Page 498 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions 495

of the Hasa oilfields with explosives, and to the investiture of the Amir

Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz, commander of the National Guard and a brother of
King Faisal, with responsibility for ‘Operation Detonation’, as it was called.
Little more was heard of the matter until the following December, when
Kissinger dropped a remark during the course of an interview with a magazine

reporter to the effect that a resort to force could not be ruled out ‘where there is
some actual strangulation of the industrialized world’. A certain amount of
indignant comment and excited speculation ensued, which led Kissinger to

amplify his remark in the course of a press conference on 17 January 1975,
when he explained that what he meant was that ‘in case of actual strangulation
of the industrialized world, we would reserve our position’. ‘Now, if you
analyzed this,’ he went on, ‘no Secretary of State could say less. We cannot take

the position that no matter what the producing countries do, we will
acquiesce.’
One could hardly describe either Schlesinger’s or Kissinger’s remarks - or

the occasional murmurs on the subject which were to be heard from President
Ford during 1975 - as even mildly bellicose, still less as a stirring call to the
colours to the nations of the West. Yet they caused flurries of outrage in the
Arab world, where, as is well known, a recourse to force to secure one’s ends is

almost unheard of. They were received with scarcely less indignation by
prominent liberals in the United States Senate. Senator George S. McGovern,
the chairman of the Senate sub-committee on Near Eastern and South Asian

Affairs, paid a visit to Saudi Arabia in March 1975, from which he returned
greatly disturbed by the displeasure expressed to him by the Saudis at what
they perceived to be threats of a military seizure of their oilfields. McGovern

agreed with them. An American military expedition to the Gulf, he reported to
his colleagues in the Senate, would be ‘sheer stupidity’: even talk of it was a
political catastrophe’. ‘Before an invading force could occupy the oil fields,
demolition teams could and undoubtedly would sabotage machinery and set oil

fires that would put installations out of production for many months.’ The
United States would earn ‘the undying hostility of the entire Arab world,
probably as well of the entire third world’, from which all manner of horrors

would result - Arab terrorism on an unprecedented scale, bomb attacks in
merican cities, security measures at American airports (‘two-hour check-in
Umes, friskings and double-checks’).

m enator Mike Mansfield, the majority leader in the Senate, followed
S tra^ °Ut 10 J^dah in August 1975. He, too, returned distressed by
b e amage which had been done to the harmony of Saudi-American relations

fe^0°°Se la^ a miUtary occupation of the oilfields. In his view, he told his
oilfi°LSenalors’ il would probably take ‘years’ to repair the damage to the
e s done by Saudi sabotage in advance of an American invasion.

oil er in short, will do nothing to bring about a solution posed [sic] by the
P 0 ucers cartel. . .. The best counter to arbitrary practices on the part of any