Page 504 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions 501

greater experience of its governments and peoples than has the United States.

This experience alone should have convinced the powers of Western Europe of
the folly of resigning the care of their vital interests in the Gulf into the hands of
Persia and Saudi Arabia. The Gulf and its oilfields are one of the great strategic
prizes in the world, and Persia and Saudi Arabia are quite incapable of

defending them, especially against the designs of the Soviet Union.
The precarious situation in which Western Europe and Japan now find
themselves with regard to the supply of oil from the Gulf is in some measure

due to the reluctance of the major oil companies operating in the Gulf in the
1960s to risk incurring the displeasure of the local regimes by demanding both
strong support from their own governments and the continuance of a Western

political and military presence in an area as unstable and primitive as the Gulf.
Instead they subscribed- or, what was as ill-considered, affected tosubscribe-
to the reigning orthodoxy of the decade, which held that such support was a

hindrance to them in their dealings with the local governments, that the
Western political and military presence was an irritant to local feelings, and
that the oil companies’ continued access to the Gulf’s oil might best be secured

by treating its production and purchase as a purely commercial activity -
Keynes again, instead of Clausewitz. Time has proved both the oil companies
and the high priests of the orthodoxy to have been mistaken. If the companies

had stood firm in their confrontation with OPEC at Tehran in 1971, and if the
governments of the Western world - and those of Britain and the United States
in particular - had backed them to the hilt, it is highly likely that the national­
ization of the companies (as distinct from minority equity participation in them

by the governments of the host countries) would not have been achieved, or
even attempted, in so short a space of time; that the great oil-price rises of
subsequent years would not have occurred; and that the resultant economic

troubles of the industrial world would not have materialized in the form that
they have.
Likewise, if Britain had not thrown away her position in the Gulf in 1971 but
had converted it into a defensive alliance with the minor states of the lower

Gulf, as was possible at the time, Western Europe and Japan would today

possess some protection for their interests in the region, as well as some
physical security for their nationals. Britain’s position had always rested upon

the lower Gulf, upon the trucial system and the long-standing connexion with
man. It did not depend upon her relations with Saudi Arabia, Persia or Iraq,

Or upon her former protectorate over Kuwait. The Trucial Shaikhs did not
want Britain to leave in 1971; nor did the shaikh of Bahrain or the sultan of
man« It was the major Gulf states, notably Persia and Saudi Arabia, who for a

lversity of reasons had long resented the British presence in the area, that
wanted Britain to depart. The British government of the day chose to listen
em’ avowing itself to be induced and coerced alternately by Faisal ibn
ul Aziz and Muhammad Reza Shah into abandoning the responsibilities