In the immediate wake of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, there was a sudden and widespread disposition in the country to acknowledge that we were confronted with a grave international crisis centered in the Persian Gulf. The shock of Afghanistan, coming as it did on top of events in Iran, appeared for a brief period to have transformed the political landscape that had prevailed for a decade. The President made no small contribution to this apparent transformation. Not only did he express outrage over Moscow’s actions and confess that the scales had suddenly been lifted from his eyes; he also declared that events in the Gulf presented the United States, and the West, with the most serious threat to vital interests since the late 1940’s. The Carter Doctrine expressed in formal terms the new awareness of the danger confronting this country and its major allies in the Persian Gulf and committed the United States to oppose by any means necessary, including military force, an attempt by any outside power to gain control of the Persian Gulf region. Moreover, the administration held out the promise that it would now move with dispatch to provide the necessary means to back up its policy reorientation in the Gulf.

These events of January and February are the better part of a year behind us. The intervening period has provided a growing sense of disappointment—bordering on dismay—to those of us who had hoped that the initial reaction to Afghanistan signaled a real transformation of American policy in the Middle East and beyond. What we have instead witnessed is the reassertion of patterns of thought and of action that in January seemed to have been discredited beyond repair. The momentary chagrin and disarray of those who had counseled policies which contributed to the present crisis have been only momentary. In recent months there has been a regrouping of old forces and a return to familiar themes. The address given in June at Harvard University by former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, an address widely hailed as admirable and clear-sighted, provided the signal for counterattack.

One of the principal stewards of a policy that has brought us to near disaster, Vance was not only unrepentant but even uncharacteristically assertive in his defense of that policy. To a nation that is presently unable to defend, if need be, its vital interests in the Gulf, and may not be in a position to do so for some years to come, his higher wisdom was to warn against the “dangerous fallacy of the military solution to non-military problems” and to remind us that “military power is a basis, not a substitute, for diplomacy.” Considering our present plight, Vance’s admonitions betray either an extraordinary obtuseness or an almost willful refusal to confront reality. Nevertheless, they have been eagerly taken up by many who share the former Secretary’s outlook but who were momentarily on the defensive last winter. Thus the Carter Doctrine is now seen by an increasing number at home—as it is seen in Western Europe—as a military response to what is presumably an essentially non-military problem; a military response, moreover, that attempts to preserve the status quo in a region where change is perhaps the only certainty.

Given the signs that are almost daily more numerous, one must be a determined optimist to believe that the debate over American foreign policy, particularly in the Persian Gulf, has now been decided and that a transformation of policy may be taken for granted. Despite the Carter Doctrine and despite the much heralded Rapid Deployment Force, there has been to date no such transformation. We remain in a period of indecision and uncertainty. The events of the past year have shaken the established foreign-policy framework; they have not destroyed it. In somewhat altered form it survives and may even be given a new lease on life regardless of the outcome of the election.

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II

In his moment of truth last winter, President Carter did not exaggerate when he characterized developments in the Persian Gulf region as posing the gravest international threat we have faced since the 1940’s. Though subsequently derided as alarmist, if anything the comparison minimized the present danger. Iran and Afghanistan—as well as the outbreak of war between Iraq and Iran—have made blindingly clear the scope and magnitude of the threat now posed to continued Western access to the oil of the Persian Gulf. What remained prior to these events a matter of speculation and uncertainty can no longer be so. The revolution in Iran, and then the Iraqi-Iranian war, revealed the nature of the indigenous threat to Western access. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan revealed the nature of the external threat. For the moment we may put aside the question of which of these dangers is of greater immediacy or significance. Both are there and, for the time being, we live at the mercy of both. Moreover, the two may not be easily separated in practice, and this despite the attempt to separate them in the Carter Doctrine. The Russians may be expected to take such advantage as they can of internal upheaval and intraregional conflict. In the years ahead, they are likely to find a number of opportunities for doing so.

The most apparent meaning of these events, then, is that we have entered a new phase of the endemic oil crisis. In an earlier phase, the salient issue raised was that of price. At least, this was the prevailing interpretation given the crisis by experts. The great question was deemed to be: how can the world pay for OPEC oil? That question, of course, persists today, and in view of the recent increases in price—let alone the increases anticipated in the years ahead—it does so in acute form. But the developments in Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq have clearly raised yet another and more serious issue: that of physical access to the oil apart from price. For Iran demonstrated that a producer might either refuse or prove unable to maintain anywhere near its previous level of production. And Afghanistan opened the prospect of losing physical access to an outside power that possesses the military capacity to impose its control over the Gulf.

The loss of physical access need not be equated with a literal cut-off from the oil supplies of the Gulf. This is one possible consequence of losing access. It forms the extreme or limiting case, and although it may never come to pass, the possibility alone of its occurrence is sufficient to condition the behavior of those who have lost their former position but who remain as dependent as ever on the resources of the Gulf. In all likelihood, the West would continue to get something that roughly approximates its present share of Persian Gulf oil regardless of the power that controlled access to the oil. But it would get the oil only on the terms, economic and political, laid down by those who enjoyed control.

This is, in fact, the situation we have been moving toward for some time with respect to the producing countries. Step by step, the major consumers in the West have surrendered such leverage as they once exercised over the producers. In turn, the latter have increasingly laid down the terms, both economic and political, on which the former may receive oil. Walter J. Levy has recently written: “Because of the fear of being arbitrarily cut off from supplies, Western nations and their companies now accept within a wide range practically any economic or political terms that a producing country may impose on them.”1 Levy observes that this subservience has only encouraged producing countries to proceed as they see fit, which has meant in an increasingly arbitrary manner, and he concludes that we have entered a period in international oil of near “lawlessness.” But this is only to say that the major Western consumers have on almost every occasion backed away from the attempt to apply countervailing power against the producing countries. In this manner, they have gone very far toward surrendering physical access in its most elemental sense.

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Whether this situation, one without real parallel in the history of state relations, might have persisted in the absence of the Soviet Union must remain an open question. It does not seem plausible, however, to assume that it could. For that assumption requires us to believe that the nations of the West, though incomparably more powerful than the principal Middle East producing countries, would go on indefinitely in their acceptance of actions that jeopardize their economic well-being and, ultimately, their political well-being. It requires us to believe that despite the prospect of chronic bouts of inflation and recession, that despite the recurrent threat to the international financial system, the Western countries would continue to remain supine before the demands of the major producers, with the result that wealth and power would pass in ever increasing measure from the hands of those who only yesterday could scarcely have imagined their plight of today.

Given the record of Western behavior in the past decade, it must be conceded that the above assumption cannot be simply dismissed. From the emergence of Khaddafi to the advent of Khomeini, this record is one that will surely fascinate, while mystifying, future historians. Never before have power and position been given up with such alacrity and in circumstances which plainly did not require their abandonment. Never before have nations that possessed so great a superiority in power as the Western countries possessed over the Middle East producers placed themselves in so needless and so dangerous a predicament. At any one of a number of points, the dangerous slide might have been arrested and even reversed. Until that slide was well advanced, it had little if anything to do with the Soviet Union. On the contrary, what is surprising, as Elie Kedourie has noted, “is that so much time should have elapsed between the visible erosion of Western power and prestige in the Middle East and the inescapable conclusions the Soviet Union was bound to draw from this willfully self-destructive conduct.”2 Though the Soviets may now be expected to take such advantage as they can of the Western descent from grace—why should they not?—it was not the Soviets who initiated the descent and gave it the momentum it soon acquired.

These considerations notwithstanding, it strains credulity to assume that the process we have witnessed could have continued indefinitely in the absence of the Soviet Union. Sooner or later, the consequences of continuing on the course followed since the fete 1960’s would almost certainly have led to a reaction in the countries of the West and to the reassertion of a control that has been so readily relinquished. Governments that refused to take the measures necessary for such reassertion would have been replaced by governments that accepted the need for taking them. There are, after all, limits to the thralldom in which a political pathology may hold those who have not lost all sense of reality. In the past year or two we had begun to press against those limits. The consequences of the sudden deprivation of Iranian production, the leap in prices, the increasing subservience demanded by the producing states, and—above all perhaps—the growing realization that all this might well be only the harbinger of greater things to come, were beginning at long last to have their effects. Without the dramatic demonstration of Soviet power, they might well have issued in the attempt to redress the balance between producers and consumers and, more particularly, to reassert a measure of Western control over the Persian Gulf.

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Now as in the past, the states of the Gulf cannot literally defend themselves against a substantial outside force, whether emanating from the Soviet Union or from the West. All they can do is attempt to deter such outside forces from being used by threatening to blow up the oil fields in response to military intervention. This threat has been voiced with varying ambiguity for some five years, particularly by Saudi officials. In the West, it has been taken with the utmost seriousness. Indeed, many expert observers consider the destruction of the oil facilities a virtual certainty in the event of outside intervention, though why they should do so is by no means apparent. Destruction of the oil fields cannot serve a defensive purpose, as does a scorched-earth policy, for it will not make more difficult the invader’s conduct of military operations. Even if the destruction is quite thorough, it denies the invader his objective only for a limited period. The threat of such denial as a deterrent may make sense, depending upon the time required for repairing the destruction and, of course, the state of the need of the invader. The same threat as a defense makes very little sense.

As a deterrent, the threat to destroy the oil fields may have only a limited effect on those who have no desperate need for continuous oil supplies. This consideration is relevant not only to the Soviet Union but to such obvious local disturbers of the fragile peace of the Gulf as Iraq. If the limited number and fragility of the ports and pump sites which control the flow of oil from the Gulf are such that any outside military intervention would result in their almost certain destruction, the same result must be held as likely to follow from any serious outbreak of conflict involving only the local states. If there were any doubt of this before the Iraqis and the Iranians began bombing each other’s oil installations last September, there can be no doubt of it now. Thus, given the very considerable potential for further turbulence in the region, the prospects for enjoying continuous oil supplies in the years ahead must be rated as quite low. But if this is once accepted, then at least one of the great and standing objections to any attempt by the West to reassert its power in the Gulf must be largely discarded. The Soviet reaction apart, nothing would be jeopardized by such reassertion that irrespective of our wishes would not be jeopardized through other developments; and a great deal might be gained.

These considerations have been obscured only because there has long been a near universal determination in the West not to acknowledge the stark alternatives that confront us in the Persian Gulf. Although it is admitted that some power (s) must control the region, the pretense is maintained that the power(s) may be the local states, and this despite their weakness relative to outside powers and their marked instability. This pretense requires us to believe that the key to global power for at least another generation, and possibly beyond, will remain with those who even when taken collectively represent a virtual power vacuum.

Time will surely lay bare this illusion for what it is. The vital resource of the Gulf can no more remain independent of great-power control than Europe in 1945 could remain outside the effective sphere of both Soviet and American power. In retrospect, it is possible to imagine at least one of the superpowers having extended its sway over the whole of Europe. It is much easier to imagine that the line of division could have been drawn other than where it was. But it is scarcely possible to conceive of the continent that had once been the center of the international system, and that suddenly had been transformed into a power vacuum through war and defeat, not attracting a competition for control by the two great victors. In defeat, Europe still represented the vital stake for the newly emergent superpowers that had displaced it. The conflict that quickly arose over control of the continent was, given its structural causes, as inevitable as anything can be in politics. Only the outcome was indeterminate.

In one sense at least, and it is all important, the parallel that may be drawn between Europe in the 1940’s and the Persian Gulf today is apparent and striking. Almost as certainly as did Europe in the 1940’s, the Gulf provides the critical source of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. What in Europe resulted from war and defeat, in the Middle East has resulted from the withdrawal of the power that once controlled the region and the subsequent refusal of the United States to fill the vacuum. In an area that was as significant for American interests in the 1970’s as Europe was in the 1940’s, the attempt was instead made to find local substitutes for the power this country refused to commit, whether in the form of a regional surrogate (Iran) or in the form of a progressive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict that would presumably satisfy the Arab states and leave them indebted to, and aligned with, this country. A policy that appeared more ambitious than ever when measured by the scope of its aims and the degree of its involvement was in fact rooted in a declining power position relative to the Soviet Union as well as to the states of the region. Indeed, the very ambitiousness of American policy, particularly when measured by the attempt to exclude the Soviet Union from playing a significant role in the region, reflected—paradoxically enough—a sense of growing vulnerability rather than of growing strength. Obscured for a time, the results of this policy have now been fully exposed.

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Whatever the outcome of the crisis in the Persian Gulf, one thing at least seems reasonably clear: the present situation cannot persist. It cannot persist not because of its economic implications, grave as they undoubtedly are and will continue to be, but because of its strategic implications. The vacuum that the Gulf represents today will be filled. And since it cannot be filled by local power—including, as should now be evident to everyone, Iraq—it will be filled by outside power.

This can only mean that it will be controlled either by the United States, or by the Soviet Union, or by a condominium of the two superpowers. If it is controlled, whether directly or indirectly, by the Soviet Union, the post-World War II political structure will suffer sudden destruction. The loss of the Gulf could be expected to form an almost certain prelude to the effective end of the American position in Western Europe and Japan. Dependent as they would then be on the Soviet Union for their most vital resource, these nations would of necessity adjust their policies and actions to Moscow’s wishes. Even if the Soviet Union did not immediately insist that they break their security ties with the United States, these ties would be deprived of any substantive meaning. In these circumstances, no real purpose would be served by the retention of an American security presence in Europe, even if this presence were not asked to leave. And with the breaking away of our major postwar allies, and the withdrawal of American military forces, the Chinese would have little alternative but to seek the best peace they could get with the Russians.

The consequences of Soviet control of the Persian Gulf can scarcely occasion serious controversy. What can occasion controversy is the kind of world that would emerge once American power and influence had been expelled from Eurasia and this country was confronted with the choice either of obtaining Persian Gulf oil on Soviet terms or of attempting to manage without this oil. It is commonly observed that although our allies could not survive without the oil supplies of the Gulf, we could, and presumably would, adjust to a cut-off rather than accept the terms that might well attend continued supply. Given the manner in which we have behaved toward those who now control the oil of the Persian Gulf, this confidence in our response to a Soviet Union in control of the oil is at the very least questionable. It may be that we would make the effort necessary to free ourselves of this dependency. But it may also be that we would not do so, and particularly if the new masters of the Gulf appeared to behave “reasonably.” After all, a nation that has heretofore lacked the resolution either to free itself of the dependency on insecure oil supplies or to secure those supplies must leave some doubt over its conduct if once confronted with even more painful alternatives than it has so far had to face. Surely the burden of proof that we would act with the necessary resolution must be placed on those who appear so confident of our reaction. Nor should we forget that even if the required resolution were forthcoming, it would not suffice to restore positions which in the meantime had been lost. Indeed, it would be the acute realization of this loss, when taken together with an apparent “restraint” by Moscow, that might be expected to inhibit the appearance of the required resolution. These are the considerations which lead Norman Podhoretz to conclude that a world in which the Soviet Union controlled the Persian Gulf “would be a world shaped by the will and tailored to the convenience of the Soviet Union.”3

Nor can the minimum consequences of Soviet control of the Persian Gulf be shunted aside by speculation on Soviet intentions. Even if those intentions were more benign than we could have plausible reason for assuming, the structural causes of conflict over control of the Gulf would remain. They can no more be spirited away than the causes that led to conflict after World War II could be spirited away.

Quite apart from the structural causes of conflict over the Gulf, why should the Soviets not aspire to extend their control over this vital area? Even if the Soviet state were something quite different from what it is, the aspiration to achieve a position of global preponderance would operate with a magnetic pull on Moscow’s rulers, particularly if their military position were as strong as the Soviet Union’s is today. That we are not dealing with “another Russia” but with the Communist Russia of today makes the consequences of the ensuing struggle over the Persian Gulf far more serious.

All this is so clear that it is tedious to place such emphasis on it. Yet the conclusions that must be drawn from the virtually self-evident still appear to escape many. And the principal conclusion is simply that the center of gravity of American interests in the world today is not to be found in Europe but in the Persian Gulf.

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III

It is no criticism of the Carter administration’s initial response to the events of last winter to point out that this response consisted primarily of words rather than of acts. The turning points in American foreign policy have been regularly marked by words, that is, by grand pronouncements not infrequently labeled as doctrines. These pronouncements have been signficant, however much the initiated have deplored the American penchant for them. Post-World War II policy can be summarized without serious distortion by considering the doctrines that have marked its development. Thus the Truman Doctrine pointed the way to the policy of containment pursued for two decades. So, too, the Nixon Doctrine, with its promise of strategic retreat, appears in retrospect as a remarkable indication of what American policy was to become in the 1970’s.

The Carter Doctrine is presumably intended to serve the same purpose as these earlier pronouncements. It may be considered as indicative of the broad outlines of future policy in the Persian Gulf region. The Carter Doctrine acknowledges our vital interest in the Gulf and declares our determination to repel by use of any means necessary, including military force, an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the region. The declaration is directed at the Soviet Union, since it is only the Soviet Union that represents “any outside force” capable of gaining control of the Persian Gulf.

The “determination” expressed in the Carter Doctrine, then, is one of countering Soviet expansion in an area of vital interest to this nation. Yet it is not only Soviet expansion that may jeopardize Western interests in the Persian Gulf. Indeed, many would argue that the principal threat to these interests in the future will come from the same forces that have formed the principal threat in the recent past. These forces have been “inside” the Persian Gulf region, not “outside.” It is true that our response in past years to these inside forces has been conditioned in part by the growing strength of the outside force and to our fear of confrontation with it. In part, however, a policy that has made one concession after the other to the oil-producing countries of the Gulf has been motivated by considerations quite distinct from a fear of confrontation with the Soviet Union. Very little will have been learned from this costly policy of appeasement if it is seen in retrospect simply, or even primarily, as a function of the Soviet-American relationship.

In addressing itself exclusively to the threat held out by the Soviet Union, the Carter Doctrine leaves unaddressed the other and continuing threat. At root, this omission reflects persisting American doubt and uncertainty over the circumstances justifying the employment of force in the Persian Gulf region. Directed as it ostensibly is only against any Soviet attempt to gain control of the Persian Gulf, the Carter Doctrine obscures what should be the central purpose of policy: to preserve access to the oil supplies of the Gulf. It is because Soviet expansion into the Gulf threatens this interest that any such attempt must be opposed. But to the degree that developments indigenous to the Gulf, or very nearly so, threaten this same interest, they too must be opposed. This, at least, is the logic dictated by interest. But the United States has thus far been unwilling to accept this logic.

To date, the Carter Doctrine has found military expression in the stationing of a fleet in the Arabian Sea that includes 17 fighting ships, 7 support vessels, and an assault force of 1,800 Marines; in stationing cargo ships at Diego Garcia that would support a Marine Corps brigade of 12,000 with weapons, ammunition, and supplies; in seeking air and naval “facilities” in Kenya, Somalia, Oman, and Egypt; and in building up a Rapid Deployment Force that is based in this country and that, as its title suggests, is presumably designed to respond quickly, even preemptively, to sudden threats arising in the Gulf region.

The common characteristic of these various measures is the avoidance, so far as possible, of an intimate relationship between the states of the region and American military forces. Even in the case of “facilities” that a limited number of states appear ready to grant, this euphemism is indicative of the reluctance to admit a relationship now regarded as a serious political liability and one to be avoided so far as possible, despite the fact that many of those who shun the American relationship have no alternative prospect of effectively defending themselves against the Soviet Union—or, for that matter, against intraregional aggression. The American government has sought to make a virtue of the necessity thus imposed on it and to find advantages in a military disposition that is largely free of the many difficulties which result from alliance relationships and the possession of regular bases for air, naval, and particularly ground forces. In fact, these “advantages” largely define the dimensions of America’s strategic dilemmas today in the Persian Gulf; they reflect the low estate to which American power has sunk in the region while making extraordinarily difficult any attempts at the effective restoration of this power within a reasonable period of time.

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Do the measures so far taken by the United States—above all, the Rapid Deployment Force—comprise an adequate response to the situation to which they are ostensibly addressed? Do they give reasonable credibility to the Carter Doctrine? If the answer depends on an existing military capability able to carry out the literal promise of the Carter Doctrine—to repel an assault on the region by any outside force—the answer must almost certainly be a negative one. Given the conventional forces the Soviet Union can presently deploy on very short notice in the Gulf, there is no apparent way these forces could be repelled by conventional American military response. On this point, at least, there is virtual unanimity of judgment among military analysts.

Moreover, very few believe the present imbalance of conventional forces can be overcome for at least several years, even assuming that the interim period is used to full advantage. Indeed, many doubt that it can ever be overcome in the literal sense of having the capability of responding in time and with forces of sufficient magnitude to make good on the promise of the Carter Doctrine. On this view, the President’s declaration cannot be taken literally even as meaningful aspiration. Instead, the best that may be aspired to is a conventional capability that can impose risks of such magnitude on an aggressor as to discourage him from attacking.

It has been intimated that these risks are already imposed on the Soviet Union by virtue of the forces the United States has ready to oppose a Soviet incursion in the Gulf. But this claim is widely doubted. The naval forces in the Arabian Sea are considered by experts to be insufficient for the tasks they would have to perform, for they must be able not only to defend themselves against land-based air attack, which they are now incapable of doing, but to disrupt an attacking force with sufficient effectiveness to permit enough time for deploying ground forces. Even if these requirements could be met, however, the interventionary force would have to be of a magnitude that exceeds by far the present Rapid Deployment Force.

The problems attending the Rapid Deployment Force have generated a great deal of discussion and controversy. Where the experts disagree on so many points, the layman must pick his way with care. The effectiveness of the force will of necessity depend upon the rapidity with which it can be deployed and on its size. Even if a very small force can be deployed very rapidly, its size must severely limit the missions it can accomplish. On the other hand, a substantial force that can only be deployed over an extended period sacrifices its raison d’être. Finally, assuming the requirements of rapidity and size could be satisfied, the force would still meet with disaster should it not possess the logistical tail for sustained operations.

These requirement impose formidable obstacles if it is assumed that Soviet capabilities and the proximity of Soviet forces to the Gulf enable them to mount a large operation in a very brief period. Many do not grant this assumption, particularly the time element. Instead of hours, it is argued, we are likely to have a warning period of at least several days, if not weeks. But military plans cannot safely be made by making optimistic assumptions. Moreover, the longer the period of warning, the more ambiguous and uncertain it is likely to be and thus the more reluctant American officials might be to deploy the force. The quite possible brevity of the warning period creates severe problems in the absence of forces on the scene that can disrupt and delay an attack, since even if the means existed for transporting a force from its American base, the time required for transport might prove fatal.

This difficulty apart, the American defense establishment does not possess the capability at present to airlift within the period of a very few days a substantial force—let us say, a division—along with the heavy military equipment it would require for sustained operations. This equipment might be prepositioned either on land or at sea. But with the possible exception of Egypt, the other candidates for providing facilities have so far refused to permit the prepositioning of such equipment, which has in turn required a maritime prepositioning program that is both costly and more vulnerable to attack. Only in a crisis could the United States use facilities to land the large cargo planes now planned. This arrangement must not only leave open the questions of capability and time but the even more basic question of the political reliability of the countries according us facilities though not permanent leases. It would be rash to assume that the use of such facilities would be unrelated to the circumstances attending a crisis, not to speak of the nature of the regimes that might be in power at the time.

This is by no means an exhaustive inventory even of the principal difficulties besetting the Rapid Deployment Force. It suffices, however, to support the conclusion that for at least several critical years this force—our principal reliance in dealing with the contingencies that may await us—will remain quite modest in size. In favorable circumstances, it might be employed to forestall undesirable political change in an important, though militarily weak, oil-producing state. This change might or might not involve the Soviet Union, whether directly or indirectly, and it might well be that at the time we were required to act we would not know the extent, if any, of Soviet involvement.

Thus the principal contingency the Rapid Deployment Force might respond to is the kind that the Carter Doctrine does not address and the one over which the United States continues to manifest a great deal of indecision. The qualification might must be emphasized for other reasons. The Rapid Deployment Force is not visible to the states of the Gulf. It is something that must be imagined. This represents a considerable liability and not an asset as is so commonly assumed. For American power no longer commands much respect in the region. If a measure of former respect is to be restored, there must be a visible demonstration of this power, and the more impressive the demonstration the better. The restoration of American status and credibility must begin with the local states of the Persian Gulf region, that is, with the states that have managed to outmaneuver and to intimidate the Western powers for a decade. But this the United States still betrays no intention of doing, whether in the declarations Washington has made or in the measures that have so far been taken to give substance to these declarations.

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IV

How, then, may one broadly characterize the American response in the past eight or nine months to the deepening crises in the Persian Gulf? In part, it has consisted of measures which leave the dangerous military imbalance in the region essentially unchanged and, more important, without much chance of serious change for at least several years. This bleak prospect is in substantial measure imposed by the force structure by which the military imbalance is to be eventually redressed. As long as we are reduced to the use of facilities, with all the conditions and uncertainties that are attached to them, there is no alternative but the route that has been taken. The route is both slow and tortuous. While it is being traversed, the interests for which the effort is made remain in full jeopardy.

Washington cannot but be acutely aware of its predicament. And being so aware, it has fallen back on an all too familiar policy: the search for a substitute for American power. The crux of America’s Middle East policy for the past decade, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, thus remains largely intact. This is the evident meaning of the search for a replacement for Iran. In the spring of this year, Iraq momentarily appeared as a prospective candidate to replace the Shah’s regime. That it could be given even half-serious consideration is indicative of a policy that in its now fully revealed vulnerability persists in groping at almost any straw. A radical state that is still bound by important ties to the Soviet Union, Iraq has expansionist ambitions in the Gulf which were openly avowed even before it went to war with Iran. To make of Iraq the new American pillar in the region would of necessity entail at least the partial approval of these ambitions. Else why should the regime of Saddam Hussein be attracted by an American connection?

An American attempt to replace Iran by Iraq would severely shake all the states of the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia. The move would also be met with consternation by Egypt and Israel. The historic enmity between Egypt and Iraq is as pronounced today as ever, given Iraq’s leadership of the opposition to Camp David. Toward Israel, the Iraqi government continues to maintain a posture of hostility surpassed only by Libya’s Khaddafi.

The Iraqi “option,” if it were ever to be pursued, would thus jeopardize what assets the United States still retains in the Middle East. Less bizarre, though no less fanciful, is the recurrent talk within the American government of a policy that would seek to align the Arab states—or most of them—with the West in common opposition to Soviet designs on the Middle East. This concert of purpose, it has been suggested, might even take the form of a regional pact. Unfortunately, there is almost no evidence to support the view that the Arab states could form such a concert of purpose, given their many and persistent conflicts. And even if by some political miracle they were to do so, how would this constitute an effective response to the threat posed by Soviet power? Together, these states are not capable of even remotely balancing the power that Moscow can bring to bear on the Persian Gulf.

Among the Western Europeans a variation on the American theme has found increasing favor in recent months. Skeptical of any American design that might force the states of the Persian Gulf region to choose between East and West, they have instead found in nonalignment the more promising way of protecting the Gulf from Soviet encroachment. But a common stance of nonalignment between East and West also presupposes that the states in question enjoy a greater concert of purpose than experience suggests. And even if this obstacle is neglected, there remains the further question: how would a collective nonalignment constitute an effective response to the military power the Soviet Union is now able to deploy in the region of the Persian Gulf? In this regard, Albert Wohlstetter’s comment is certainly apropos: “Western Europeans who do not feel able to manage a defense of Western Europe without a large American military presence should hardly expect the Gulf states to be able to do so.”4

While a great deal has been made on both sides of the Atlantic of the differences separating the American and the Western European positions, the same logic drives both to place increasing emphasis on the need for progress toward a satisfactory settlement of the Palestinian problem. Whether the chosen policy is one of alignment to the West by means of a regional arrangement or one of collective nonalignment, the indispensable precondition for either is considered to be a satisfactory solution of the Palestinian issue.

What distinguishes the emerging Western European position is the explicitness with which the connection is now drawn, the dissatisfaction that is increasingly voiced over the Camp David process, and the changes many Western European governments now insist must be made in the Camp David framework in order that progress toward a satisfactory solution become possible. The European position assumes of course—and in this respect as well it does not differ essentially from the American position—that for both the Palestinians (in effect, the PLO) and the many interested Arab states there is a common understanding on what “progress” and a “satisfactory solution” would be. Yet almost all of the evidence we have denies this assumption. What Jordan and Egypt, and very likely Saudi Arabia, consider a satisfactory solution is something quite different from what the radical states in the area consider a satisfactory solution.

In the Western European position of today we may well be seeing the harbinger of the American position once the elections are behind us. For an American government too might reach the conclusion that the Camp David process has come to a “dead end”—to use the current European expression—and that new initiatives are necessary. Even if it should not formally abandon the Camp David framework, it might nevertheless place a great deal more pressure on the Israelis to move toward the goal now called for in effect by the Europeans—an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank that is governed by the PLO.

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Yet with each passing day it becomes all the more clear that a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict—assuming, for the sake of argument, this to be at all possible within the foreseeable future—would prove unresponsive to the dangers we face in the Gulf. No conceivable settlement of the Palestinian issue would materially affect the aspirations of Iraq, the continuing storm in Iran, or the deeper causes of instability in Saudi Arabia. The major internal threats to Western access to the oil supplies of the Gulf would therefore remain. So, too, the outside force that at any time might take advantage of these contingencies would also remain. A settlement of the Palestinian issue would not remove the many sources of conflict and instability in the region. Nor would it deter the Soviets from taking such action as they might take in the absence of a settlement.

From the outset of the search for a comprehensive settlement, the reasoning of those intent on obtaining it has been that without such settlement, or visible progress toward achieving it, another round of conflict in the near future is inevitable. Another round of conflict, this reasoning goes, promises a repetition of the events attending the 1973 war, only this time with results that may prove disastrous. But as the Iraq-Iran war has once again demonstrated, the contingencies that are so feared—interruption of the flow of oil and confrontation with the Soviet Union—may still arise in the absence of another round of conflict between Israel and its protagonists. Any number of events, as we should now appreciate, might lead to an at least partial cutting off of oil supplies. And any number of events might bring on extension of Soviet influence or control in the Gulf. On the other hand, so long as the peace between Egypt and Israel holds, one of the least likely prospects is another Arab-Israeli war. For without Egypt, it would be foolhardy for Israel’s remaining adversaries to initiate war.

If Washington and its Western European allies are above all intent on avoiding another Arab-Israeli war, they should be doing all that is within their power to consolidate the peace achieved at Camp David. Yet by their obsession with the Palestinian problem they risk doing very nearly the opposite. If the Western states are willing to do for the PLO and their supporters what the latter are unable to do for themselves, there will be little incentive for serious negotiations. More serious still, if the West places supreme importance upon achieving what it deems to be the rights of the Palestinians, Sadat can scarcely afford to take the position of demanding less. The renewed drive that we see today for a comprehensive settlement endangers the partial settlement that must still be consolidated.

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V

These considerations seem so apparent that one is driven to ask why at this late date they nevertheless remain so widely resisted. What betokens, Elie Kedourie asks, “a restless and dangerous quest for schemes and combinations which, soberly considered, are both shaky and profitless: to satisfy the PLO is to satisfy the Arabs, to satisfy the Arabs is to have them on our side, to have them on our side is . . . what? To compel the evacuation of Afghanistan? To deter the Soviets? To secure the price of oil? At prices which do not irresistibly go up?”5 The questions are no more than rhetorical. “The real reason for all these agitations,” Kedourie rightly concludes, “is the profound reluctance of Western powers to do what is required in order to protect their own interests: namely, to make their strength visible and respected. Only they can reestablish the balance which past illusions and fecklessness allowed to be upset.”

Unfortunately, the illusions and fecklessness of which Kedourie speaks continue to find expression, as the Vance speech at Harvard and the favorable reception accorded that speech testify. Stanley Hoffmann finds the former Secretary’s pronouncement an “admirable” antidote to those who fail to appreciate that, in Vance’s words, “increased military power is a basis, not a substitute, for diplomacy,” and who believe “that America could have the power to order the world just the way we want it to be.”6 Given the power disposed of by the Soviet Union, Hoffmann warns, “these are the hallmarks of global calamity.” And so, indeed, they are, as every sensible person would agree. They are as unexceptionable as the admonitions that diplomacy cannot be effective without adequate military power and that America is not wholly impotent in its ability to affect world order—and about as instructive.

The purpose of the Vance speech, however, was not to give the nation an introductory lesson in the conduct of foreign policy. It was to register opposition to the shift in American policy that began in the fall of 1979 and, even more, to warn against any further hardening of policy. With respect to the Persian Gulf, the Carter Doctrine must have represented the limits to Vance’s endurance, else why his emphasis—otherwise certainly out of place when directed to the Carter administration—on the “dangerous fallacy of the military solution to non-military problems” and his warning that “the use of military force is not, and should not be, a desirable American policy response to the internal politics of other nations”?

Hoffmann has filled in the gaps left by Vance. In the guise of presenting the “average Western European view”—which is, in effect, his view as well—Hoffmann finds the Carter Doctrine “militaristic and simplistic.” Not only does it demand that the states of the Gulf choose between East and West, thus ruling out a position of nonalignment that “constitutes the best obstacle to Soviet advances.” From a yet broader perspective, the American approach is seen as neglecting “all the factors and forces, other than the military balance, that explain the predicament of the United States in the Persian Gulf and can be neither suppressed nor superseded by force alone, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the internal weaknesses of the Saudi regime, or the Iranian internal turmoil.” It is presumably these factors more than the absence of substantial and effectively deployed and deployable military forces in the Gulf that impair the Western position and endanger Western interests. The significance of this criticism cannot be appreciated by taking it at face value, for at face value it makes very little sense. How will collective nonalignment do what alignment cannot do? Certainly, it cannot somehow confer on the non-aligned a strength they otherwise do not have. Non-aligned, the states of the region will still remain weak, they will still be ridden with instabilities, and they will still present the Soviet Union with numerous opportunities to exploit these instabilities.

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The charge that the American approach neglects all factors and forces other than the military balance is very nearly the opposite of the truth, clearly in the past and even at present. What has been neglected is precisely the military balance. This is the major reason we find ourselves in the precarious position we do today. But suppose we were to direct greater attention and effort to these other factors and forces. Apart from the Arab-Israeli conflict, could we have more than a marginal effect on their outcome? And if it is these factors and forces that really explain the American predicament in the Gulf, then we had best conclude that our predicament is hopeless. For if one thing is certain, it is that they will persist, and probably worsen, in the years ahead.

Is this Hoffmann’s conclusion? He will not admit to it. What first needs to be done, he argues, is to counter the influence of those who are obsessed with military power, who see in it a substitute for diplomacy, and who long for a return to a Pax Americana. Confronted with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and with what Hoffmann concedes to be the “enormous military advantages” the USSR enjoys in the Persian Gulf region, his “first imperative” of action is to declare war against those Americans who trade in “oversimplifying and hysterical interpretations of Soviet behavior” and who think of the Soviets as “ten feet tall, as manipulating countless forces in countless countries, as devilishly clever, scheming, and successful, and also assert that a simple overwhelming display of military might would drive all our troubles away. . . ,” Presumably, once this truly dangerous domestic adversary is silenced, the “enormous military advantages” the USSR enjoys may be seen in their proper perspective.

This proper perspective is reached by understanding Soviet interests and goals. “Any serious analysis of Soviet policies and statements,” we are informed, reveals a “profound insecurity,” a pervasive ambition to be “recognized as an equal superpower and accepted by the U.S. as a co-manager of world affairs with equal rights and equal say,” and a determination to oblige Washington to treat Moscow as an equal, if it does not do so voluntarily. Whether this is an adequate statement of what “any serious analysis of Soviet policies and statements reveals” need not detain us here. For purposes of argument, it may be accepted. The relevant question, then, is its bearing on our predicament in the Persian Gulf. If Moscow is insistent upon “equal rights and equal say,” and eager to “oblige” Washington to treat it as an equal, what does this mean for the region on which the West (and Japan) are vitally dependent and in which Moscow has “enormous military advantages”?

Hoffmann’s answer is first to remind us that Soviet moves in Africa and around the Persian Gulf since 1975 are probably “in considerable part a response to our ‘exclusion’ of the Soviets from the Middle Eastern peace process. . . .” But even if we were to accept this dubious view, what may be said to follow from it? Are we to conclude that if we were now to reintroduce the Soviets into the peace process—thereby abandoning in effect Camp David—our predicament in the Gulf would be, if not resolved, materially eased? Hoffmann will not say. He will not even clearly say that we should now admit the USSR as a partner into the peace process, just as he will not say that we should grant the Soviets “equal rights and equal say” in general and in the Persian Gulf in particular. The reason is that “their regime violates our deepest beliefs, and its ambitions threaten our strategic, economic, and political positions.”

Yet he counsels us to keep trying “to turn an adversary relationship into a mixed one” and to understand “that what is at stake is not an untenable status quo but the management of inevitable change.” Only then “will the Soviet drive for status become less maniacal, more differentiated, and our resistance to it less fierce and more discriminating.” And his specific prescription for getting past the immediate crisis is to explore the possibility of a bargain whereby in exchange for a Soviet commitment to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan and to accept an enlargement of the present Afghan regime we would guarantee Afghanistan’s neutrality, resume arms-control negotiations on a comprehensive test ban, etc., resubmit SALT II to the Senate, move toward a speedy SALT III negotiation, and link the Camp David process—now played out—to a renewed search for a comprehensive settlement (acknowledging at the outset of the “search” the “Palestinian right to self-determination”).

What is all this but a sophisticated way of proposing that we move over in those areas from which we have heretofore sought to exclude the Soviets and thereby adjust—in large part, at least—to their interests? The “untenable status quo” the changing of which will lead to the moderation of Soviet policy is a status quo that has in the past favored Western, and particularly American, interests and that in the future must prove more favorable to Soviet interests. Otherwise there is no reason to expect that change will lead to an amelioration in Soviet policy. If this in indeed the meaning of Hoffmann’s advice, why not state it more directly and candidly? Why equivocate and even mislead on the issue of “equal rights and equal say”?

As for the “bargain” with the Soviet Union that Hoffmann suggests exploring, a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan cannot be secured by the promise of that country’s “neutrality,” for Moscow can have no confidence in a Kabul government it does not control, especially in the light of what has transpired in Afghanistan over the past year. A formula of neutralization must either insure Moscow’s control, in which case the term neutrality is merely a euphemism, or it is worthless. Yet if that is indeed the meaning of neutrality in the Afghan context, how is it a “bargain” in return for which we make the other concessions Hoffmann proposes? And even if these objections are put aside, how would a “renewed search” for a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict (again a euphemism since in “acknowledging the Palestinian right to self-determination” as a precondition, what is paraded as a search is in reality a settlement) alleviate, let alone resolve, our predicament in the Persian Gulf? Would the Soviets then abandon their aspirations in that region or be forced to do so because of the obstacle to their ambitions that would appear in the form of the imposing barrier of nonalignment?

At the root of Hoffmann’s superficially complex analysis is something quite simple. He does not wish to redress the present imbalance of power in the only way that imbalances can be redressed—with countervailing power. At the same time he does not wish to acknowledge the possible, even likely, consequences of failing to redress the imbalance. Thus the bitterness with which he turns on those who call for redressing the imbalance.

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VI

It is almost with a sense of relief that one turns from this kind of obscurantism to the direct and altogether candid statement of resignation by Walter J. Levy in his remarkable Foreign Affairs essay, “Oil and the Decline of the West.” Levy’s renown as a petroleum consultant, his long-standing acquaintance with Middle East problems, and his record of prescience in analyzing the oil crisis entitle him to be listened to with great respect.

Not known for overstatement, Levy provides an estimate of our predicament today in the Persian Gulf and of our prospects for coping with the dangers confronting us that is so bleak as to startle even the pessimist. From every perspective he considers, Levy concludes that there has been a marked deterioration in the economic, financial, and strategic position of the Western world consequent upon the oil crisis. The financial problems of recycling petrodollars even at current OPEC prices, let alone at future prices that may equal and perhaps exceed the rate of inflation, have become increasingly onerous. The circumstances that facilitated recycling in the years 1974-78 can no longer be relied on. The problem that preoccupied economists at the outset of the oil crisis—how can the world pay for OPEC oil?—has returned with a vengeance. Levy thinks it unlikely that “our national and international financial system can cope with this problem without risking sustained recessions, a slow rate—if any—of economic growth, high rates of inflation, widespread unemployment, industrial and national bankruptcies, and political upheavals.”

All this still assumes that the security and availability of oil supplies—particularly Persian Gulf supplies—can be relied on. But this assumption too has now been called into serious question. For the terms imposed by producing countries for oil supplies now increasingly include political and other extraneous conditions which if not met may lead to a cut-off in supplies. And even if all economic and political terms are met, producers may, and indeed already have, arbitrarily changed the terms on which supplies are granted to consumers. Thus we have entered “a period in international oil . . . where the producing countries can have it nearly all their way; because there are no countervailing powers they have to consider. The only question they have to face is whether, because of their own interest in the economic and political well-being of their customers, it would be prudent for them to exercise self-restraint.” This one-sided relationship might yet be remedied by a coordinated policy of resistance on the part of the major consumers. Instead, Levy shows, they have acted in the spirit of sauve qui peut and of submission.

To these now familiar threats to the security and availability of oil supplies must be added those resulting from the internal instability of most Middle East regimes (exacerbated by rapid modernization), the many intraregional conflicts, and the growing Soviet political-military presence. Levy thinks it unlikely that any of these dangers can be effectively countered, in terms of securing vital oil supplies, by the West. The forces of internal instability will work their inexorable way. The disruption of oil supplies they will give rise to is seen as beyond our capacity to affect in any significant manner.

In this respect, the Carter Doctrine and the efforts it may, or may not, presage can have no more than peripheral bearing on future events in the Gulf. For while Levy concedes that it was “absolutely necessary to state clearly our overwhelming interest in Persian Gulf oil,” he finds the “real value” of the Carter Doctrine “based on the hope that the Doctrine will be accepted as credible and prove to be a deterrent to the Soviet Union—and will thus never be tested.” As a means of addressing the threats held out by intraregional conflicts and by internal political instability, he considers the Doctrine to be virtually worthless. It promises to involve us in the “most difficult and probably impossible assignment” of protecting the status quo in the Gulf at a time when the status quo is under increasing challenge and to do so in circumstances where “we will probably never know whether or not there was any Soviet direct or indirect involvement.” Even if we were better equipped today than we are to carry out this assignment, it would not matter a great deal since the use of force in the Gulf would be self-defeating. “The one thing that seems to be certain is that if fighting in the Persian Gulf should erupt, the first targets that will be destroyed, either by foreign or local forces, are the vital oil facilities.”

Why should not these same considerations also largely negate the value of the Carter Doctrine as a credible deterrent to the Soviet Union? It turns out that Levy believes they do. “In terms of achieving U.S. policy objectives,” he writes, “the Carter Doctrine might in the end prove to be as ineffective as the Nixon Doctrine policy of the 1970’s. . . .”

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The Spenglerian prospects Levy holds out might be largely discounted either if the critical need for the oil of the Gulf could be substantially lessened in the years ahead or if all parties—producers and consumers, superpower rivals, etc.—determined to behave cooperatively and to take full account of each other’s vital interests. But the oil dependency will persist for at least a long generation and the utopian fantasy of cooperation is just that. Thus Levy’s conclusion that “we will probably be confronted by a series of major oil crises [that] . . . will set back world progress for many, many years. . . . [The] world, as we know it now, will probably not be able to maintain its cohesion, nor be able to provide for the continued economic progress of the people against the onslaught of future oil shocks—with all that this might imply for the political stability of the West, its free institutions, and its internal and external security.”

Plainly, the Levy message is one of sheer resignation. That it is brilliantly constructed and candidly put forth cannot detract from the outlook of despair and passivity it conveys. It may be that Levy believes his message, if taken to heart, will have a quite different effect, that it will sufficiently shock his readers to provoke serious thought about their predicament and eventually help lead to resolute action. If this is the intent, it is very skillfully obscured. Instead, the message that does come through with striking force is that our situation is for all practical purposes hopeless and that there is little to be done but to resign ourselves to it and to face a forbidding future with what equanimity we can. The effects of the Levy message, then, are very similar to those of Hoffmann, and this irrespective of the considerable differences that otherwise separate them.

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VII

It is instructive to recall that at each stage of the gathering crisis that has now assumed such ominous proportions, the advocates of passivity have occupied what at the time appeared to be the prudent and “sensible” position. In 1974-75 the response to the crisis, centered then as today in the Persian Gulf, divided in the main between those who argued that there was no need to consider the reassertion of Western power in order to preserve vital interests and those who argued that although the need might exist, adequate and effective means for such reassertion did not. The former position commands much less support today than it once did. Instead, it is the latter position that is now increasingly appealed to and enjoys broad favor. Nor is this surprising, since our relative power position has markedly declined in the intervening years. If we were disadvantaged then, as so many vehemently insisted, what are we today? And if we now look back almost with nostalgia on our circumstances of 1974-75, is it possible that in 1985 we may look back with similar nostalgia on our circumstances of today?

If there is a lesson to be learned from the past six years, it is that measures to redress an ever more adverse position in the Persian Gulf region must begin from where we are and not from where we would like to be when undertaking what is admittedly an ever more difficult and dangerous task. For we may never arrive at where we would like to be, whether because where we would like to be is a reason regularly invoked for postponing doing much of anything or because while we are moving toward where we would like to be in order to act, others are moving as well. Surely we cannot safely proceed on the assumption—or rather the hope—that others will oblige us either by not moving at all or by moving at a relatively slower pace. Yet this is the assumption that some appear driven to make who, while clear on the need to redress the present imbalance, are also adamant on the need to avoid any action that might be seen by a militarily superior adversary as threatening or provocative.

Thus Paul H. Nitze has argued that since the present “correlation of forces” clearly is unfavorable to us, and whatever our efforts will remain so for the next five years at least, we must learn to conduct strategy from relative weakness.7 Nitze doubts whether “there are any circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States actually to commit military forces in combat with Soviet forces on the periphery of the European land-mass. . . .”8 Given our position of vulnerability, we must take a leaf from the Communist book. The object of our policy, he has urged, “should be to throw dust in the enemy’s eyes while getting on with reversing the trends and making them positive.”

For on Nitze’s assessment, the American position today in the Gulf resembles the Soviet position at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. A preponderant Soviet position at the conventional level is further supported at the strategic level by Soviet escalation control. In Nitze’s words: “Soviet nuclear predominance carries the implied threat of an ability to escalate a conflict up the nuclear ladder just as the U.S. predominance in the Cuban missile crisis . . . implied such a threat to the Soviet Union.”

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What conclusions follow from this estimate? Obviously, one is, as Nitze warns, that in the present situation “we understand our limitations and the constraints on our use of military power.” But the critical issue is what this understanding means in the present circumstances and where, if followed, it is likely to take us. Nitze’s answer is that “there is no inherent reason, save a willful—and we hope unlikely—desire of the Soviet Union to confront us militarily in the near future, why we as a nation cannot conduct policy from an honest appraisal of our current position while refashioning our policies and forces and thus improve our position eventually to an honest parity.”

It is a mystifying conclusion, given both the analysis that has preceded it and Nitze’s known views about the continuing utility of military power. Of course, the Soviet purpose in seeking a favorable “correlation of forces” is not “to confront us militarily” but to attain certain political ends largely by virtue of enjoying an advantageous military position. From Moscow’s perspective, it is hoped that these ends will be secured in the shadow of preponderant military power. If not, the defenders of a status quo that the Russians wish to alter will eventually have to be confronted. Otherwise, what is the point of military power that is so largely disproportionate to defensive purposes? Certainly one may argue over the nature of the ends Moscow seeks. But even if we accept the Hoffmann dictum of what “any serious analysis of Soviet policies and statements reveals,” we are left with the Soviet insistence upon “equal rights and equal say” and a willingness to make use of such advantages as Moscow disposes of to achieve this end. Nitze clearly does not so restrict Soviet policy aspirations. Yet he sees no inherent reason why we cannot use the present period to improve a position which, he believes, if openly challenged in the Persian Gulf, would have to be conceded. If this is indeed the case, there may be little policy left to conduct while we go about improving our military position.

The difficulty with Nitze’s analysis is that there is no apparent connection between his strategic estimate, together with his general appreciation of Soviet policy, and the consequences he finds likely to follow from this estimate and appreciation. One can sympathize with the reluctance to draw the altogether grim consequences that would appear to follow. Even so, this reluctance has the effect of creating a startling disjunction between the estimate made of our predicament today and the consequences held likely to follow from the estimate. If the estimate is reasonably accurate, passivity can be the only prudent response in the immediate years ahead to further challenge in the Persian Gulf. That such passivity is for Nitze a necessary means of improving our strategic position rather than an end in itself (as it has been during the past decade and as many still wish it to be), cannot alter the conclusion that the intermediate-term consequences are the same. On the other hand, the refusal to accept this conclusion and, instead, to hold out the prospect—an unlikely one in any case—of being granted a period of grace by the Soviet Union during which we may, in Nitze’s words, “refashion our policies and forces and thus improve our position eventually to an honest parity,” can only have the effect of casting serious doubt on the estimate made of our predicament.

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Is the present danger as critical as the Nitze estimate would lead us to believe? The question is not put for rhetorical purposes. Even Hoffmann and his ilk concede that there is a danger. And if they find an important part of this danger to stem from “oversimplifying and hysterical interpretations of Soviet behavior,” they also concede a good part of the case on which the estimate of Nitze and other of Hoffmann’s domestic “adversaries” rests. It is Hoffmann, after all, who speaks of the “enormous military advantages” enjoyed by the Soviet Union in the region of the Persian Gulf, just as it is Hoffmann who acknowledges that Soviet ambitions “threaten our strategic, economic, and political positions.”

The view that we are roughly in the same strategic position today that the Soviets were at the time of the Cuban missile crisis rests upon three assumptions. One appears indisputable—the very considerable imbalance in conventional forces favoring Moscow. Another is very much disputed—Soviet nuclear predominance. Still another is quite misplaced—the balance or equality of interest the two superpowers have in the Gulf. Today, as in 1962, it is the United States that enjoys the relative advantage in the balance of interest, if only by virtue of the defensive position this country has occupied, whether earlier in the Caribbean or at present in the Persian Gulf. In the case of the Persian Gulf, the predominance of the American interest is all the more apparent and compelling. By confronting us in the Gulf, the Russians would in effect confront us in Europe. By threatening our position in the Gulf, the Russians would in effect threaten our position in Europe. Indeed, by threatening our position in the Gulf, the Russians would in effect threaten our position everywhere but this hemisphere.

There is thus no “equality of interest” between the West and the USSR in the region of the Gulf, and it is dangerously misleading to assert otherwise. What to Europe is indispensable to its economic life, and to the United States is indispensable to its entire position in the world outside this hemisphere, is indispensable to the Soviet Union as the key to global predominance. Without that key, Moscow would still be able to expand its position and influence in the world. But without that same key, Washington would have surrendered almost in entirety its post-World War II position.

This asymmetry in interest is usually taken to imply a disparity in willingness to incur risks in the event of confrontation. In the Cuban missile crisis the side thus favored—the United States—also happened to be the side possessing relative military advantage at both the conventional and strategic-nuclear level. In a confrontation over control of the Gulf, would the loss of the latter advantage cancel out the advantage conferred by possession of the greater, and even compelling, interest? Clearly, it would do so if the Soviet Union enjoyed the same decisive advantage at the strategic-nuclear level that it is acknowledged on almost all sides to possess at the level of conventional forces. It is the persisting doubt and uncertainty on this point, though, that does not permit discounting the significance of the imbalance of interest. It is the same doubt and uncertainty that requires treating with caution the parallel drawn between 1962 and today.

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VIII

Even if our position in the Persian Gulf today does not present us with a Cuban missile crisis in reverse, it is surely serious enough. Among those who believe much greater efforts can and must be made, there are nevertheless differences in view over what we should endeavor to do. We have already noted Paul Nitze’s counsel that we must strive to attain an “honest parity” and that there is no good alternative to such a policy. In much the same vein, Albert Wohlstetter urges the “broad alternative of meeting a conventional threat on its own terms.”

Certainly, these prescriptions are unexceptionable when judged in terms of desirability. But are they possible of realization, and particularly in the period ahead? For the critical issue confronting us is not the position we will be in by the late 1980’s, important though this undoubtedly is, but how we will get to the late 1980’s without disaster.

Whereas Nitze believes we can only get there by exercising extreme prudence and, though he does not explicitly so say, by luck, Wohlstetter thinks a viable conventional defense of the Gulf is possible even within this intermediate period.9 The elements of such a defense, he argues, “require not merely a force rapidly deployed from the United States” but also “a continuous and politically tolerable allied combat presence . . . able to defend itself against land-based air attack and yet project enough firepower ashore to deter, delay, or disrupt an initial adversary surprise attack aimed at seizing key points on the Gulf.” While the delay must be long enough to permit bringing in reinforcements by air, “the firepower and the presence required can be more modest if it is available very early,” and this for the reason that an attacking Soviet force presumably would have many vulnerabilities. Thus a “greatly increased naval combat presence, able to defend itself and to project power ashore” would form the core of the presence capable of disrupting an attack and giving time for a rapid-deployment force to bring in reinforcements. Such a force would restore our credibility with the states in the area, offer them evidence for believing we could protect them against attack (whether from the Soviet Union, aggressive neighbors, or radical factions), and perhaps make them more willing to offer land facilities for alliance use. This, in turn, would be likely to open the way to stationing a “land presence as well, or at least an increased use of land bases in a crisis.”

The Wohlstetter view, then, is that it is quite possible to meet a conventional threat on its own terms and that this can be done by a substantial increase in present efforts along lines indicated above. At the same time, he is quite emphatic in rejecting reliance on nuclear escalation:

The threat of using nuclear weapons in response to a conventional incursion—of introducing a tripwire or plate-glass defense of the Persian Gulf—is likely to frighten allies, especially those in the region, more than it will the Russians. A nuclear tripwire defense in the European center becomes progressively less persuasive as Soviet nuclear strength increases at short, medium, and intercontinental range. A tripwire in the Persian Gulf is likely to be even less persuasive.

Whether Wohlstetter’s strictures on threatening the use of nuclear weapons are well-taken is one thing. Quite another is whether a non-nuclear threat can be effectively dealt with on its own terms. Wohlstetter does not really argue, let alone plausibly demonstrate, that it can. What he does argue is the need for a force that, in his words, “could so increase the risks to an aggressor as to discourage him from attacking.” Are the risks those of being repelled, of suffering defeat in the Gulf, regardless of the magnitude of the conventional incursion? Wohlstetter does not so claim, and for good reason. The force he advocates is one that might deter and, should deterrence fail, defend against certain kinds of conventional threats. But it is not against any and all such threats that the force can hold out the promise of effective defense.

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At issue here is not the desirability of meeting a conventional threat on its own terms, so far as this is possible. It is instead whether a defense of the Gulf is possible against the kind of incursion the Soviets could make if they were so determined. There seems little prospect that such defense is feasible. Certainly it is not in the critical period immediately ahead. We must recognize that we cannot defend the Gulf against a determined Russian assault—not now, not in the immediate years ahead, and perhaps not ever. Beyond a certain level of conventional threat, we must either rely on the threat of responding with nuclear weapons or concede that there is no response we can make.

The case against relying on a nuclear tripwire in the Persian Gulf gains in persuasiveness by assuming that it is intended as a substitute for making a serious effort to strengthen conventional capability in the region. A strategy that relies on nuclear deterrence to the virtual exclusion of conventional defense not only encounters the now familiar problems of credibility, when applied to the Gulf it meets the further difficulty arising from the variety of circumstances which are absent in Europe but which largely define the condition of the Gulf. These familiar circumstances could well mean, as Wohlstetter points out, that the West might have the burden of initiating military action. Yet in these circumstances, a nuclear tripwire would either lack credibility or simply prove irrelevant.

What follows from these considerations is not that the threat of nuclear escalation has no proper role in a Gulf strategy, but that its role must be limited to deterring a major Soviet assault and to minimizing the otherwise corrosive effects the threat of such an assault might have over time. A tripwire policy in the Gulf cannot be expected to carry greater persuasiveness than it does in Europe. Certainly, it cannot enjoy even a roughly comparable persuasiveness if it does not have the requisite conventional-force underpinning. Intensity of interest alone cannot substitute for the commitment that must be given expression in conventional forces. Moreover, what limited experience we have points to the need for a substantial ground presence if a nuclear threat is to carry the requisite credibility.

The argument here, then, is not one of rejecting a conventional defense and relying instead on a tripwire policy. It is one of embracing both the need for a conventional defense and the need at some point for a tripwire policy. The essential goal of a viable strategy in the Persian Gulf is to fashion a conventional-force structure that can effectively deal with all contingencies that may arise short of a determined Soviet assault and that will make such assault an extremely dangerous move by virtue of the level of conventional conflict it would necessarily entail. For that level of conflict must in turn raise the meaningful prospect of nuclear escalation, a prospect we can—and should—no more attempt to disavow in the Persian Gulf than in Europe.

If we could but once achieve this goal we would have immeasurably improved upon our present position. As matters stand, however, we are very far from doing so. Nor are the prospects for achieving it promising so long as the current strategy for deploying conventional military power in the Gulf persists. For that strategy dictates the creation of a military “presence” that remains as little visible as possible to the states of the region. It requires for its success the conjurer’s trick of not appearing to be where you are—or, rather, where you want to be. Unfortunately, there are limits to the military effectiveness of such magic and we see them today in the difficulties attending a Rapid Deployment Force that is intended to serve the same functions as a ground presence. Similarly, we see them in the difficulties of temporary facilities that are intended to serve the same functions as regular bases. A permanent and much larger naval combat presence than we presently have in the Arabian Sea could effectively address some of these difficulties, though by no means all. But the creation of such a presence will itself require a considerable period of time.

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IX

These difficulties marking our present efforts are not inexorable. They are not dictated either by geography or by the logic of military power. They are, for the most part, preeminently political. The prevailing view is that though political in nature they cannot be altered, and certainly not in the immediate period ahead. This view is regularly advanced with all the certitude that other views about what is and is not possible to do in the region have been advanced in recent years. Given the sorry record of a policy that has largely reflected these views, it does not seem unreasonable to question what passes as the received wisdom today on the political constraints held to condition—indeed, to dictate—military strategy.

One thing, at least, seems clear. There is no apparent way by which we can conform to these constraints and still respond effectively to the deepening crisis in the Gulf. This being so, we must choose either to resign ourselves to a future over which we can have but little control or to attempt to break out of the constraints that hamper a more effective response than is currently being made.

The principal constraint results from the absence of regular bases that would permit the permanent stationing of land-based aircraft and ground forces. Ideally, these bases and forces should be located in the immediate area that must be defended, whether against a hostile coup, intraregional aggression, or a Soviet incursion. But the immediate area that must be defended is also the area considered least willing and least able to receive foreign forces. The “West Germany” of the Persian Gulf—Saudi Arabia—cannot be defended in the manner it ideally should be defended. Short of this ideal, the next best alternative is the possession of regular bases and the positioning of air and ground forces on the immediate periphery of the Gulf where they may still be considered as something closely akin to a preemptive presence.

If this next best alternative is to be realized, it can only be done with the cooperation of the two states on which a viable American policy in the Middle East will necessarily depend in the period ahead—Egypt and Israel. In the northern Sinai there are the bases which can support the forces required for an American air and ground presence that, once in place, might radically alter our present position of vulnerability in the Gulf. According to the terms of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel these bases—Eitam and Etzion—must be turned over to the Egyptians prior to the final Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai in early 1982. Before turning them over for Egyptian “civilian use,” the Israelis are entitled to destroy, as they have recently done at Refidim in the southern Sinai, the complex infrastructure that required years to construct and without which the bases have but little military utility. As matters now stand, therefore, two of the best bases in the entire Middle East—one providing access to a port on the Mediterranean, both isolated from population centers, and both within less than 90 minutes flying time from the Gulf—will be rendered of negligible value for military purposes at a time when the American government is negotiating for limited rights of access to inferior bases both in Egypt and elsewhere.

The explanation given for this apparent madness is President Sadat’s position, reiterated on a number of occasions, that Egypt must reclaim full sovereignty over the Sinai. Presumably, the American use of the Sinai bases would deny that claim, though why it should do so is left unclear. There is also the point, made by Egyptian officials, that the Israeli-built air bases in the Sinai are too sensitive politically to permit their use by American forces. But this point is not easy to follow either, unless it is simply a way of saying that the Egyptian government does not wish to appear as compromising any of its rights to the Sinai. If so, it is only a variation on the sovereignty claim, and one that might be met in a number of ways.

The point has been made by many that even if Sadat could be persuaded to agree to American use of the Sinai bases, the consequences of such agreement for his domestic position might well prove to be disastrous. To permit the stationing of American troops on Egyptian soil, it is argued, could strip the present government of its legitimacy. Sadat would presumably appear as an instrument of the United States and the betrayer of Egyptian independence. When applied to some of the Persian Gulf states, the argument carries some weight—though how much, we have no real way of knowing, despite the assurance with which it is regularly advanced. When applied to Egypt, it must be met with pervasive skepticism. There was a time not so many years ago when the presence of thousands of Soviet advisers and military personnel—stationed, it may be added, near population centers—did not deprive an Egyptian government of its legitimacy. Why should an American presence have such effect, particularly one that would be stationed in so remote an area and that—as we shall presently note—could help to implement the provisions of a treaty which has restored Egyptian territory?

Nor is this all. If the regular presence of American forces on Egyptian territory would have the consequences many believe they so clearly discern, why would not the temporary presence of forces have a similar effect? Evidently it would if this argument is to be believed. If so, then Egyptian officials are either fools and digging their own graves by permitting the Americans the use of facilities such as the Red Sea port of Ras Banas even for “certain limited purposes” or, despite their assurances, they have no intention of permitting the use of facilities in periods of crisis (a use that is reported to include the temporary stationing of ground forces). Since neither assumption seems very plausible, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the argument is a case of special pleading—clearly with respect to Egypt and very likely with respect to a number of other states in the region as well.

Although an American ground presence in the northern Sinai must be justified primarily in relation to its impact on our position in the Gulf, there would likely be important collateral advantages to be gained by its introduction. These advantages bear on the implementation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and, beyond the peace treaty, on the prospects for progress on the Palestinian issue. The Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai is conditioned upon the establishment of certain security arrangements part of which must be carried out either by a United Nations force or, should the establishment of such force prove impossible, by a multinational force acceptable to Egypt and Israel. It is now apparent that there will be no United Nations force due to the opposition of the Soviet Union. In its place, a multinational force could be formed in which the United States would assume the predominant role. Indeed, there is no reason why such a force could not be made up from Egyptian, Israeli, and American contingents.

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The need to implement the provisions of the peace treaty thus provides the opportunity to introduce a permanent American military presence in the Sinai. The stability of this presence could be insured by the need to obtain the agreement of both parties to the treaty as a condition for its removal. It is evident that the force required to implement the arrangements called for in the treaty is not the force required to meet the various contingencies that may arise in the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent the parties from agreeing to an American contribution that is quite disproportionate to the needs of the peace treaty alone. Put more candidly, there is nothing to prevent the parties from using the treaty as a means to introduce a substantial American military presence, whether immediately or in stages.

In a broader perspective, the impact of a permanent and substantial American presence on the peace process can be no more than speculative. At the very least, however, the arrangement here suggested would go very far toward guaranteeing the peace that must provide the cornerstone for any general settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nor is it farfetched to consider that the effects of an American presence would go a good deal further. A permanent American commitment in the Sinai could not but in time affect the outlook of both Israel and Jordan toward the Palestinian issue. What may seem to both parties in the present circumstances an insoluble issue might take on a different appearance should an American presence once become a reliable given in their calculations. It was, after all, not so long ago that an American guarantee was seen by many observers in this country as the key that might turn the lock to an otherwise intractable conflict. This a guarantee could never do. Instead, the lock had first to be turned by others, as indeed it was turned by the dramatic sequence of events that began in late 1977. Now that it has been turned, the idea of a guarantee—or, in the form suggested here, its functional equivalent—may well become relevant, and this despite the indifference shown toward it today by those who were formerly its ardent supporters.

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At the same time, it must be emphasized that the need for an American military presence in the northern Sinai cannot be justified primarily in terms of its prospective impact on the peace process. Even if the impact were to prove negligible, unlikely though this must be, the need would remain undiminished. For a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict is an interest that cannot be compared in importance with the Western interest in insuring access to the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf. Were it not for the connection mistakenly drawn between the two, a connection made more insistently today than ever, the West would have the same modest concern with the Palestine issue that it had a decade ago. Indeed, were it not for the obsessive illusion that a settlement of the Palestine problem can provide our deliverance in the Persian Gulf, we would by now have been forced to confront the stark choice before us in the Gulf. Instead, the hope persists that the choice between conceding vital interests and moving resolutely to restore the dangerous imbalance can be avoided by a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The choice cannot be avoided, though. If vital interests are not to be conceded, with consequences even pessimists blanch at, countervailing power will have to be applied and soon. Yet there is no apparent way this can be effectively done while adhering to the constraints that at present define our efforts. The breaking of these constraints would not remove the dangers we face today in the Persian Gulf. A policy compounded in about equal measure of inadvertence and fear has succeeded in bringing us to a point where there is now no safe way out of our predicament.

Still, an extremely precarious position could be substantially improved by the introduction of a permanent land and air presence large enough and near enough to the Gulf to deal with most contingencies that might arise. There can be no assurance that the force would be employed should the need arise. But this is only to say that there can be no assurance that the prevailing policy of a decade will be once and for all abandoned. Without the required instruments to support a new policy, however, the time may well be drawing near when a change in policy will have become all but impossible.

1 “Oil and the Decline of the West,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1980), p. 1004.

2 “Western Deference in the Mideast,” New Republic (June 7, 1980), p. 19.

3 The Present Danger (Simon & Schuster, 1980), p. 60.

4 Albert Wohlstetter, “Half-Wars and Half-Policies in the Persian Gulf,” in W. Scott Thompson, National Security in the 1980's: From Weakness to Strength (Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1980), p. 164.

5 Kedourie, op. cit., p. 21.

6 “The Crisis in the West,” New York Review of Books (July 17, 1980), pp. 41ff.

7 Paul H. Nitze, “Policy and Strategy from Weakness,” in Thompson, op. cit., pp. 443-56.

8 Even more pointedly, he writes: “If the choice in solving our energy problem were to be viewed as one between using force in the Middle East or going without Middle East oil imports, the latter would clearly be the better choice.” Given the dependence of Europe and Japan, our choice—if it be that—would issue in their necessity to subordinate their policies to the Soviet Union.

9 Wohlstetter, op. cit., pp. 164-70.

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