Page 481 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

478 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

In Arabia and the Gulf, as we have seen, the United States government,
having no real policy of its own to follow, allowed itself to be seduced - partly
through its own promiscuity - into adopting and implementing ARAMCO’s
plans for the furtherance of that company’s commercial ambitions and those of
its Saudi Arabian clients. The key to the fulfilment of these ambitions was seen

to be the removal of Britain from Arabia and the Gulf; and to the attainment of
this end the State Department lent its unobtrusive support for twenty years or

more after 1945, rationalizing its duplicity with catchpenny references to the
United States’ anti-imperialist traditions, American sympathy with Arab
nationalist aspirations and the natural harmony of Arab-American relations. If
the United States government had paused to look about it in the 1960s to see
who else (besides ARAMCO and the Saudis) was eager to see Britain ousted

from the Gulf - a galere which included Muhammad Reza Shah, the
Baathist junta in Baghdad, the NLF politburo in Aden, the guerrillas of
Dhufar and associated Marxist and terrorist groups - it might have had cause to

think again. As it was, the realization of what might follow the British with­
drawal from Aden and the Gulf came too late for the United States to throw the
policy of the previous twenty years into reverse, even if the British had been
prepared to swallow their bile and co-operate.

Since I971 the United States has had to grapple by herself with the problem
of devising and implementing a strategy to protect Western interests in Arabia
and the Gulf. To date she has not found one, beyond the faute de rnieux
arrangement of entrusting the security of the Gulf to the joint care of Saudi

Arabia and Persia. That such an arrangement was hopelessly inadequate even
for the protection of the vital interests of the Gulf states, let alone those of the
Western industrial nations and Japan, was obvious from the start; yet since
the beginning of the decade successive administrations in Washington have
persisted in believing, or affecting to believe, the contrary. Just how great a
part illusion, self-deception and wilful obtuseness have played in fostering this
belief is clearly revealed in the transcripts of hearings on the subject of

American relations with the Gulf states held by the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and the House Committees on Foreign Affairs and International

Relations from 1972 onwards. To read these transcripts is to enter a strange
world from which reality has been resolutely banished, a world where ecto
plasmic shapes variously labelled ‘Persia’ (or ‘Iran’), ‘Saudi Arabia , Kuwait,
‘Oman’ and so forth are solemnly and interminably described by a shut mg,
endless procession of sages, oracles, sophists and sciolists, with all the Pe^

picacity of an Arabian Bedouin discussing the finer points of the Unite ta

Constitution.
belonged to one^n Wltnes^es appearing before the congressional committees
offi X „ 3 f °f lhree Rories. There were government
of th ’ 1 fr°m lhe Departments of State and Defence; representatives
1 in ustry or other commercial undertakings; and professional