Preserving the Oil Flow

By Strobe Talbott

The U.S. seeks to shore up security in the Persian Gulf

The barren hills near the Iraqi border town of Khanaqin quaked with the thump of artillery fire last week. While Iraqi MiGs and Iranian Phantoms dueled in the skies overhead, tanks were battling on the ground, yet again, over a patch of disputed frontier. Iraq and Iran have been skirmishing along their border for nearly two years, ever since the downfall of the late Shah. The fighting did not spread, but it underlined afresh the edgy, mercurial state of the Persian Gulf region, repository and supplier of so much of the world's oil.

In Washington, in the capitals of Western Europe, in Tokyo, the future of the countries around the gulf has become an obsession with policymakers, diplomats, generals and economists. There is nothing altruistic about their concern. Approximately 40% of the oil consumed by the non-Communist world, including nearly a third of the U.S.'s imports, comes from the gulf. Moreover, since the region holds more than 50% of the world's known petroleum reserves, the economies of the West--not to mention of the Third World--will increasingly depend on the security of the wells and tanker lanes of the gulf.

That security is in jeopardy at virtually every point of the compass. To the north, Iran sinks deeper and deeper into chaos. To the west, what is widely seen as Israel's intransigence emboldens radicals, undercuts moderates and enrages almost everyone in the Arab world. To the south, the memory of last year's attack by zealous dissidents on the Sacred Mosque in Mecca still sends shudders through the House of Saud and the monarchies that rule the gulfs ministates. In the waters of the gulf itself, a Soviet guided-missile cruiser and its frigate escort have replaced the Shah's navy in patrolling the shipping channel through the 40-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz. The U.S.S.R. now maintains 85,000 troops in Afghanistan and has military advisers in South Yemen and Ethiopia, while a fleet of ten Soviet warships and 16 support vessels cruises the Indian Ocean.

The rise of anti-Western Islamic militancy, the instability of the gulf states,* the explosiveness of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the buildup of Soviet power have generated intense anxiety, even some apocalyptic pessimism among Western statesmen. "We are on a roller coaster to disaster," said Henry Kissinger in congressional testimony last July. "Our future is now at the mercy of a precarious political status quo in what is probably the most volatile, unstable and crisis-prone region of the world."

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski believes that the U.S. and its allies can still head off disaster. "The area I once called the arc of crisis [the northern and western rim of the Indian Ocean] may well be the focus of our major effort in the 1980s to enhance geopolitical stability," Brzezinski says. "Between 1945 and 1955, the major thrust was in Western Europe and the Far East. From 1955 on, it was in assuring overall strategic stability vis-`a-vis the Soviet Union. It is very likely that in the 1980s we will be involved in an unprecedented effort to assure stability, and therefore exercise deterrence, in the Persian Gulf area."

The Carter Administration's initial response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan last December was largely rhetorical. In his State of the Union message in January, the President warned that "an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the U.S., and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

Critics charge--and White House officials privately concede--that the U.S. is ill prepared to back up Carter's tough talk. Declared former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger last week: "The military forces presently and prospectively in place in the region are not sufficient by themselves adequately to constrain Soviet moves if the Soviet Union were to become more aggressive."

But the Administration has begun to redress the Soviet-American military balance in the region. The U.S. has negotiated agreements with Somalia, Kenya and Oman for access to their ports and airfields in a crisis. Borrowing vessels from its Mediterranean and Pacific fleets, the U.S. Navy has stationed two nuclear-armed aircraft carrier groups in the Indian Ocean and a five-vessel task force in the area of the gulf itself. In March the Pentagon announced the creation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a reservoir of more than 200,000 troops from which the President could draw an instant expeditionary force.

Says the commander of the RDJTF, Marine Lieut. General Paul X. Kelley: "We have a global mission, but our focus is on the Persian Gulf." Since some of the units available to Kelley are not sufficiently trained and equipped for combat and most are based in the U.S., the force would have to be quickly whipped into shape and airlifted to staging areas mear the combat zone. There it would "marry up" with equipment and supplies prepositioned on ships now cruising off Diego Garcia, a British-owned island in the Indian Ocean some 2,500 miles south of Hormuz. The U.S. has leased base rights on the island.

Making good on Carter's vow in the event of a showdown in the gulf could be a logistical nightmare. Administration strategists are concentrating on dealing with four possible emergencies. Three are based on the Afghanistan experience--"invitations" to Moscow by secessionist Azerbaijanis in northwestern Iran, or by Baluchis in southeastern Iran, or by an embattled leftist government in Tehran that eventually might take over from the mullahs. The fourth possibility is a Soviet thrust into Pakistan, under the pretext of hot pursuit of Afghan rebels. In each case, the U.S. would have to contend with an overwhelming Soviet advantage: geographical proximity. "When you talk about projecting combat power 7,000 miles and then sustaining it over the long haul," says Kelley, "it boggles the mind. That's why it's absolutely essential that we have access to facilities in the region."

Critics, including Ronald Reagan, believe that the U.S. will need more, including a land-based military presence in or near the gulf area. Explains Reagan's chief foreign policy adviser, Richard Allen: "The key problem with the Carter Administration's approach is the absence of American personnel on the ground."

Administration officials would love to have U.S. bases within tactical aircraft range of the oilfields. But as Vice Admiral Thor Hansen, staff director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledges, "The leaders of the area have made it clear they don't want U.S. bases on their territory."

Even the U.S.'s best friend in the Arab world, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, has said he does not want U.S. forces stationed on his soil. Saudi Arabia, too, is opposed to bases. The reason, as asserted by the kingdom's suave Princeton-educated Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al Faisal: "The introduction of bases by one side will only bring about more military activity by the other side."

Even the one hospitable Arab government, Oman, has reservations. Explains Abdul Aziz al Rowass, an adviser to Sultan Qaboos of Oman: "The U.S. must have access to our facilities, but only on request. It is up to us to say yes or no." Rowass, who wears the traditional Omani curved dagger, the khanjar, in the embroidered belt around his flowing white robe, points to one of the many maps on his office wall in Muscat and adds, "We will never allow the facilities to be used against neighboring and friendly countries."

The U.S. has repeatedly disclaimed any such intention. "We're not going to get involved in internal conflicts or conflicts between states of the region," insists Kelley. But the suspicion lingers in the gulf that the strategists in Washington have a supersecret fifth contingency use for Kelley's RDJTF: American seizure of the oilfields in a local crisis, or in the event of another Arab oil boycott or a massive price hike by OPEC.

Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are especially worried about the "oil-grab scenario." Officials there attach ominous significance to the emergence as a Reagan foreign policy adviser of Johns Hopkins University Professor Robert W. Tucker, the author of a controversial 1975 article in Commentary laying out the rationale for a possible U.S. seizure of the fields.

There is also concern in the gulf that the present searchlight of American attention will provoke, rather than deter, more intrusive Soviet policies. Kuwait especially fears that U.S. rhetoric about protecting the region against the Soviets has the ring of self-fulfilling prophecy. "I hate these people talking about how they're going to defend and save our oil," says Sheik Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah, Kuwait's Foreign Minister, gesturing angrily toward a pile of Western newspapers on his desk. "Defend us against whom? Who's occupying us? We haven't asked anybody to defend us. Yet we find all these ships around us asking for facilities. It's all a bit like a film with two directors--Russia and the U.S. How will the film end? Perhaps with both big powers agreeing, 'O.K., these oilfields belong to us, and those to you. We'll divide up the region from here to there.' Is that how it will end?"

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein calls for "the rejection of the presence of foreign armies and military forces or any foreign forces and military bases or any facilities in any form or under any pretext or cover or for any reason whatsoever in the Arab homeland." If anyone is going to police the gulf, in Saddam's view, it will be Iraq.

The Carter Administration hopes that Iraq's aspirations to fill the vacuum left by the fall of the Shah will induce Baghdad to put some space between itself and its longtime benefactors in Moscow. But at the same time, U.S. experts realize that Iraq is not about to endorse an active U.S. role in the area. In fact, Saddam has said that any Arab state that cooperates too closely with the U.S. should be "isolated politically and economically."

Most vulnerable to such threats is Oman. Among the gulfs other, more timid but traditionally pro-Western leaders there is apprehension that the U.S. may unwittingly contribute to Sultan Qaboos' downfall by courting him too publicly and congratulating him too loudly. Around the State Department and National Security Council this is known as the "kiss of death" problem.

But with Carter on the defensive in the presidential campaign, the White House has not been able to resist public boasting over its facilities-access agreement with Oman. "Why must the White House keep saying this openly?" asks Kuwait's Sheik Sabah plaintively. "Does the U.S. have to put Oman in a bad position like this?"

France and Britain--and, for that matter, Western Europe as a whole--generally support the Carter policy, but wish it could be conducted with less publicity. France operates a 14-vessel fleet in the Indian Ocean, while British contract officers occupy key military positions throughout the gulf; yet both the Quai-d'Orsay and Whitehall assiduously downplay their roles.

Reagan Foreign Policy Adviser Allen believes that the answer for the U.S. is not lower visibility but higher credibility: "Of course the U.S. must worry about the kiss of death problem. But the opposite of the kiss of death would be an embrace of strength. Our friends in the region must be able to count on a firm and steady policy of U.S. support."

The trouble is that American credibility in the Arab world depends not so much on how much military muscle the U.S. can flex as on how much political clout it can bring to bear in the Arab-Israeli standoff. The U.S.'s inability to budge the Israelis from the West Bank and to mediate a settlement of the Palestinian issue has direct and damaging consequences for American efforts to shore up gulf security.

As viewed from Washington, that security depends primarily on keeping the Soviets out. But seen from Kuwait, Bahrain or Iraq, security depends on defusing the Arab-Israeli conflict. From their perspective, far more disturbing and potentially destabilizing than the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is the Knesset's formal annexation of Arab East Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem," says Sheik Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Defense Minister of Bahrain, "will always be more important to us than Kabul." Adds Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, his fist clenched and his voice rising in what for him is an uncharacteristic display of frustration: "Israeli aggression is no better than Soviet aggression. If the U.S. wants to bring stability and protect independence in this region, then how can it ask our cooperation in opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan unless it also opposes the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967?"

Arab officials are virtually unanimous in arguing that what they see as Israeli annexationism is not just a major or central problem--it is all pervasive. Until the U.S. is perceived to be influencing Israel toward eventual withdrawal from the West Bank, it will be unable to have much influence on the gulf states. Many U.S. experts on the Middle East, both in the area and in Washington, agree with that gloomy assessment. "Our stock out here is at an alltime low," concludes an American diplomat in the region.

With their immense wealth and their fixation on a different enemy from the one Washington worries about, the gulf states are simply not very amenable to U.S. leverage.

The stagnation of the Camp David process has been a great boon to Soviet interests in the area. By making the most of its longstanding support for the Palestinian cause against the U.S., Israel and Egypt, the U.S.S.R. has been able to weather quickly and painlessly the initial storm of protest within the Arab world over the invasion of Afghanistan. As Oman's Abdul Aziz al Rowass observes sadly, "The Arab-Israeli problem is the gate through which the Soviet Union entered our region, and that gate won't be closed until the problem is solved."

His government, for one, still distinguishes between the issues of gulf security and Arab-Israeli peace, cooperating with Washington on the former while criticizing it on the latter. But for the moment Oman is the only country in the gulf willing to make--and act on-- that distinction. It may not be able to do so forever.

--By Strobe Talbott

*Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq.

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