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.
The Soviet Threat
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.
• • •
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.
Needs for the Future
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 dange
r 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.
• • •
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.
Our airlift to Israel and the alert of our forces which I ordered in 1973 with the knowledge that these actions might lead to an Arab oil embargo were a demonstration of how far the United States will go to keep our commitment to Israel’s survival and to prevent Soviet intervention in the area.
But that decision was a close call then and it will be even closer in the future as the Soviets gain clear nuclear superiority. The Palestinian time bomb must be defused before we face another Yom Kippur crisis.
It would be presumptuous and foolhardy to suggest that there is some magic formula, some quick fix, for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are, however, some basic principles that must form the foundation of any viable policy. First, whatever group does in fact or claims to represent the Palestinians must recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace and must reject the use of terrorism or armed action against Israel or Israeli citizens. Second, Israel must comply with the provisions of U.N. Resolution 242 with regard to the return of occupied territories. However, Israel is entitled to secure borders and cannot and should not be expected to agree to setting up a hostile armed state in its gut on the West Bank. Third, occupied territories that are returned should be demilitarized. Finally, Jordan can play a constructive role in resolving the Palestinian issue.
Having in mind these basic conditions, we must recognize that the Palestinian issue is a rallying cry for radical forces throughout the area and is constantly exploited by the Soviet Union. It is in the interests of Israel and every moderate government in the Mideast to make a maximum effort to resolve it. Unless progress is made swiftly, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, the most effective voice for moderation in the Mideast, will find his position untenable. In the 1956 Suez crisis we learned how destabilizing a radical Egyptian leader can be. Next to the need to keep the Soviets out of the Mideast, the most important thing is for Israel and the moderate Arab governments to do everything possible to defuse the Palestinian issue so that Sadat and other moderate Arab leaders will not be driven from power.
• • •
In the long term the problem in this area is the Soviet Union. The Soviets may well need access to Middle East oil themselves during the 1980s. Certainly they want the power to affect the flow of that oil to Europe and Japan. With their nuclear-armed Backfire bombers and SS-20 missiles, their Indian Ocean and Mediterranean naval squadrons, their rapid-deployment airlift forces in the Caucasus, their use of ports in South Yemen and the Horn of Africa, and their new air bases in Afghanistan, the Soviets will be able to project their military power into the area in ways that the United States cannot, and with a speed the United States cannot match. It would take us at least a decade to catch up in this regard. This imbalance casts a long shadow over the politics of the area.
The strategic position of the entire Western alliance hinges on reliable access to crude oil from the Persian Gulf. This, in turn, requires that we successfully block the Soviet drive toward dominant influence in the area.
Since oil is not a convenience for the West, but a necessity, the United States and our allies in Europe and Japan must make it a priority to provide economic and military assistance to governments in the area that are threatened by internal or external aggression. We must be ready and willing to take whatever steps, including a strong military presence and even military action, are required to protect our interests. We must also be able to back up our words. The enunciation of a grandiose “doctrine” that the United States will resist a threat to the region by responding militarily is an empty cannon unless we have the forces in place to give credibility to that pledge. If we make it clear that we are prepared to go this far, and if we show that we can, we will not be forced to do so.
It is essential that the United States have base facilities so located as to enable us to project our power convincingly into the area, and to respond swiftly to sudden threats. We also need to assure access to bases in Western Europe that could be used to facilitate airlift and sealift operations between the United States and the Persian Gulf. And then, when we do project power, we must do so resolutely. Announcing the emergency dispatch of an aircraft carrier to the Gulf only to turn it back to avoid provocation, sending F-15 fighter planes to Saudi Arabia as a show of force but making a point of sending them unarmed—gestures such as these are worse than futile. By inviting contempt, they encourage aggression.
Above all, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and other key states must be unequivocally reassured that should they be threatened by revolutionary forces, either internally or externally, the United States will stand strongly with them so that they will not suffer the same fate as the Shah.
It will be necessary not only to be prepared, but to be seen to be prepared. We must not only have the will to use force if required, we must demonstrate that will. We must also have the forces that can be used. We may run risks in defending our interests in the Persian Gulf. We would run far greater risks if we failed to defend those interests.
5
The Vietnam Syndrome
The H-Bomb is more handicap than help to the policy of “containment.” To the extent that it reduces the likelihood of all-out war, it increases the possibilities of “limited war” pursued by indirect and widespread local aggression.
—B. H. Liddell Hart
When it is all over, it [the war in Vietnam] will
undoubtedly prove to be one of the decisive wars of this century and, in its influence, more far-reaching than any other war of its type . . . and its real effects are still to come.
—Sir Robert Thompson
I regard the war in Indochina as the greatest military, political, economic, and moral blunder in our national history.
—Senator George McGovern
The final chapters have yet to be written on the war in Vietnam. It was a traumatizing experience for Americans, a brutalizing experience for the Vietnamese, an exploitable opportunity for the Soviets. It was also one of the crucial battles of World War III.
Scores of books have been written on the Vietnam War. Now Hollywood is drawing on it for dramatic material, and in the process weaving its own interpretations. Each differing view reflects in some measure the author’s own particular experience, or lack of experience, with the war.
As Commander-in-Chief during the final five years of the war, my perspective is unique. I believe I understand why we failed in Vietnam. I knew then the stakes we were fighting for. I know now the price we have paid because of our failure, and most importantly, I think I know how we can learn from those mistakes and avoid making them again.
“Revolutionary war”—guerrilla war—has been one of the Soviets’ favorite instruments in World War III.
During the period when the European colonial empires were being dismantled, it was relatively simple to co-opt the calls for “liberation”; and new and unstable nations still provide fertile ground for the seeds of revolutionary war. Further, this type of war can be pursued without the consequences, either military or diplomatic, of committing Soviet troops to the battle.
Real War Page 11