Page 380 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Masquerade 377

knee to the Arabs and Persians. All three governments suffered, and suffer
still, from delusions regarding the rationality of contemporary political
regimes in the Middle East: they believed that conciliation and fair dealing
would prompt the Arabs and Persians to reciprocate, to act with good faith and
moderation over oil prices and supplies. The French were sublimely confident,
despite all their unhappy experiences in the past, that they knew the secret of
handling the Arabs. The British persevered undismayed with the same con­

ceit, heedless of the depths of ignominy into which it had dragged them. For
those in the Foreign Office who clung to this belief, the presence of the oil
companies in the Middle East had long been a matter for regret, since the
companies’ sordid commercial activities were seen as tending to sully what
might otherwise have been the pure and limpid waters of Anglo-Arab amity.
While such sentiments were not entirely unknown in the State Department,
they would seem to have played a less decisive part in determining official
policy towards the oil companies. The State Department certainly had its
quota of officials smitten with the furor arabicus, earnest souls who believed

that they had unravelled the mysteries of the Arab psyche, and that the
understanding they had gained as a consequence, combined with the sympathy
they felt for Arab aspirations (or, rather, what they thought these aspirations to
be), gave them an incomparable advantage over their French and British
counterparts in treating with Arab governments. Such illusions aside, there
were some grounds for the relative equanimity with which Washington viewed
the rising level of oil prices in the Middle East after the Tehran diktat and, in
the early months of 1973, the prospect of higher levels yet. The United States
was herself a not inconsiderable producer of oil, and domestic oil prices were a
good deal higher than those prevailing in the Middle East. American oil

companies were not only the main producers of Middle-Eastern oil but they
also had the largest share of the world market for crude oil and refined
products. Financially, therefore, the United States could expect to derive
substantial benefit from the greater profits which American oil companies
would reap from passing on to their customers whatever increases in the price
of crude oil were obtained by the Middle-Eastern oil states.
Politically, too, higher oil prices were not unwelcome to the United States.
They helped to soothe the feelings of the Arabs, ruffled by some aspects of

American policy in the Middle East, particularly concerning Israel. More
directly, they helped to smooth the path of Saudi-American co-operation,
which had by the latter half of 1972, if not before, become a principal strand in
American policy towards the Arab states. Furthermore, as Saudi Arabia and
Persia were now conceived of as the two local powers which would, with the
blessing of the United States, guard the peace and security of the Gulf after
Britain’s withdrawal, Washington naturally wished to ensure the continuance
in power of the Saudi and Pahlavi dynasties, and ample financial resources
were a necessary means to this end. They were also necessary if the two states