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The 'Sting9 457

antipathies among OPEC’s member governments assert themselves, which
they are bound to, the facade of unity will crack, particularly among the
Middle-Eastern states. The entire course of Middle-Eastern history testifies to
such an outcome. The day when the cartel disintegrates, however, will not be

hastened by the Western powers continuing to adopt towards OPEC the
posture of the rabbit faced with the stoat. If they act instead in unison to exploit
the organization’s patent vulnerability, using the diversity of economic and
political weapons at their disposal and playing upon the antagonisms that
divide OPEC’s members, they will accomplish both the break-up of the cartel

and their own release from financial bondage.

It is sometimes forgotten that the dependence of the industrial world upon oil
from the Middle East is less than a generation old. Out of a total world

production in 1939 of approximately 278 million tons, the United States
produced 168 million tons, and Persia and Iraq between them only 13.62
million tons. In 1946, the first full year of post-war production, the United
Slates produced 230 million tons out of a total world production of 371 million

tons, while Persia produced 19.19 million, Iraq 4.69 million, Saudi Arabia 7.99
million and Kuwait 0.80 million tons. Even in 1950, by which time the Saudi
Arabian and Kuwaiti fields were beginning to come into full production, the

total amount of oil produced in the Middle East was only 86.60 million tons out
of a total world production of 518 million tons. The industrial world, in brief,
has done without Middle-Eastern oil before, and it can, if necessary, do
without it again. The attraction which Middle-Eastern oil held for the West
was not just its abundance but its cheapness. If it ceases to be cheap, if it
becomes, as it has become, ludicrously expensive, it will lose its attractiveness,

and the Western industrial nations and Japan, as soon as they are in a position
to do so, will cease to buy it.
Indeed, if the Arabs and the Persians and their partners in OPEC continue

on their present reckless course, they could well bring the age of oil in the
world’s history to a premature end. The Gulf would then revert to the back­
water it has been for centuries past, its shores lined with the rusting carcasses of
refineries, petro-chemical complexes and gas liquefaction plants, the skeletons
of which may still be visible two or three millennia hence, to confound any

archaeologist who may chance upon them and perhaps lead him to wonder, like
helley’s traveller in an antique land, whether he is not contemplating the
vestiges of a once magnificent civilization.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.