NSDD 111 Next Steps toward Progress in Lebanon and the Middle East

TOP SECRET.- 2 stronger strategic relationship with Israel and those moderate Irab states willing to work with us militarily. Cooperation with Israel could have vital importance to us in the event of a major crisis with the Soviet Union in the Eastern Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf. Cooperation with the Arab states is vital for dealing with the variety of lower level and possibly internal security challenges in the region. For this reason, we must not allow either party to hold hostage our security cooperation with the other. We will need. to explain to our Arab partners that our cooperation with Israel is. aimed at Soviet contingencies that would be catastrophic to the region as a whole. We need to explain to Israel that our cooperation with the Arabs is vital to American and ultimately, we believe, Israel's long term security in the Middle East. Yet, as recent history has shown, this task is not easy. It requires that Israel desist from active campaigns in the United States against our arms sales to the Arabs and that we convince Israel that we will not allow its qualitative edge be eroded. (S) More strategically-oriented relationships with our friends should provide a context for inducing cooperation on the broader peace process which is the ultimate key to limiting. Soviet penetration and bringing about regional peace. We must not lose sight of this fact or of the importance of reciprocity of any relations between partners. Strategic cooperation should not become a bargaining chip for specific ends. **- The value of strategic cooperation both for us and our friends derives from its desirability and from the fact that it is grounded on matters of clear, mutual self-interest. Specifically, this means that we should not hold hostage progress on our strategic planning with either Israel or the moderate Arabs to progress on Lebanon or the peace process. Yet in reality we know this linkage will be made especially on the question of military cooperation with Jordan. In this particular case, we have no alternative but to insist to Israel that it mute its. objections to our military relations with Jordan in exchange for some of its own needs. This should be done privately. (S) Above all else, we need to. reassert American leadership in the wide range of challenges we face in the Middle East. The initial success and approval which greeted my September 1, 1982, peace initiative was because it was bold, innovative and challenged long held assumptions about obstacles to resolving the Palestinian problem. We must regain the initiative in the Middle East by acting once more in a bold way, especially in the aftermath of the Beirut tragedies. For if we appear to be hunkering down to a more passive policy as we approach an election year, we will not make progress but will slide into a morass of confusion and doubt which will give rise to strong domestic criticism. Specifically, we need to accept that the Palestinian problem remains a key to regional peace. and that at this time the future. of the PLO is uncertain. For this reason, we need to redouble our efforts for constructive dialogue with moderate Arabs to find ways to break through the Palestinian impasse. If one truth is evident since September 1,