Real War (14 page)

With their enormous oil riches, their vast, sparsely populated lands, and their small army, the Saudis have been aptly described by columnist John P. Roche as “coup-bait.” Their situation was well summed up by one U.S. official, who commented, “Suppose you were a rich woman living alone in a tiny town surrounded by hoodlums. Everyone knows you have millions in diamonds under your bed and no police to protect you. Occasionally the sheriff comes by, siren blaring, hops out, gives you a big kiss and roars off. Would you feel safe?”

Geographically, there are four approaches to Saudi Arabia: (1) from the “front-line states” in the Arab-Israeli conflict—Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Israel; (2) from the direction of the Persian Gulf—Iran, Iraq, or one of the small sheikhdoms on the Gulf; (3) from the Horn of Africa, just across the Red Sea; and (4) from Oman, or from North or South Yemen, at the end of the Arabian peninsula.

Events on all four approaches give the Saudis reason to be nervous.

The Saudis are concerned that any settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict that does not resolve the Palestinian problem will increase the militancy of the Palestinians. In 1976 the Palestinian Liberation Organization disrupted Lebanon, plunging it into civil war. During my administration they tried twice within three months to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan, they set off a civil war in that country, and they almost succeeded in bringing about the fall of its government. Terrorism is the
PLO's stock in trade, and Saudi Arabia is extremely vulnerable to terrorist activities; two thirds of the workers in its oil fields are Palestinians. In addition, anything that strengthens the hand of the Arab radicals—as an unsatisfactory settlement would—weakens the position of the moderate Saudi leadership.

From the direction of the Gulf, the Saudis have multiple concerns. They fear the nearby military power of Iraq. The toppling of the Iranian monarchy makes other crowns in the region, including Saudi Arabia's, sit less securely. Internal problems in the small Gulf sheikhdoms make these, too, potentially unstable. In Kuwait, for example, less than half the population of 1 million are Kuwaitis; more than 250,000 are Palestinians, and another 250,000 are other foreign nationals. In the United Arab Emirates, and also in Qatar, only about one-fourth of the population is indigenous. Strains among the seven tiny sheikhdoms that formed the United Arab Emirates in 1971 could well give rise to exploitable conflicts in the future.

Looking across the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa, the Saudis have seen the Soviet-supported regime in Ethiopia waging a two-front war: to recapture the rebel province of Eritrea—with its Red Sea ports—and, against Somalia, over the Ogaden. The Saudis were partially responsible for weaning Egypt and the Sudan away from their earlier ties to the U.S.S.R., and they have also provided aid to Somalia for the same purpose. They have been deeply disappointed by U.S. unwillingness to provide arms to the Somalis and the Eritreans. Ethiopia has 30 million people—four times as many as Saudi Arabia. Eritrean ports dominate the southern end of the Red Sea, where three quarters of Saudi Arabia's coastline lies.

From the end of the peninsula where Oman and the two Yemens lie, trouble has been more the rule than the exception. South Yemen remains the most pliable Soviet tool in the Arab world. This barren nation is host to Soviet and Cuban advisers and East German police-state experts, who assist the few thousand members of the Communist Party in controlling the nation's 2 million people, while also helping South Yemen make war against its neighbors, North Yemen and Oman.

North Yemen has no oil and little industry, but with 6 million people, its population is almost as great as that of Saudi Arabia. While still pro-Western, North Yemen has recently purchased
Soviet arms and shown signs of hedging its bets. If through subversion, conquest, or unification with South Yemen, North Yemen comes under Communist control, the Saudis will be gravely menaced. A million North Yemenis work in Saudi Arabia.

South Yemen—in effect, the Cuba of the Arabian peninsula—also has active designs on its eastern neighbor, Oman. Oman once ruled a far-flung empire of its own. When the United States first established trading relations with Oman in the 1820s, its navy was larger than ours, and at one point its empire included the island of Zanzibar, over 2,000 miles away. It still controls what, in geopolitical terms, is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world: the tip of the Ras Musandam peninsula that forms the southern bank of the Straits of Hormuz, that greatly coveted entrance to the Persian Gulf.

For years the Soviets and South Yemenis backed an insurgency in Oman's Dhofar Province. The Omanis were unable to put this down until the Shah of Iran sent troops to assist them. Key roads were secured, the border with South Yemen was sealed, and by late 1976 the rebellion was ended and Oman was secure—for the moment. When the Shah fell from power in early 1979, however, the crowds had hardly quieted in the streets of Tehran before a spokesman for the Dhofari guerrillas operating out of South Yemen announced that guerrilla efforts would begin again.

Especially ominous, the Soviets have recently equipped the Cuban Army with the latest in armored weaponry, and the Soviet brigade discovered in Cuba in 1979 may well be training Cubans in armored warfare, which requires coordination at the brigade level. At the same time, intelligence reports have indicated that the Soviets are stockpiling in South Yemen precisely the sort of advanced battle tanks, combat carriers, and other arms and equipment that would be needed for an armored strike across the desert. As strategist
Edward Luttwak has suggested:

The pieces are on the chessboard; the operation could unfold at any time. With a revived Dhofar movement providing the political camouflage of an internal revolt, and the chronically aggressive South Yemen government mounting a military attack in the guise of an intra-Arab fight, the Cubans
could inject the coup de grace of an armored threat which the small Omani army could not possibly resist. . . . All the oil of Arabia would come under the direct threat of a radical Cuban-supported (and thus Soviet-sponsored) regime, whose mere emergence might well suffice to inspire radical seizures of power in the small Trucial sheikhdoms that have much oil.

It would also bring the Soviets to the Straits of Hormuz.

Wealth and weakness plague the countries of the Persian Gulf. Their riches and their vulnerability combine to make them doubly tempting targets for the Soviet Union.

Watching the Soviet Union crush Afghanistan as the 1970s ended, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat commented: “The battle around the oil stores has already begun.” Moscow has struck to within 300 miles of the Straits of Hormuz, the strategic choke point on the West's oil jugular. From bases in southwestern Afghanistan, MiG fighters can reach the Straits, something that was previously beyond them.

From Turkey to Pakistan, the countries of the “northern tier” that once held the Russians in check are either in turmoil or gravely weakened. Sir Robert Thompson has noted that Russia has three fronts: a European or Western front, an eastern front facing China and Japan, and a southern front facing the countries between Turkey and Afghanistan. The third front has now been breached, and Russia is moving southward toward that region in which, as Molotov said, the “center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union” lies.

Since the end of World War II oil from the Middle East has been crucial to Western Europe and Japan. Since 1970, when domestic production peaked, it has become increasingly important to the United States. The Soviet Union now exports 3 million barrels of oil a day; half of its 1978 foreign currency earnings came from oil exports. Forecasts of Soviet oil production suggest that it may peak soon, and decline during the 1980s; the Soviets themselves may well become net oil importers during this period. This is bound to affect their cost-benefit
calculations in considering a grab for the riches of the Persian Gulf.

Before their seizure of Afghanistan, the Soviet base closest to the Straits of Hormuz was at Mary, earlier known as Merv, in Soviet Turkmenistan. When the Russians first moved into the Merv oasis in 1884 a great debate occurred in Great Britain over Russian intentions and the threat to the British Empire. Those who were complacent about the tsarist conquests were like our own “so what” school in recent years; they archly accused the hard-liners of “Mervousness.” The Russian ambassador in London argued that it was difficult “for a civilized power to stop short in the extension of its territory where uncivilized tribes were its immediate neighbors.”

The Russians were halted along the Amu Darya River in the late nineteenth century, and that river formed the border with Afghanistan until Russian troops crashed across it in late 1979. There are no natural barriers separating Afghanistan from the Arabian Sea and the Straits of Hormuz. There is only barren land and, ominously, a zone of instability.

That zone of instability is called Baluchistan. Five million Baluchi tribesmen live in southern Afghanistan, western Pakistan, and southeastern Iran. In recent years the Baluchis of Pakistan have repeatedly rebelled against the central government. In late 1979 open conflict with the Tehran government erupted in Iranian Baluchistan. Because most Baluchi are Sunni Moslems, Khomeini's theocratic Shiite dictatorship gives them a new grievance. Even before the Soviets openly invaded Afghanistan, there were reports that they were using camps in that country to train, indoctrinate, and supply separatist Baluchi rebels from Pakistan. Baluchistan has 750 miles of strategic shoreline along the Arabian Sea, reaching almost to the Straits of Hormuz. A People's Republic of Baluchistan would give the Soviets a red finger pushing through to the Indian Ocean. This could be a decisive step in the Soviets' northern pincer movement toward the Straits.

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The entire industrial economy of the West now depends on oil, and the entire military machine of the West runs on oil. Control over the West's oil lifeline is control over the West's life. Never has the region of the Persian Gulf been so vital to
the future of the world. Never have the nations of the Persian Gulf been so vulnerable to an aggressive power that seeks to impose its will on the world.

One after another, nations of the Persian Gulf and the Islamic crescent have fallen to revolutionary forces that, in one way or another, are anti-Western if not actively pro-Soviet. The extreme volatility of Middle Eastern politics has made the region both more tempting to adventurers and more vulnerable to takeover attempts. If the Soviets succeed in taking effective control of the Persian Gulf, Europe and Japan will be at their mercy. And mercy is not one of their most notable virtues.

For centuries great forces have collided in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, great interests have contended, and local quarrels have raged. This will continue to be true in the 1980s. The competition of interests over access to oil from the region at reasonable prices threatens to dwarf all previous conflicts.

Our oil supplies from the Mideast are vulnerable to three major threats—the potentially explosive Arab-Israeli conflict, Soviet adventurism, and local revolutionary forces such as those that overthrew the Shah.

For years Americans thought of Middle Eastern conflicts almost exclusively in terms of the Arab-Israeli contest. But the area has been riven by strife for centuries; for centuries it has been the crossroads of the world, but also a world unto itself. Now its conflicts have intensified as old ways and new collide, sometimes explosively, and as the external restraints that contained local rivalries are removed. The fact is that the West's most important import comes from the world's most volatile region.

There is unrest or the danger of unrest in every country in the Middle East. No border is secure, nor is any state free from worries about internal security. Conflicts rage between Shiite and Sunni, between Iranian and Arab; there are clashes among nationalities, sects, tribes, and classes, as well as the gathering revolt of traditional Islam against modernity, and all of these
often erupt into violence. At the end of 1979 former Israeli ambassador to the United States
Chaim Herzog summed up part of the record of instability:

In the past 18 months alone, four Arab presidents were removed, one assassinated in Yemen, one executed by assassins in South Yemen, one removed by a coup in Mauritania and one recently by a coup in Iraq. Thirteen of the current heads of Arab states, over 50 percent of them, have succeeded immediate predecessors who were violently removed from office, in most cases from this life. In the past 15 years there have been 12 fierce bitter wars in which Arabs were pitted against Arabs in bloody internecine strife.

The Soviets are skilled at exploiting trouble, but there would be trouble in the Middle East even without them. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a source of bitter conflict, but there would be conflict without the Arab-Israeli dispute.

Even the “Islamic revolution” defies simple categorization. Among the world's 800 million Moslems there are more non-Arabs than Arabs; Moslems form a majority or a sizable minority in seventy countries. The world's most populous Moslem country is Indonesia. There are more Moslems in India, Nigeria, the Soviet Union, and even China than in most countries of the Middle East.

Modernization—which often means Westernization—has been a wrenching experience for these traditional societies, and the United States has become a convenient whipping boy for those torn between the strict teachings of the past and the lures or demands of the modern world. Conserving the best of traditional Islam while satisfying the needs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will challenge the wisest reformers. But it must be done.

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With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, one premise from which United States policy must proceed is our strong moral commitment to the preservation of the state of Israel. Israel has demonstrated in four wars over the past thirty years that it can more than hold its own against its neighbors. Now that the threat from Egypt has been neutralized, this is even more true. But if the Soviet Union were to stage a full-scale intervention,
as it threatened to do in 1973, Israel would go down the tube. Even if Israel has or acquires nuclear weapons, its modest nuclear capability would not be a deterrent against the nuclear might of the Soviet Union. The key to Israel's survival, therefore, is our determination to hold the ring against the Soviets.