PLANETARY GOVERNMENT AND THE MIDDLE EAST

To The Editors of The Crimson:

As a long time and concerned student of international relations, I am confident that one big power, or even two, such as the United States and the Soviet Union, cannot rule our planet. And certainly the price Messrs. Ford and Kissinger are demanding the people of the United States pay for what they call peace in the Middle East is too high, even if it had a possibility of succeeding, which, in my considered judgment, it does not have.

The Middle East problem is a planetary problem, not just one of the United States, Israel and Egypt. The problems of Palestine, Jerusalem and Golan Heights are of equal importance at least, in my opinion, to the oil and security rights of the United States and Israel. Furthermore, the rights of the latter two cannot be secured unless the other problems are part of a simultaneous solution.

The fatal flaw in U.S. government foreign policy since WW II has been its unilateral attempt to solve these problems. Where many are concerned many should and must have a voice. Six Arab states and the Soviet Union have already condemned the Kissinger-Ford peace pact. Many others are almost certain to do likewise.

Henry Kissinger did not have to act unilaterally in the Middle East crisis. He could and should have arranged for the United Nations to take the lead. This would have meant the interest of all parties would have been considered. As it is, he has played all his trump cards at a cost of many billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars in placing what I fear is a mere poultice on a cancer.

Israel should retire to its pre-war 1967 borders as ordered, under a United Nations guarantee of these borders, specifically underwritten by the big powers, against change other than through free, full, open and agreed change. To the above recommendations which I have repeatedly made, I now propose the creation of a permanent U.N. force, including big power troops, to compliance with U.N. decisions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

I urge as strongly as I can that Congress withhold approval of this inherently inadequate peace-pact, and instead ask the United Nations to consider the Middle East problem, along with other planetary danger spots. The creation of a planetary government, with power limited to disputes between and among states, but with powers adequate to adjudicate these disputes, is, in my opinion, the sine qua non of human survival in the thermo-nuclear age.

Since science has made possible the destruction of the Human Race, the Cold War must be ended and the present anarchist character of the nation-state system must be replaced by a planetary government of limited but adequate power to meet modern needs. Hugh B. Hester   Brig. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)