'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Geopolitics of the Gulf 201

Ever since 1970, when the British withdrew the sizable forces they had maintained "East of Suez", with the primary mission of guaranteeing the security of the Gulf and of its all-important oil pipelines and shipping lanes, the " security" of these routes and facilities (from a western perspective) has been guaranteed through the maintenance of a delicate balance between the three legs of the Gulf's security " stool". One leg--until recently--was the multi-faceted US defense relationship with Saudi Arabia.

The other two legs were (from the US point of view, still) much more problematic than the relationship with saudi Arabia, and in need of frequent re-balancing. These were Iran's significant strategic "reach" over the Gulf area -- heavily pro-Washington until the Shah fell in 1978; then judged to be distinctly anti-Washington-- and Iraq's somewhat more meager strategic reach over the area.

(Iraq is intrinsically less strategically hefty than Iran-- which was why Saddam was such an arrogant fool to think he could ever win the war of choice he launched against Iran in 1980. Plus, Iraq has almost no direct seafront footage along the Gulf, while Iran has hundreds and hundreds of miles of it-- all the way down till it meets Pakistan down there in the Arabian Sea someplace.)

In all those eight years of terrible carnage that were the Iran-Iraq War (a.k.a. the Very First Gulf War of the modern era), Washington enacted its "balancing role" mainly by giving discreet help to whichever side was the momentary underdog, with the presumed aim of keeping the war going for as long as possible.

Well, maybe it was a bit more complex than that. I guess that Bombs-Away Don Rumsfeld and the other Reagonauts did start out viewing the war as providing the opportunity for enacting a little bit of pure vengeance against the ayatollahs' regime... And then Bombsy went to Baghdad to cavort with Saddam, etc etc... But then, within a couple of years or less, Howie Teicher and Oliver North were on their way to Teheran with a plane full of vitally needed spare parts for military aircraft, etc., that the Israelis were thoughtfully sending over there-- along with that truly mind-boggling chocolate cake from a Tel Aviv bakery. And thus, the Iran-contra shenanigans reached their peak.

Sure looked like keeping the war going for as long as possible to me.

The war only ended in 1988, after the deaths of countless hundreds of thousands of people (mainly, young men) from both countries. And after both country's leaderships had spent out (or, in Iraq's case, severely over-spent) a whole generation's-worth of oil revenues.

In a way, the equally disastrous invasion that Saddam launched of Kuwait some 18 months later was a direct result of that war-related overspending of the 1980s. He was attempting to force the Gulf monarchies to totally write off the huge debts he had run up with them during the war-- while also parking himself atop the continuing revenue stream from Kuwait's ever- gushing oil-wells...

How things have changed! In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, one of the bedrocks of US strategic planning for the Gulf was the ever-easier access American forces had to forward bases and extensive other facilities inside Saudi Arabia. After the 1978 revolution in Iran, it was to bases in Saudi Arabia many of the US troops ejected from Iran were redeployed. In the 1980s, it was from those bases that US surveillance planes flew high over Iran to provide real-time intel to Iran's Iraqi invaders. In the 1990s, the Saudi bases were the essential and vast staging ground from which the "liberation" of Kuwait was launched...

But then, back in April, the White House suddenly decided it didn't need the massive network of air-bases that US contractors had built throughout Saudi Arabia kingdom (at great profit to themselves) throughout the previous 30 years any more. Bombsy and his friends had apparently decided--was this a little premature, or what? --that Iraq could be the American forces' new forward base in the Gulf region.

How well will that work out? I guess we need to wait and see...

[You may also want to check out this JWN post from March 28, 2003: * Geopolitics of the Gulf 101]