Page 493 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

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Arabia, the Gulf and the West

cars, half-a-dozen squadrons of modern fighters, missile systems, transport

P^nes, helicopters and naval patrol craft. The U A E (which is to say principally
Abu Dhabi) spent the better part of $1,000 million on arms and aircraft

between 1974 and 1978, equipping her armed forces of 25,900 men with four
fighter squadrons, transport planes, helicopters, thirty light tanks, 150
armoured cars, artillery, missile systems and naval patrol boats. Oman has

spent a comparable sum in the same period of time - though with better cause-
to purchase for her armed forces of 20,000 men three fighter squadrons, four

transport squadrons, helicopters, missile systems, naval craft, artillery and
armoured cars. Qatar, while spending more modestly, has still acquired a
goodly armament in addition to ordering thirty Mirage fighters for her air
force. Over and above the flood of new and up-to-date weapons pouring into

the Gulf there is also a brisk secondary traffic in arms going on (the Persians
have been particularly involved in it), with many older weapons, procured only
a decade or so ago, being sold off to a variety of customers, including Afghans,

Baluchis and the poorer shaikhdoms of the UAE.
It is evident from even the most cursory glance that these extensive and
elaborate armaments either will be used in the near future in conflicts among

the Gulf states, or they will be left to deteriorate into huge piles of expensive
junk, a fitting commemoration of one of the greatest acts of pecuniary folly in
the history of the Middle East. Given the past record and ingrained disposition

of the governments and peoples of the Gulf, the former eventuality is the more
likely, and the destruction that will result will be on a scale never before
experienced in the Gulf. For several reasons, among them the relative paucity
of alternative worthwhile targets for bomber aircraft, oil installations and port

facilities are bound to suffer heavy damage. If the Gulf states had been
equipped according to their real defensive needs, as they were in the past, they
w’ould now possess little more than small arms, light artillery, armoured cars,
helicopters, naval patrol craft and other military equipment ot an equally

modest order. What they have accumulated instead in the way of powerful and
costly armaments will not serve to protect them from a major power bent on
their subjection but will merely increase their capacity to inflict serious injuiy

upon themselves and upon Western interests in the Gulf.

The dismal spectacle of the Gulf arms extravaganza is a reflection of the utter

bankruptcy of Western policy in the region since the departure of the Brius in
1971. In place of a coherent strategy to safeguard the vital economic interests 0
the West there is only a pathetic reliance upon the doctrine of common ^ter
to achieve the same purpose. The principal precepts of the doctrine are t at

Arabs and Persians stand to benefit as much as the West from the uru”

rupted supply of oil to the industrial world, that they have a mutua
with the West in resisting the extension of Soviet influence in the 1 ’
and that they will refrain, therefore, from weakening the West economi