Fateful Triangle

The Road to Armageddon759possibly a superpower confrontation. As noted earlier, the USSR haswarned that it would become directly involved if Damascus wereattacked, and the war might well have escalated to Israeli bombing orshelling of Damascus. By September, Israeli forces were deployed northof Beirut and Syrian forces in Eastern Lebanon had been cut off, withIsraeli artillery in a position to shell Damascus. It is possible that furthersteps would have been taken in what military analyst Ze’ev Schiffdescribes as Israel’s war “to expel Syria from Lebanon,” had it not beenfor the unexpected international reaction to the Beirut massacres. It is,in short, not impossible that the victims of this atrocity saved the worldfrom nuclear confrontation.Even apart from the Syrian phase of the war, the risk of superpowerinvolvement was considerable. The Soviet Embassy was hit on severaloccasions and was “heavily damaged” during the Israeli shelling of WestBeirut. Furthermore, during the Israeli invasion of West Beirut, Israelitroops occupied parts of the Soviet Embassy and held them for twodays, a gratuitous act of defiance in the course of the conquest of avirtually undefended city. 13 Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perledisclosed subsequently that Israeli jets killed 11 Russians whom theyobserved investigating a downed Israeli reconnaissance plane inLebanon. 14All of this was passed over calmly here, because we take it forgranted that the USSR will back down in any confrontation apart fromits immediate borders. Luckily for the world, this expectation once againturned out to be correct. But this should not prevent us from perceivingthe seriousness of the provocation. Suppose that the situation had beenreversed. Suppose that a Cuban army had invaded Costa Rica or Guatemala,purposely killing 11 American advisers, shelling the U.S.Embassy and occupying it in the course of conquering the capital city.How would the U.S. have reacted? Of course, the question is academic,Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky