A Vital Buffer Worth Preserving : This is not the time to write Jordan off

King Hussein of Jordan is the Middle East’s archetypal political survivor. For 37 years he has succeeded in keeping his head, while all around him other Arab leaders were losing theirs. Over the decades the king has evaded assassination plots hatched by Egypt, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization. His survival, though, hasn’t depended only on knowing when to duck. He is also very shrewd at constantly recalculating his course so as to pretty much remain in the Arab mainstream, wherever at any given moment that happens to flow. It’s this talent that largely explains the king’s intemperate and even reckless outburst against the United States this week.

Hussein’s fiery remarks--”intended for Jordan,” as one official in Amman wryly noted, “but unfortunately they were received by the United States”--put him squarely on the side of Iraq while deeply offending both Washington and Saudi Arabia, Jordan’s chief economic supporters. The war against Iraq, he said, is “a third world war . . . a war against all Arabs and Muslims.” The language echoes Saddam Hussein’s cynical effort to place a conflict provoked by Iraq’s naked aggression in the context of a universal struggle between Muslim believers and Western infidels. The monarch, British-educated and a man of the world, knows better than that.

What he also knows is that the 3.4 million people over whom he rules--60% of them Palestinians--overwhelmingly identify with Saddam Hussein’s anti-Western, anti-Israel policies. Now, the Arab world is not notably a place where public opinion is regularly consulted, through free elections, for example. But it is a place whose leaders, unless they run a complete Iraq-type police state, know that they had better take the anger of the street into account or risk falling victim to it. The king’s calculation is that right now his life will be easier if he aligns himself with this anti-Western mood, whatever short-term ill effects that could have on his relations with Washington and Western Europe.

The initial U.S. response has understandably enough been hurt, anger and a move to reassess the aid program to Amman. The king was way off base, and there’s no reason not to say so firmly. But then a cooler calculation becomes necessary. Is this the time to consign the king to the ranks of America’s enemies, to write Jordan off? Clearly it is not.

When all is said and done, Jordan remains a vital buffer between Israel and Iraq, a country whose leader more often than not will be found in the camp of Arab moderates. King Hussein can be--right now he clearly is--a difficult friend. But a Jordan without the king, a Jordan taken over by radical Palestinians or pro-Syria or pro-Iraq forces, would threaten the strategic balance in the region and would be calamitous to U.S. interests. There’s no need to reward the king for his outburst; far from it. But Jordan’s geopolitical importance in the scheme of things must be kept steadily in mind. The U.S. response to the monarch’s provocative rhetoric--a dispassionate response--should be shaped accordingly.