Page 480 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions 477

is as prone to make ad hoc moves and decisions in the face of changing
circumstances as are the Western powers. The Kremlin is far from being
infallible in its political judgements, as the record of its relations with the Arab
world since the Second World War bears witness. It has revealed no signs of

possessing any unique insight into the hearts and minds of the Arabs, nor has it
exhibited any unusual dexterity in handling them. What it has shown has been
an unremarkable ability to exploit for its own purposes the numerous griev­
ances held by the Arabs in general against the West.

Whatever view one may take of Soviet intentions towards Arabia and the Gulf,
and of the Soviet Union’s capacity to carry them into effect, it remains that the
Russians now possess considerable strategic and tactical advantages in the

region which they did not possess a decade ago. These advantages, moreover,
have been gained as much through the ineptitude and infirmity of the Western
powers as they have by the Soviet Union’s own efforts. While the Russians may
have miscalculated at times, they have at least attempted to ground their policy

upon reality and not upon wishful thinking. Western policy, on the other
hand, has been based upon illusions, upon self-deception and upon calcula­
tions of short-term advantage. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
formulation and execution of American policy towards Arabia and the Gulf

during the past decade.
However widely one may choose to define American interests in the Middle
East, three are of obvious paramount importance, viz. the prevention, for
strategic reasons, of Soviet domination of the region; the retention of the bulk
of its oil reserves for the use of the Western industrial nations and Japan; and

the preservation of the security and independence of Israel. While it may seem
at first glance self-evident that the United States has successfully defended
these interests over the past three decades, the fact remains that this defence
has been wearing dangerously thin for some years now. One has only to

compare the general Western position in the Middle East in 1945 with what it is
today to appreciate how greatly Western power and influence in the area have
been diminished in the intervening years, a deterioration which is in large

measure attributable to the peculiarities and vagaries of the policy pursued
there by the United States. While the undermining of British and French

influence in the Middle East was a conscious early aim of that policy, it was also
to some extent unconscious, the product of American unwillingness or in-
a dity to understand that the strength of Britain and France as European

powers, and therefore as allies of the United States, derived in appreciable
egree from their imperial and post-imperial interests overseas. The United
es was so intent upon destroying these interests for reasons of anti-colonial
lgint]ment and commercial advantage that she failed to realize the incongruity,

alii3 °ne l^e iniurious consequences, of supporting the British and French as
leS ln ^Ur°pe and harrying them as rivals in Asia.