Page 496 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions
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irrelevant tomorrow. For this reason, if for no other, it follows that only an
international order based upon enduring principles evolved over the centuries,

principles which have resisted the ravages of passing fashion and changing
circumstance alike, offers any real protection against the buffets of fate - a
protection, it might be said, which ultimately works to the benefit of the
Afro-Asian peoples as well as to that of the rest of mankind.

There has been a strong tendency in the West for some time now to acquiesce
in the arguments of OPEC and to abandon, or at least to compromise, the

established principles of international law in treating with that organization,
and more particularly its Middle-Eastern members. The lure of expedi­
ency, as we have seen, proved irresistible in October 1973, and nothing in the
behaviour of the Western powers since then gives grounds for believing that

their response to another Arab oil embargo, or the threat of it, would be any
different. It is usually assumed that such a threat would be evoked by the
Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it would be directed towards securing some

advantage for the Arab governments or their Palestinian proteges in the form of
territorial or other concessions by Israel. Yet a curious feature of the innumer­
able exchanges over the oil question which have taken place since October 1973

among the Arab oil states, Western governments, OPEC and the Western oil
companies is that the Arab-Israeli question and the plight of the Palestinians
have for most of the time been lost to sight in the brouhaha over oil prices,
production levels, financial surpluses, arms transactions, ‘recycling’ of

revenues, and the multifarious altercations to which these issues have given
nse. Again, it is worth recalling that, although it was the October 1973 war
which prompted the imposition of the Arab oil embargo and cuts in oil
production, it was not the war which occasioned the doubling and redoubling

0 oil prices and their subsequent increase. While the Saudi government’s
winged messenger, the ubiquitous Shaikh Yamani, has proffered frequent

assurances of the continuity of oil supplies to the West in exchange for Western
pressure upon Israel to make substantial concessions to Arab demands, the
onouring of such assurances, in the light of past experience, is highly prob-
l^a^ca^- What is more, no Arab government, including his own, has ever

e concessions by Israel with a reduction in oil prices, which is a matter of
mtich moment to the West as security of supplies.

assu^1 hSe 3nd ot^er reasons it would be unwise in the extreme for the West to
sou 1. .^e Arab-Israeli dispute constitutes the sole or even the chief
tes/^f0 irr*tati°n which could provoke another Arab oil embargo. The acid

ever *S t0 Postu^ate an end to the dispute which would have satisfied
the W aspirati°n> even down to the abolition of the State of Israel. Could
ex estern industrial nations and Japan thereafter rest easy in the serene
necestatl°n °f unlramrneiied access to oil at reasonable prices? It is scarcely

financ’3^ l° t^ie^ cou^ not- For the oil weapon, and particularly its
la aspects, has less to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict than with the