Page 437 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

434 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

How would a Western nation, say Britain or France or West Germany, which
was tied by barter arrangements to Saudi Arabia or Persia or Iraq, fare in such
an eventuality? It could well find itself dragged willy-nilly into a remote
quarrel, in the making of which it had no hand, in the outcome of which it has

no real interest, yet in the conduct of which it is required to participate-and all
for the sake of essentially (or even exclusively) Arab or Persian or Muslim
objects.

The nerveless acquiescence of the Western nations in the frequency of oil-price

rises since the Tehran confrontation of 1971 has been prompted in the main by
the hope that the acquiescence will gain them security of oil supplies. It will, of
course, do nothing of the kind. All that continual surrender does is to streng­
then the financial weapon in the economic armoury of the Middle-Eastern oil
states. But there are even more insidious dangers to the West in the inexorable

accumulation of great wealth by these states than the threat to its economic
health. Because this wealth has been obtained without effort on the part of the
states in question, it has had a profoundly corrupting influence upon their
governments and upon numbers of their subjects, a corruption made all the
more inevitable by the nature of Arab and Persian society. As greater riches are

amassed, the process of corruption will intensify, hastening the spread of
instability in Arabia, Persia and the Gulf. It is doubtful whether at any time in
the history of mankind a group of intrinsically insignificant polities, at a
comparatively primitive stage of economic, political and social development,

has possessed such enormous financial power as the handful of Gulf states now
dispose of. As the governments of the Gulf states are moved to employ this
power for political and other purposes abroad, the corruption will spread
beyond the Gulf, influencing and disturbing governments and societies in
lands far removed from them in customs, culture and religion.
It is beyond the scope of this book to examine at any length the injurious

effects of Arab and Persian oil money upon the West. That the contagion has
already entered the body of the West can be confirmed by the merest glance
about one. It is present in financial and commercial circles, though its workings
are rarely exposed to public view. It has penetrated politics and government,
especially in Britain, France and the United States, where the spectacle 0

high-ranking ministers, officials and politicians wheedling, flattering an
fawning upon the plutocrats of Arabia and Persia has become a daily occur
rence. To the Western public, growing increasingly uneasy and dejected at t e
progress of the contagion, it is glibly explained by. their rulers and by t °se
public life to whom they look for instruction and guidance that the con^ag^-s

does not exist; or, if it does, that it is benign; or if it is not benign, then t ere

naught to be done about it.
It is difficult, indeed impossible, to believe that the governments of Britain,
France and the United States are not fully aware of the nature of the Middle­