Real War (12 page)

No arm of the sea has been, or is of greater interest alike to the geologist and archeologist, the historian and geographer, the merchant, and the student of strategy, than the inland water known as the Persian Gulf.

—Sir Arnold Wilson

The area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf [is] . . . the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union.

—Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov

Events in the Persian Gulf show dramatically how places that until recently seemed remote and exotic can suddenly present us with crises of surpassing urgency; how we can awake to find that a region once celebrated largely in romantic fantasy now holds the fate of the world in its hands—or, more precisely, in its sands.

The story of the Persian Gulf stretches back thousands of years, to the early stirrings of Western civilization. The complex, often strained and sometimes bitter relationships among its various cultures and religions span the centuries to shape the present. But its strategic significance today centers on two factors: its location and its oil.

Both military and economic power now depend on oil. This basic fact makes the Persian Gulf the eye of the global
storm in these final decades of the twentieth century. If the Soviet Union gains the power to turn off the oil spigots of the Middle East, it will gain the power to bring most of the industrialized West to its knees. To achieve this, it is not necessary that the Soviets actually take over the nations of the Persian Gulf, as they took over Afghanistan. Their purpose can also be served by external pressures or internal upheavals that deny those countries' resources to the West.

The Soviets have long been aware of this. Dissident Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov recalls a talk given at the Kremlin in 1955 by a high Soviet official, who explained that the long-range goal of Soviet policy in the Middle East was “to exploit Arab nationalism in order to create difficulties for the European countries in obtaining crude oil, and thereby to gain influence over them.” This was eighteen years before the 1973 oil embargo.

Sometime in the twenty-first century nuclear, solar, geothermal, and other energy sources may be sufficiently developed to meet most of the world's energy needs. But for now we live in an age of oil. In the decades just ahead this gives extraordinary strategic significance to the region of the Persian Gulf. This means that one of the world's most troubled, unstable, and imperiled areas is also one of its most vital.

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In the industrial age energy is the lifeblood of the economic system, and economic power is the foundation of military power. Great Britain was the first great industrial power, and in the nineteenth century it became the world's leading political and military power. Britain got a head start on the world because it was virtually an island made of coal, and because coal powered the industrial revolution.

As the age of coal gave way to the age of oil, Britain, the world's first coal superpower, gave way to the United States, the world's first oil superpower. The first oil well in the world was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust was the OPEC of its day, the United States the world's largest oil exporter.

Oil fueled the automobile. Since it also made possible the airplanes, ships, tanks, and trucks of twentieth-century warfare, access to supplies of oil became a military necessity. In World
War I the French statesman Georges Clemenceau declared that “Oil is as necessary as blood.” Marshal Foch warned, “We must have oil or we shall lose the war.” Lord Curzon later claimed that “The Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil.” In the first few weeks of the war Marshal Joffre won the Battle of the Marne by rushing French reinforcements to the front in gasoline-powered taxi cabs commandeered from the streets of Paris.

In World War II, when General George S. Patton was streaking across France, Texas pipeline specialists followed in the wake of his tanks, laying pipe at a fifty-mile-a-day clip. One of the Allied powers' principal strategic advantages in World War II was that they controlled 86 percent of the world's oil.

The Guns of World War II were barely silenced when Stalin made his first push toward the Persian Gulf. After their wartime occupation of the northern part of Iran, the Soviets brazenly refused to remove their troops, set up an “Autonomous” Republic of Azerbaijan and a Kurdish People's Republic under their control, and demanded creation of a “joint company” to exploit the oil reserves of northern Iran, with 51 percent of the shares to be held by the U.S.S.R.

Harry Truman, President at the time, later wrote:

The Soviet Union persisted in its occupation until I personally saw to it that Stalin was informed that I had given orders to our military chiefs to prepare for the movement of our ground, sea and air forces. Stalin then did what I knew he would do. He moved his troops out.

The next Soviet threat to the Persian Gulf, “the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union,” came in the eastern Mediterranean, in Greece and Turkey, where Britain was cutting back on its foreign commitments.

President Truman again responded, going before a joint session of Congress to seek American aid for the two countries.
The Truman Doctrine was born; American power would seek to restrain Soviet power in the eastern Mediterranean. By mid-1948 the Sixth Task Force, forerunner of the U.S. Sixth Fleet—the Navy's Mediterranean fleet—had been formed, and U.S. planes were soon using bases in Libya, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. An American military presence had been established in the Middle East.

In those desperate and decisive postwar years oil became, in the words of one observer, “the link between the Truman Doctrine for the Middle East and the Marshall Plan for Europe.” For a Europe struggling to rebuild its industries, oil was crucial, and it was oil from the Middle East. In 1948 Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal sent a memo to President Truman declaring, “Without Middle East oil the European Recovery Program has a very slim chance of success.”

Europe's shift in basic energy source from its own coal to imported oil dramatically changed the geopolitical structure of the world. The Middle East had long been the crossroads where Asia, Africa, and Europe met. Now its oil is the lifeblood of modern industry, the Persian Gulf region is the heart that pumps it, and the sea routes around the Gulf are the jugular through which that lifeblood passes.

Japan relies on what columnist James Reston has called a “bridge of oil tankers—one every 100 miles from the Gulf every day of the year.” The Gulf supplies 70 percent of Japan's oil needs as well as over half of Europe's.

The United States has become increasingly dependent on oil as a source of energy, and increasingly dependent on imports as a source of oil. Oil now supplies nearly 50 percent of our energy, and while we depended on imports for a third of our oil in 1973, we now import half of it. Further, Canada was one of our leading suppliers in 1973; five years later the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) provided more than 80 percent of our imports. The United States, once the world's principal supplier of oil, has become the largest purchaser from OPEC, taking a fifth of its oil.

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More than ever, the question of who controls what in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East is the key to who controls what in the world.

The British saw this coming a long time ago. In the early 1950s they tried to convince the United States that the problems of the Gulf were “highly strategic and political, not just economic.” The British were more vulnerable than the Americans, so they needed to see these problems more clearly; but they were also more experienced, especially in the Gulf, and were therefore able to see them more clearly.

Although most of the world did not become aware of the small Gulf sheikhdoms until after the Arab oil embargo of 1973, British rulers had been paying attention to the minutest details of their affairs for 150 years.

The British first moved into the Gulf in the early 1800s in order to prevent pirates from disrupting their trade. From then until the early 1970s British military power kept order, provided protection, and settled disputes in the various sheikhdoms dotting the Gulfs coastline.

Throughout the Gulf and around the Arabian peninsula, Britain reigned supreme. In Aden, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, a group of sheikhdoms that used to be known as the Pirate Coast, the British were the link between the sheikhs and the rest of the world. They handled their task with tact, thoroughness, and toughness. In 1934, in a campaign to safeguard their port of Aden, the British used flattery, bribery, and well-calculated shows of force to conclude no less than 1,400 “peace treaties” with the various rulers in the hinterlands of what is now South Yemen. It was under the umbrella of British protection that the great multinational companies began to explore the region in their search for oil.

Britain controlled not only the Gulf but also access to it from all areas of the Indian Ocean—from Singapore, Malaya, Burma, India, Ceylon, Aden, Suez, Kenya, South Africa, Australia, and from Diego Garcia and other islands in the Indian Ocean—all British possessions at one time or another. Both the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean that led to it were “British lakes.”

Britain maintained its presence in the Gulf until 1971. But its phased withdrawals from responsibility “East of Suez” after World War II created a series of power vacuums that were filled by anti-British nationalists, egged on by the Soviets.

Another foretaste of later troubles in Iran came in 1951, when Mohammed Mossadegh pushed through the Iranian legislature a measure nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and then himself became Prime Minister. Under the highly emotional, anti-Western Mossadegh, Iran tumbled into chaos. Oil production virtually ceased. Economic development plans were crippled. Land reform, previously begun by the Shah, lagged. Discontent spread, the communist Tudeh party thrived, and it looked as though Iran might fall into the Soviet orbit.

In 1953 Mossadegh attempted to overthrow the Shah. The CIA and other allied intelligence agencies gave covert help to General Fazollah Zahedi in his successful effort to put down Mossadegh. Mossadegh was ousted and the Shah was restored securely to his throne; from then on, the Shah took personal control of Iran's affairs. Much later—during my administration—General Zahedi's son, Ardeshir, became Iran's ambassador to the United States.

With Iran once again in the pro-Western camp, it was possible to unite the “northern tier” countries, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan, in a military alliance with Great Britain called the Baghdad Pact, and later the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). This effectively blocked Russia's direct thrusts toward the Gulf.

The next warning shot came from Egypt. President Gamal Abdel Nasser, a charismatic, left-leaning nationalist, touched off a worldwide furor in 1956 by nationalizing the Suez Canal.

Far more was at stake in the Suez takeover than the economic interests of the canal's shareholders. The canal had been operated in trust for all nations. Europeans depended on it both for their life-sustaining trade and for the transport of 70 percent of their oil. They had little faith that its operations would be secure in the volatile Nasser's hands. Israel soon
struck across the Egyptian border, and France and Britain then moved immediately with air, sea, and land forces to seize the canal. From the American standpoint, their timing could not have been worse. The British and French forces landed just as the United States was condemning the Soviet Union for its brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution, and on the eve of a presidential election in which Eisenhower's slogan was “peace and prosperity.” With the anticolonial movement gathering force, and with the Soviets threatening to intervene, rather than joining its allies the United States brought heavy pressure on them and caused them to withdraw.

Far more than the canal was lost. This humiliating defeat in Suez had a devastating effect on the willingness of Britain and France to play a major role not only in the Mideast but in other areas of the world as well. The U.S. action, rather than winning Nasser's friendship, gained his contempt and increased his hostility toward Israel, other Arab countries, and the United States itself. Years later Eisenhower was to reflect that the U.S. restraint of Britain, France, and Israel when they were trying to protect their interests in Suez was a tragic mistake.

Stirred up by the Suez crisis, radical workers set fire to many of Kuwait's wells and pipelines. Tough, fast action by the Kuwaiti security forces prevented further serious damage: 100 time bombs, set to blow up the sheikhdom's pipelines, were discovered. Some of the radicals involved were Palestinians. The Iranian crisis, Suez, and the flare-up in Kuwait had shown the world that in the Middle East oil and politics can mix explosively.