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By Commander W. H. Nelson, U.S. Navy
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“. . . how certain can anyone be that Iraq, with essentially the same political leadership in place as during more aggressive, interventionist years, will not again turn its attention toward the smaller Gulf states. The border with Kuwait, for example, remains unresolved; will Baghdad not use its extraordinarily large, well- equipped and now experienced army to extort or even force a settlement on its terms?”
—Mazher A. Hameed (1986)'
In light of the crisis fomented by Iraq during the end of last summer (some anticipated it, as the above quote indicates), it is clear that we need to consider a number of questions. First, what is the U.S. national interest in the Persian Gulf—is it based strictly on oil or is oil just a subset of a broader Middle East agenda? Second, what role is the United States prepared and able to play in this region—policeman, fireman, or frustrated victim? Third, what role can and should we expect our friends and allies to play, particularly those even more dependent on the Persian Gulf nations for energy than we are? Fourth, how should we react to the lackluster military response to the current crisis by almost all of the European community as we plan for the future of NATO? And last, what is the appropriate military component to our regional policy and what is the Navy’s role in it?
This significant imbalance in military capability is a crucial factor affecting Persian Gulf stability. Not surprisingly, the comparative military weakness of the friendly southern Gulf states directly affects the amount of military effort necessary to influence the behavior of aspiring regional hegemons.
One of the reasons for this imbalance is demographic. Resources available in Iran and Iraq contrast vividly with those of Saudi Arabia, which has half as many people as Iraq and one-sixth the population of Iran. This directly correlates with the size of each nation’s military forces; those of Iran and Iraq are both ten times larger than Saudi Arabia’s. As the nation with the least number of people among the three countries, Saudi Arabia has focused its military expenditures on lethal, high-technology weapons and systems such as F-15 fighter aircraft, E-3A AW ACS early warning aircraft, and other modem, Western systems. Their high cost drives the largest defense budget in the region and reflects Saudi Arabia’s position as one of the world’s largest buyers of Western military technology.
To varying degrees, each of the Gulf nations depends on oil revenues to support both domestic and military programs. The current crisis was inspired in large part by the drop in oil prices that began in the early 1980s and ultimately deprived Iraq of money needed to pay debts associated with its eight-year war with Iran. No oil producer as immune from the price slump. Annual Saudi oil revenues, for example, fell from over $102 billion to $22 billion from 1980 to 1986 alone.2 Iraq’s “easy” solution was to incorporate the country that holds the most IOUs—- Kuwait. Clearly, world oil prices therefore play a central role not only in the economic, but also in the military stability of the region.
Another key difference among these nations, and a source of friction in the Gulf states for years, is the location and relative geographic advantages of each. First and most obvious is possession of the oil reserves. Of equal importance is Iran’s long shoreline that covers almost half of the Persian Gulf. Iraq, on the other hand, has extremely limited access to the Gulf, a fact that has not gone unnoticed in Baghdad’s aggressive calculations. Saudi Arabia borders both on the Gulf and the Red Sea, the latter now increasingly important as an oil sea line of communication with the completion of pipelines that terminate outside the Gulf. Finally, the Soviet Union’s close proximity to the Gulf region cannot be ignored, nor can that of neighboring Israel.
Other significant factors also have an impact on regional security: the hegemonic ambitions of certain Gulf states in the overall context of the Middle East, the role of the superpowers, and the regional politics of the Gulf states themselves as represented by the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Iran has long been considered the most powerful nation in the region. Its historical pretensions to regional dominance were abetted by the United States’s response to the United Kingdom’s announcement that it would withdraw forces from east of the Suez Canal by the end of 1971. Iran was to be one of two pillars (Saudi Arabia the other) in President Richard Nixon’s “Twin Pillars” policy for the Persian Gulf. This policy reflected Nixon’s choice during the Vietnam War to fill the military vacuum left by the
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British with local forces, instead of employing significant levels of U.S. forces. Under the late Shah, Iran enjoyed a solid security relationship with the United States and received a variety of up-to-date U.S. weapons and other military hardware.
Iranian claims on Bahrain date back to the 1700s. Although the British presence in the Gulf deterred Iran from overt moves against Bahrain, the Shah did seize the important islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971,3 The fall of the Shah and the emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fundamentalist Moslem government again altered the security balance in the region and ended the ill-conceived “Twin Pillars” policy. Iran was left isolated, well-armed, hating the United States, and still nurturing its territorial desires in the Gulf. The very Palpable threat of invasion Iran posed to Kuwait after Kuwait sided with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War is an excellent example.
Another state with now obvious hegemonic ambitions is Iraq. The recent invasion is not the first time Iraq has laid claim to Kuwait. Within a week of the 19 June 1961 declaration of Kuwaiti independence (a British protectorate since 1899), Iraq’s President Abd al-Karim Qassem announced that he considered Kuwait “an integral part of Iraq.”4 Britain dispatched troops from Kenya, which were ultimately replaced by a 3,000-man force from the Arab League, composed of Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian troops. Although some of Iraq’s motivation was to divert public attention from internal dissatisfaction with the current regime, Iraqis believed that Kuwait should be part of their regionally dominant country.
The Iraq-Kuwait dispute is typical of the Middle East. Its roots go far into history, and like so many other border troubles in the region, it has been “solved” many times, only to have one side repudiate the “solution” at a later date. Iran and Iraq, Iraq and Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, and many other examples of border uncertainties and challenges reflect the internal friction and dynamic of the Persian Gulf region that defines its instability.
Saddam Hussein’s “holy war" against the West reflects not only the desperate straits in which he finds himself, but also the link between stability in the Persian Gulf and the Pan Arab movement itself. While not the most important force at work in the relations among Gulf nations, Pan Arabism is, nonetheless, a factor of significance that Arab states have used at various times to promote the aims of regional actors.
In this regard, Saudi Arabia has taken the lead in recent years as the one state in the Gulf able to establish solid credentials in both the West and in the Arab camp. Iraq claimed that it was performing this role during its war against Iran. But the Saudi role has been bolstered by the significance attached to their status as the keeper of the two holy cities is Islam—Mecca and Medina. Western policymakers can help the Saudis balance these two often divergent roles of Arab nation and Western ally by not forcing them to choose between the two.
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Many Middle East experts believe that the solution of the Arab-lsraeli-Palestinian question is paramount to prolonged regional stability. For example, before the most recent crisis, no state in the Gulf could afford to project an image as a U.S. ally, considering the U.S. role as Israel’s unquestioned protector and supporter. The Bush administration is keenly aware of this, as its efforts to keep the Israelis out of this latest crisis show. In the long run, however, the unprecedented access U.S. military forces have had in several Gulf states during the Iraq-Kuwait crisis
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/- The United States has held an interest in the Persian 'e Gulf since shortly after World War II, when it established is a Middle East Force. The region remained of little signifi-
The secret to settling a Persian Gulf crisis may lie in the willingness of the Gulf Cooperation Council (all Gulf states except Iran and Iraq) to team with Western oil dependent countries. Persuading those countries to commit outside their borders, however, is easier said than done.
cance until the late 1960s, when the West began to depend increasingly on Middle Eastern oil. The United States was also content during this period in allowing British forces to maintain the security balance. The retreat of the British east of Suez and a growing dependence on foreign oil have continued to draw serious attention to the region since the Nixon administration. Countering Soviet expansion southward has been a major consideration and reflected the state of U.S.-Soviet relations as well as world events, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Western strategists have long warned about Soviet moves toward the Gulf, its oil fields, and warm-water ports. And their fears crystallized in the Afghanistan invasion. Today the Soviet Union is seeking a role it has always nurtured, that of regional mediator. Without the Israeli baggage of the United States, the Soviet Union has tried to involve itself diplomatically in Gulf affairs, providing its good offices to help solve regional problems. Until the present crisis, the Soviet Union has had little success in playing this role, despite huge arms sales to countries such as Irau. The Soviet-Afghanistan debacle and the Gorbachev regime’s conciliatory diplomacy toward the West have served at once to lessen fears of Soviet intentions. But they have also reduced the perception of regional states that the Soviets could act in a decisive way in the region—particularly militarily.
In response to their collective needs for increased security and economic cooperation, the Gulf states (minus Iran and Iraq) formed the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981. The Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were principal catalysts. The main objectives of the council are to ensure the member nations’ own internal and external security and to avoid dependence on any external power.5
So far, the organization has been fairly successful in the economic sphere, but it has failed to provide the Gulf states with any form of security guarantee. Although on paper the combined forces should be able to thwart a regional aggressor, a lack of common training, equipment, and communications hampers any real effectiveness. This was clearly borne out in the current crisis.
What is the U.S. national interest in the Persian Gulf? The first obvious answer is oil. Policymakers cannot escape the reality that “from the mid-1990s the Gulf will begin to dominate the world energy market, achieving a monopoly by 2020.”6 Most experts agree that if world oil prices remain relatively low, the search for alternative energy sources will be slow, at best. The U.S. government’s unenthusiastic support for developing alternative energy sources, such as the Synfuels program, is a good example. Thus, much of the industrialized West will con-
tinue to depend upon Gulf oil reserves to sustain energy needs. Free and unfettered access to these resources is currently vital to Western security—but who is selling may not always be important, just as long as someone is.
The United States also has an interest in the region because of its geostrategic location as the land bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa. The British valued the area because of its access to India. Today, the Persian Gulf is just one part of a system of vital waterways that includes the Red and Mediterranean seas. Dependence on the Persian Gulf for the shipment of oil has dwindled since the construction of pipelines carrying the oil of various Gulf states. The flow out of the Persian Gulf has reduced from 16.2 million barrels per day in 1980 to about 5 million in 1988.7
A final, significant reason for U.S. interest in the region involves the geostrategic world position that it occupies. The United States is unquestionably the last superpower. The larger issue of world order and stability (particularly in regions vital to our own security) can only be satisfactorily addressed if we are involved. Secretary of State James Baker noted in his recent address to the Senate: “. . . America must lead and our people must understand that. We remain the one nation that has the necessary political, military, and economic instruments at our disposal to catalyze a successful collective response by the international community.”8
The recent crisis has demonstrated that the United Nations can “pull together” when faced with naked aggression, but it was U.S. unilateral actions that halted Saddam’s tanks at the Saudi border. Maintaining the perception of the United States as a reliable security partner, especially to our allies in the Arab countries, is of utmost importance.
Since 1973, the United States has played a role of episodic intervention in regional affairs whenever U.S. interests were threatened. Afghanistan helped the Carter administration to “see the Soviet light” and resulted in the Carter Doctrine—officially declaring the Persian Gulf an area of vital interest to the United States. This reactive policy of the U.S. government, almost always with military forces, has not always won friends in the region nor influenced regional hegemones. Local supporters of a U.S. role have wondered if the Americans would react, and if so, would they precipitously and unilaterally introduce military forces into the region without invitation.
There is a fundamental requirement for the United States not only to maintain forces in the Gulf, but also to ensure it has a credible rapid deployment capability. It is no longer a matter of deterring the Soviets. Today, they appear willing to let others spend the money and take the political heat for forward deploying national military forces. Instead, it is a matter of the remaining superpower, dependent upon the region’s energy resources, to ensure stability.
Secretary of State Baker made this point quite clear. “If we want to encourage peaceful change and preserve the security of all our friends in the area, we must remain a reliable partner for peace.”9
The United States, of course, is not the only country in the world that depends upon Gulf oil. Our European allies and the Japanese depend on it significantly more than we do. Any U.S. role should, if possible, be supported, joined, and underwritten by fellow oil-consuming nations. Europe and Japan must commit with financial and military resources necessary to join in ensuring regional security. But even though “NATO, the European community, and the West European Union have pitched in magnificently,’’ according to Secretary Baker, reaction to the current crisis in the Gulf has been, in comparison, less than spectacular.
In response to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s remarks on this situation, the remaining Europeans did what they do best—they argued about it. Their timidity in responding militarily to a rapidly deteriorating crisis may serve to caution those who would discard NATO in favor of some new European security institution. In addition, the long-overdue discussion of out-of-area operations within NATO needs to happen soon, and in conjunction with upcoming efforts to reshape NATO’s strategy.
Three years ago, the United States responded to the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark (FFG-31) by increasing its naval forces in the region and by conducting an oil tanker escort service at the request of Kuwait. Except for some British and French naval forces, the United States was essentially alone in attempting to keep the Gulf open to oil shipments.
Unlike 1987, today “over twenty-five countries are now supplying men and materiel in support of Security Council resolutions.”10 While this in itself is a remarkable difference, U.S. policy objectives remain the same: to work with governments both inside and outside the Gulf to build a more durable order.
The U.S. government is quickly facing tough choices between reducing the national debt by cutting the budget (especially defense) or continuing to fund its role as a World leader. Saudi oil dollars will help defray the costs of the current employment of U.S. forces, but a “banker” ■nay not be available each time the United States needs to exercise military power in the future.
Budget pressures will encourage those who urge a retrenchment in U.S. global involvement, particularly with respect to military forces. A “do nothing” strategy, one that leaves the nations of the Gulf to their own devices, would not serve our long-term strategic interests (or theirs) tor many of the reasons discussed above. Budget pressures, domestic needs, the “peace dividend,” and other reasons for slashing our military capability will not allow the United States to play its necessary role in the Middle East and the Gulf. Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz’s admonition that “Talk is not enough to safeguard Western interests in this region” is ironically as true today as when he said it three years ago."
Although a coalition approach among the energy dependent Western countries would be preferable, the option of the U.S. acting alone must also be considered. Going it alone has had a significant impact on the Navy in particular. Episodic intervention in the region has resulted in erratic naval force levels, which has played havoc with operational and personnel tempos, maintenance schedules, and ultimately, readiness and retention. The idea of a 12- carrier battle group Navy is not totally consistent with the types of employments required to date nor with a strategy that would require unilateral U.S. actions. In any case, Political leaders cannot wish away commitments (i.e., a Indian Ocean-carrier battle group presence) in order to justify cuts in naval forces.
The best option, of course, would be for the energy- dependent nations to work together with the Gulf Cooperation Council for stability. “Sharing the defense burden Would be an excellent way to show both friend and foe the degree of Western resolve in maintaining an open Gulf.”12 This option has much to recommend it: burden sharing, alliance solidarity, and support for United Nations proclamations. If such a combination could be organized, and decided to engage in such a policy in concert with the United States, then the new coalition could explore specific modalities in the diplomatic, economic, and niilitary arenas. The United States would no longer face intervention alone. Indeed, if multinational pressure is brought to bear, intervention may be unnecessary. Pegging collective security on the reactions of nations inherently short-sighted concerning problems beyond their immediate borders, however, is risky.
The United States is in the Gulf for the long haul. In the aftermath of the Cold War, and the economically interdependent world of the 1990s, the United States must have the assistance and cooperation of its allies in protecting mutual, vital interests. When these interests are threatened, we will still lead, but our friends must join with us. This is particularly true in the Persian Gulf.
The implications for the U.S. Navy are significant. The Navy was already on-station when the current crisis erupted, and the Navy-Marine Corps team was the first to carry out deterrence measures ordered by the President. If past is prologue, then the Navy will be the last military component to stand down from this crisis and will remain on watch for U.S. interests in the region.
We should be careful in the current budget battle not to cut funds disproportionately for the types of forces that directly underpin our global role. The Navy and Marine Corps budget (particularly the areas that support power projection, amphibious operations, and sealift) should be carefully weighed both against other components of national defense, as well as with respect to their impact upon the total government budget. The United States cannot have a complete energy policy without the types of military forces that guarantee regional stability in the Persian Gulf.
Other energy-using nations can join with us in defraying our costs for maintaining quick reaction and on-station forces. And the United States can take a fresh look at its NATO naval commitment which, in the current international scheme of things, is probably outdated and excessive. For example, naval presence in the Mediterranean is unquestionably important, but the United States must have more flexibility to move its forces without artificial restrictions from NATO. This is particularly true as the Navy shrinks from 14 to 12 carrier battle groups.
We should sustain some form of multinational naval presence in the Persian Gulf. The current force could be replaced with a multinational squadron much like NATO’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic. This “beefed up” Middle East Force, operating in conjunction with Gulf Cooperation Council navies, would be the most effective way to ensure allied participation while eliminating the problem of a unilateral U.S. presence. Even though exact composition and command arrangements could be worked out, a battleship might be a good choice as permanent flagship, given its firepower and survivability. This idea might apply to the Mediterranean as well, in view of its increasing importance as an energy sea line of communication. A reduction in the number of ships forward deployed in the Gulf would provide an obvious savings for the United States as well as demonstrate Western resolve to ensure regional stability.
'Mazhcr A. Hamccd. American Imperiled: the Security Imperatives of the Arab Gulf States (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Assessments Group, 1986), p. 9. ’Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf and the West (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), p. 17.
'Ibid., p. 19.
■'Robert Litwak. Security in the Persian Gulf (New Jersey: IISS, 1981), p. 24. 'Mazhcr A. Hameed, op. cit., p. 85.
"Michael Cunningham, Hostages to Fortune (London: Brasseys, 1988). p. II. 7lbid., p. 28.
“Secretary of State. James Baker, "America's Stake in the Persian Gulf Crisis", Statement Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, September 5, 1990. 9lbid.
“’Ibid.
"Milton Vlorst, "Iraq at War." Foreign Policy, vol. 65. Winter 1986/87, p. 364. 12CDR W. H. Nelson, "Peacekeepers at Risk," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 113. July 1987, p. 94.
Commander Nelson recently completed a two-year tour in the Chief of Naval Operations Office of Strategic Concepts (OP-603), where he worked maritime strategy and NATO bilateral issues, as well as headed the conventional arms control section. He is currently a strategic analyst at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.