Arab Version of Machismo Plays Elusive Role in Mideast Showdown : Culture: Regional public opinion weighs Hussein, Bush and others on that scale. It’s vital that Americans stand their ground, an expert says.

After all the ships, tanks, planes and troops have been placed in the balance in the Persian Gulf crisis, Arab analysts add still another factor--the intangible quality of “face.”

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, President Bush, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, PLO leader Yasser Arafat--all have all been weighed on the scale of Arab public opinion in the last four weeks.

“What’s important now is that the Americans not lose face,” one exiled Kuwaiti professor said. “If they weaken in this confrontation, the (Arab) people will turn against them.”

Mubarak suggested in a television interview that face is particularly important to President Hussein.

“To withdraw from Kuwait . . . I think he would meet terrible problems if he did that now,” Mubarak said. “That’s why he’s very obstinate. Overall, he has lost credibility all over this part of the world. I can’t say that he’s finished, but his curve has gone down sharply.”

In the Arab world, the notion of face is rooted in the ancient traditions of Bedouin honor and the need to protect the family or tribe. Every harm is repaid, particularly insults, which Arabs say “can only be washed away with blood.”

In the Far East, wisdom is held in the highest esteem; in the Middle East, strength is the paramount virtue. Some historians argue that machismo was born in these deserts, delivered to Spain in the Arab conquests and transferred to Latin America by the Spanish.

Although Western attitudes of rationality have pervaded the region, particularly among the upper classes, strength is still the dominant measure of face. Weakness is deplored. If a friend is bowed with illness, an Arab man will rarely console him with an arm around the shoulder. He will stretch his hand before his friend’s eyes and make a fist: Be strong.

These are days of testing for the Iraqi president. He denies that his Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait was dishonorable, arguing that he was only taking back what belonged to his tribe, the Iraqis. But the Kuwaitis, Saudis and Egyptians accuse him of breaking a vow not to invade.

Hussein has challenged King Fahd’s esteem for allowing Western troops--nonbelievers--on soil that shelters Islam’s holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina. He argues that the troops are threatening the tenuous concept of the Arab nation.

The Saudis and most other Arab countries point out that it was Hussein’s invasion that drew the Westerners into the region and that Hussein has put his own people in danger. This, they say, is not the mark of a leader.

All these points have been measured by Arab opinion, and Hussein’s stock has declined. But he still has supporters--in Jordan and North Africa, and in the Palestine Liberation Organization, which esteemed him highly earlier this year when he threatened to use chemical weapons against Israel.

Using foreigners trapped in Kuwait and Iraq as hostages against attack has cost him heavily in the West. Besieging the diplomats still in Kuwait city has also hurt him.

“If anything happens to them,” Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has said, “it will be the responsibility of a dictator who seized another country by force.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi strongman has turned to variations on cunning that have backfired among ordinary Arabs.

“This is preposterous; he has no shame,” an exiled Kuwaiti woman exclaimed last week as she read a hotel news-ticker account of Hussein playing patron to a group of Britons held in Baghdad, offering to have his Ministry of Education look after one child’s school needs and patting another on the head.

There is no Arab honor in hypocrisy, and the balance shifted sharply against him after the incident with the children.

The greatest test of face--of strength, in Arab terms--for Hussein and the other principals in the confrontation will come in the weeks ahead, presuming the gulf region does not erupt in war.

“I can’t see him backing down,” said the Kuwaiti professor, a psychologist. “He’s a mix of different characters: extremely intelligent, stubborn, greedy, hyper. But his vision is narrow. . . . The problem with Saddam is that he doesn’t mind everything burning down, even if he’s the only one to survive. They say he’s been reading history a lot. Probably Nero.”