Why are we in the Persian Gulf? That's the question that is (or should be) on America's lips. It's a simple question. But the answers coming from Washington have been mostly obtuse and contradictory.
Officially we are there to guarantee the safety of neutral commercial shipping in international waters. But U.S. forces are (at this writing) only committed to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian attacks. This despite the fact that Kuwait is allied with Iraq in the seven-year-old gulf war. And it was Iraq that instigated the "tanker war" in the gulf and has done by far the most damage to international shipping there.
The administration also claims it is trying to use U.S. leverage to encourage a peaceful solution to the Iran-Iraq war. There was once an opportunity for the United States to make a constructive contribution to peace in the gulf. We could have used our influence to organize a global arms-sale boycott against the warring governments. But that opportunity was squandered in the double-dealing of the Iran-contra scandal. With a change of heart, we could still wipe the slate clean and act as peacemakers. But not while we are militarily engaged on one side of the war.
Closer to the mark in explaining U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf is the observation that the Reagan administration felt compelled to make a "balancing" gesture toward the Arab side of the gulf after the revelation of its arms sales to Iran. Kuwait sensed this opportunity to drag the United States into the war and sweetened the pot by saying that if the United States didn't come in, they'd invite the Soviets. It was an offer the Reagan administration could not refuse, especially when it also brought the opportunity for cathartic head-to-head combat with the Iranians.
The scandalous Iran arms deal may explain the timing of the U.S. intervention in the gulf. But the scope of our military commitment goes far beyond that necessary to reassure the Arab gulf monarchs. Instead, the United States has also seized the occasion to begin establishing the permanent military presence in the region that we have wanted since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
IN U.S. GLOBAL STRATEGY, pre-1979, the Shah's Iran had the crucial role of U.S. military surrogate in the gulf region. The fall of the Shah left a significant gap in the U. S. imperial umbrella. We had no conventional force capable of acting in the gulf against a (highly unlikely) Soviet invasion or a not-so-unlikely indigenous insurgency against one of the gulf monarchs.
Under President Jimmy Carter, the Rapid Deployment Force was cooked up to fill this need. But the Arab gulf countries were reluctant to allow the permanent U.S. bases on their territory that a successful RDF required. The gulf rulers needed U.S. military protection to survive, but too close an identification with "The Great Satan" could only fan the flames of Islamic revolution at home.
Attempts to create a new surrogate force in Saudi Arabia were stymied by Israeli-inspired congressional opposition to Saudi arms sales. The enormous U.S. presence in the gulf is expected to give the United States new leverage in its demand for on-site bases, the theory being that 500-pound gorillas sit pretty much wherever they please.
Such military operations tend to create their own momentum, as we may recall from our Vietnam days. That is already evident in the Persian Gulf where, as this is written, U.S. military commanders are clamoring to discard the subtle distinction of protecting U.S.-flagged (or re-flagged) ships in order to repel all Iranian attacks on gulf shipping.
Whenever Congress has raised its timid questions about the nature and duration of the gulf operation, the administration has pleaded the need for unencumbered decision making in a national security emergency. A war that has continued at a stalemate for seven years hardly constitutes an emergency for the U.S. public. But the claim of threats to vital U.S. national security interests have gone largely unchallenged in Congress and the established media.
In most of its foreign policy adventures, the Reagan administration has tended to define national security in ideological terms. From Central America to Afghanistan, the line is that we back "freedom fighters" the world over because the spread of "democracy" will make for a stronger America in a safer world. But even the most astute ideologue would be hard-pressed to make substantive distinctions among the Arab monarchies of the gulf, the theocracy in Iran, and the secular dictatorship in Iraq.
Democracy, even in Reagan's contorted definition, is irrelevant here. And so is anti-communism, since the Soviet Union, like the United States, would clearly prefer an Iraqi victory. The Soviets' diplomatic influence in the gulf has increased in recent months. But only because their policy has been relatively rational, attentive, and evenhanded while U.S. policy has reeled about like a drunken sailor.
IN THE CONTEXT of the Persian Gulf, "national security" is nothing more or less than a code word for "oil." What is at stake is the right of the United States, and the multinational oil corporations it represents, to long-term, unencumbered access to gulf oil supplies and decisive influence over production and pricing decisions. The stability of the Western-oriented Arab states guarantees that state of affairs. The Islamic wild card represented by the Iranian revolution threatens it.
The Iranian threat is not so much through the strength of Iran's own oil supplies as through the revolutionary example it sets for the dispossessed of the Arab states. The Iranian example is a grim and brutally repressive one. But it is also perceived to be the only anti-imperialist political force going in the Middle East that shows much vitality or any demonstrable success. That guarantees it a measure of popular appeal in a region so thoroughly neo-colonialized by Western guns and money.
As long as there was no prospect of an Iranian victory, the United States and its allies were happy to see the war- and its fearsome toll grind on. In order to keep the armories stocked, both Iran and Iraq had to increase dramatically their oil production, contributing to the over-supply and resulting low prices of recent years. The conflict also fed a brisk arms export trade of great profit to our European and Israeli allies. But in the end, though it has little love for the Iraqi government and less for Arab nationalism, the U.S. political-military establishment will take whatever steps it deems necessary to prevent an Iranian victory.
The bipartisan U.S. consensus that has held for more than 40 years maintains that "our" future of endless economic and military expansion depends on control over "our" oil. The darker-skinned Muslims who happen to live atop "our" oil can be humored, bribed, bullied, or cajoled. But they can never be allowed to gain power commensurate with their potential wealth.
Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojourners contributing editor.
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