Page 497 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

494 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

powerful sentiments of grievance and resentment against the Christian West
long cherished by the Arabs, who deem themselves a chosen people, the

repository of the true faith, the race of the Prophet, ordained by Providence to
receive the submission of others. These emotions, together with the fertility of
the Arab imagination and the exhilaration induced in the Arab mind by the

possession of vast oil wealth, virtually guarantee that the Arab oil states will be
tempted to employ the weapons of embargo and boycott to achieve a variety of
political and economic objectives at the expense of the West. It is equally

likely, in view of the spasms of religious fanaticism which have racked Persia
since the closing months of 1978, that the Persians, too, will experience similar
temptations.

There is an almost palpable reluctance in the West to face squarely the
likelihood that the Arab oil states, alone or in company with their fellow

members of OPEC, will again attempt to constrict or curtail the flow of oil to
the Western industrial nations and Japan. There is an even greater reluctance
to consider the possibility that the West might be forced as a consequence to

take active measures to secure its sources of supply in Arabia and the Gulf. On
the rare occasions when the subject has been aired - and these, in the main,
have been confined to the United States - it has produced guarded comments
from government ministers, mixed opinions (mostly of an emollient kind)

from prominent politicians, and a certain amount of excited discussion in the
public prints, much of it dominated by the ideological outlook of the

participants.
The possibility of Western counteraction was first shadowed forth on 21
November 1973, when the American secretary of state, Henry Kissinger,
remarked, apropos of the embargo then in operation, that ‘the United States
would consider counter-measures if the oil embargo is continued indefinitely

or unreasonably’. Innocuous though this statement seemed to be, it provoked
some furious bluster from Yamani, who, it may be recalled, described the idea
of American military intervention as ‘suicide’ and threatened to destroy the

Saudi Arabian oilfields in advance of such intervention. A few weeks later, on 7
January 1974, the United States secretary of defence, James Schlesinger,
ventured the opinion that the use of force could not be excluded if circum

stances called for it.

We should recognize [he said] that the independent powers of sovereign states

not be used in such a way as would cripple rhe larger mass of the industria iz
That is running too high a risk, and it is a source of danger, I think, not on y
standpoint, but also from the standpoint of the oil producing nations.

An angry protest followed from the Saudi government, which *0 a f rev;ous

warned the United States not to ‘belittle’ Yamani s r^mar s ° , jeaj of
November about the possible destruction of the 011fiel^s* f. wiring

publicity was given during the remainder of January 1974 to