Page 485 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

482 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

own frontiers. The Kuwait national assembly, like that of Bahrain, was extol­

led as the harbinger of democracy, a worthy facsimile, it might almost be said,
of the parliament at Westminster - or the Diet of Worms. Much the same kind
of nonsense was talked about the UAE and Qatar, with their ‘constitutions’

and ‘representative bodies’ and ‘growing political sophistication’, as if what
was being discussed was the Athens of Pericles rather than the primitive
backwaters of Ajman and Umm al-Qaiwain.
A good example of this Pollyanna view of the Gulf was the statement made to

a sub-committee of the House Committee on International Relations on 10
June 1975 by Joseph J. Sisco, under-secretary for political affairs at the State
Department. According to Sisco, ‘a spectacular transition’ was under way in

the Gulf, ‘where new political institutions have been formed and tested and
where traditional values are subject to modern social change’; ‘where there has
been a dramatic evolution in relationships between international oil companies
and oil producer states’; and where ‘the countries in the area have moved

toward greater regional co-operation’. None of this bore the remotest resemb­
lance to reality. The two or three ‘new political institutions’ that had been
created, like the Kuwait and Bahrain national assemblies, were, even as Sisco

spoke, well on their way to oblivion, while the political structure of the UAE
had not even been tested. The ‘dramatic evolution’ in relations between the oil
companies and the oil-producing states consisted in the creeping nationaliza­
tion of the companies and the arbitrary fixing of oil prices by the states. As for

‘greater regional co-operation’ among the Gulf states, it was then, and remains
still, a mirage. Yet the promotion of such co-operation in the interests of
collective security was, so Sisco asserted, the first object of American policy in
the Gulf. What he did not explain was why the United States had had no

success in achieving this aim, if the Gulf states were really of such a mind to
C°Th^Vlthd°ne an°ther 3S he cIaimed.
just as far from realization^" ^TenCan pohcy as enunciated by Sisco seemed
economic progress’in the reeinn in<?luded rhe encouragement of‘orderly
prices’, and the employment J C°n^nUed aCCess t0 odsuPpiies‘at reasonable

supportive of the inre surplus oil revenues ‘in a constructive wav,
Sisco exZinL solemnlvar? fi"anCia' T° a"ai” °b»-
mix and growing nexus of rel 1?Ked,Sra\es <has rehed on a varie^

clear although it c a ■ atI0ns^11Ps ■ What this meant exactly was not
eXial tchnla! ‘° 'nC,Ude the exPansi°n of American diploic,
lower Gulf whe |ommercla^ contacts with the Gulf, and particularly the
haXorh ’ T- S°,SlSCO,Pr0Udly informed the committee,‘we have lean,

talent h'nS’’ A lrIS eeve Embassies, staffed with some of the best young
of :nv;t av r n instance of this diplomatic talent at work was the wording

1 . IOnS- r°m L^e American embassy in Abu Dhabi in 1974 to foreign and
, lSni^aries t0 attend a Fourth of July reception, to celebrate ‘our inde­

pendence from the British Empire’.)