Page 492 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions 489

accoutre themselves with whatever weapons they desired a derogation from
their national dignity and sovereign independence. Britain, however, con­

tinued to regulate the flow of arms into the Gulf in the post-war years,
restricting it to limited quantities of weapons for which the Gulf rulers could
prove a legitimate need. Her policing of the arms trade ceased with her
withdrawal from the Gulf in 1971, and so too, it would seem, did her sense of

moral responsibility. From being the policeman of the Gulf she became within
an indecently brief span of time one of the leading arms pedlars in the region,
soliciting and supplying orders with all the moral sensibility of a racecourse

tout, stooping readily to bribery and other louche practices (including the
debasement of the Crown honours system) to further these discreditable
transactions. If the questionaNe were not

as were those employed by a handful of American
firms it was only because the British P-^-^J^X^em of cong^
bring these matters out into the open in t e y abrade has the British
stonll inquiry in the United States did. Not °n“ tta^de to the Brtush

parliament seriously debated the question o inauired in any
Persia. Not a single committee of the House of Commons ha ^eF^ce
depth into Britain’s involvement int this pernicious’

and the United States, Britain has found it expe 1
of her oil purchases from the Gulf states, an at t e to the West by

governments happy so that they will not impede te owo ^hich
catering to their obsession with military mig , P . • -son On the
Western powers have attempted to justify, mdivi ua pn$ persi’ans are

contemptible grounds of force majeure - i.e. if .... them from
precluded from buying arms from one Western power they will buy the
another or from the Soviet bloc. Urine to the
To try to ensure the security of the Gulf’s oilfields by
passion of the local governments for the deadly and cos y tnn extent t0

policy so bereft of sense as to be unworthy of serious 1SCUSS1° ‘ ireajv been
which Persia and Saudi Arabia have armed themse ves . forces of
indicated in the chapters on those two countries. Iraq as Tipra;rforCe

212,000 men, upon whom she spent $1,660 million in 1977 a on anj
comprises well over 300 combat aircraft, organized in two bomber ana
eighteen fighter squadrons (with another forty or more aircr army,
addition to transport squadrons, helicopters and missi e syste • of
180,000 strong, has 2,000 tanks, 1,500 armoured fighting ve 1 >

every calibre and a variety of missile systems. It is much t e sam,.
the discrepancies in population, with the minor states ° t e
with total armed forces of 12,000 men, had a defence budget 0 wehov
J2’5°° million for the three years I975> J976 and I977’ / armoured

herself with 125 medium tanks (with another 130 on or er),