CHAPTER I

REAPPRAISAL OF U.S. SECURITY INTERESTS AT A TIME OF CHANGE

          In the year 1979, there has been a major change in the United States relations with the Middle East.

          Three events of great importance have taken place.

          1) The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with its wide   implications

          2) The Camp David process, initiated by President Carter, came to fruition in the signature of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of March 1979. In favor of the treaty, it can be said to have reduced the dangers of fifth Arab-Israeli war. But it has badly divided the Arabs; it has caused great embarrassment to America's friends in the area; it has strained relations between the United States and Arab opponents of the treaty, such as Jordan and Syria; it has bred further bitterness among the Palestinians and fed the popular belief throughout the Arab and Islamic world that the United States and Israel, by removing Egypt from the battlefield, have conspired against Arab interests. In a word, the Egypt-Israel treaty must now be seen as a high-risk enterprise, providing evidence of the failure of the Carter Administration to secure the global, comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute which was its declared objective.

          3) The overthrow of the Shah, and the emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic; have led to a great crisis in United States - Iranian relations. Not only has America lost a major strategic ally, but finds itself at grips with a powerful, bitterly anti-American, popular movement extending beyond Iran which the U.S. does not fully understand and with which it appears not to be able to cope.

          All these events demonstrate the limits on America's ability to influence developments in the Middle East today. Its control over events there bas rarely been so uncertain. The paradox is that this decreased influence comes at a time of increased American dependence on the Middle East.

          The primary reason is, of course, oil. The United States and its allies need oil from this region for their industrial survival and their military capability. Moveover, if the Soviet Union were to secure control of Middle East oilfields, it would thereby secure an immense advantage over the United States with fatal damage to the global balance.

          Therefore, prime U.S. security interests in the Middle East may be defined as:

1)       continued access to oil;

2)       containment of Soviet power and restoration of the United States as the main external influence over the region;

3)       achieving regional stability as the key to securing the two objectives listed above.

          How are these interests to be defended? In the light of regional turbulence and of America's uncertain response to it as shown up by the events of 1979, it is clear that a fundamental reexamination of America's role and policies in the Middle East is needed.

          This reappraisal is already under way. A debate has started among policy-makers, the press, and the public in the U.S. about what can and should be done. Recommendations range all the way from setting up and equipping a so-called Rapid Deployment Force to the renunciation of strong-arm measures in favor of seeking a greater understanding of Islam and local nationalism. But so far no firm clear policies have emerged. This is not surprising in view of the speed with which events have evolved. There is agreement only on the inadequacy of the old concepts and premises of the U.S. involvement.

          The debate in the United States is of course paralleled by a debate among policy-makers in the region, whose interests are directly affected by the way the West, in general, and the United States in particular, respond to the current security challenge.

          The challenge has two aspects, military and political.

          On the military front, policy-makers need to think about the following three questions:

1)       What is the most effective strategy for regional security?

2)       What role should be played by regional national armed forces?

3)       What role should be played by U.S. military power?

          On the political front, the questions are:

1)       What is the most effective strategy for the region's political development?

2)       What is the most effective economic and development strategy?

3)       How can the U.S. best come to terms with most of the nationalist forces and aspirations of the region, which is based on the Islamic Sharia?[1]

         This paper cannot hope to provide comprehensive answers to such large questions, but it will try to identify the problem areas and, by examining past mistakes, point to future solutions.

 

 

CHAPTER II

THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL DEFENSE OF OIL

         If the Middle East had never produced a barrel of oil, it would still be of importance to a global power such as the United States. Although reduced in importance by modern technological advances in transportation, control of the land-mass linking Asia, Africa and Europe is still a strategic prize, not to speak of the busy sea routes[2] of the Gulf[3], the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea.

         But the Middle East is the world's main oil reservoir. As such it is of paramount importance to the West. There can be no question that continued access to its oil is a major security interest of the United States and its - allies.

         The figures speak for themselves: oil accounts for about half the total energy consumed in the U.S. Of this oil, about half is imported. And of these imports, some 34 percent comes from the Arabian Gulf.

          It is possible to envision the U.S. surviving without these imports but at a cost of reduced security, poorer life-style and even domestic disorder. But the impact on America's allies of a shut-off of the oil would be catastrophic: the Gulf provides over 60 percent of Wesf Europe's oil imports and 70 percent of Japan's!¹

Psychology Gap

          In the last decade a revolutionary change has taken place in the control and price of Middle East oil resources. This change has not been fully understood by public opinion in the West, accounting for what may be termed a "psychology gap". The importance of this gap is that it colors Western (including American) attitudes to Arab oil producers.

          Ten years ago, before the great oil price increases of the early 1970s, the oil industry was dominated by Western-owned international companies, backed by Western governments. These oil majors controlled exploration, production, transportation, refining, distribution, and marketing of oil and oil products.²

          From the end of the Second World War to the early 1970s the price of oil remained at what would now generally be considered very low levels. No doubt the easy availability of cheap oil contributed to the recovery and expansion of the economies of Europe and Japan, and to the evolution of the industrial world's lifestyle as we know it.

          Several developments brought the era of cheap oil and a buyer's market to an end. They included the creation of OPEC in September 1960; the June 1967 war and the closure of the Suez Canal; the withdrawal of British military and political power from Aden and the Gulf in the period 1967-1971; the gathering strength of the oil-producing countries and their increased political authority; finally, the October War of 1973.³

          These changes in the power balance resulted in the oil price increases of 1971-1974 and the continued upward pressures of 1978-1979.

          Western consumers, long used to cheap and plentiful oil, have been  slow to adjust to the new market realities. This is the "psychology gap" I have referred to. They have tended to react with irrational anger and bewilderment to price increases and supply problems as if overseas oil was somehow theirs. In this climate, some voices have been raised to argue that the solution to the energy problem lay in the collapse of OPEC or in some great technological breakthrough, or in the use of military force to seize and hold the oilfields. In my opinion, without the OPEC organization, certain countries such as Saudi Arabia would not have as much influence as they do now to maintain prices and production rates at reasonable levels. Therefore, the quantities would be less and the prices unpredictable.

Can Force be Used?

          According to a standard definition, the "vital interests" of a nation are those for which it is prepared to fight.⁴ Leading American spokesmen have indeed affirmed that the protection of the oil flow from the Middle East is such a vital interest and should be defended with all appropriate means including military actions⁵ which has also been emphasized by President Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address.⁶

          But how credible are such statements? A recent study produced for the Congressional Research Service concludes that the United States just does not have the military capability at present to deploy decisive military power in the Gulf region.⁷ Both the Chief of Staff and Secretary Brown corroborated this in their testimonies before Congress.

          Those segments of public opinion which call for the use of force to secure the flow of oil⁸ sometimes fail to grasp that this would not only involve seizing the oufields, but holding them for an indefinite period, defending them against all forms of attack including sabotage, and operating them, very probably with the use of local labor. A superpower attack on a regional oil state would face grave difficulties if the regional power had the will to defend itself. Mounting a conventional defense would be possible - one brigade could hold off a division (according to the active defense tactics of the U.S. Army) - but, as a last resort, the regional power could destroy its own oil installations rather than allow them to fall into hostile hands. The Arabs would go to great lengths to maintain their pride intact. As King Faisal once said in a private meeting with an international official in 1973, "We would rather go back to eating dates and milk rather than to lose our lands or our pride". This generation has not forgotten our heritage and where we came from.

          Two obvious problems confronting any American assault force are the distance of the Arabian Gulf from the U.S. East Coast - about 7,000 nautical miles - and the sheer size of the oil-bearing region. Saudia Arabia alone has more than 800 wells connected by 3,000 miles of pipeline. A perimeter around its five principal fields would encompass 10,000 square miles, twice the size of Connecticut.⁹

          As every oil man knows, Middle East oil installations are virtually indefensible against terrorist attack. It is literally impossible to guard every mile of pipeline, let alone every terminal, power-plant, tank farm and pumping station. One sabotaged pumping station could shut down a pipeline for 90 days. Oil fires are, for obvious reasons, difficult to extinguish. So oil installations are particularly vulnerable to attack and cannot be defended by armed force.

          According to a report by John M. Collins and Clyde R. Mark, published by the Congressional Research Service, the United States has 19 active divisions (including three Marine Corps divisions), 162 fighter/attack squadrons, and13 aircraft carriers.¹⁰ However, much of America's military strength is committed to NATO in the European Command (EUCOM), or committed to the defense of Korea and Japan in the Pacific Command (PACOM). The home-based forces of the continental United States (CONUS) act as a strategic reserve, but also provide rotation base requirements. As a result, only a small portion of American forces may be said to be truly free for contingency purposes in the Gulf.

          It is estimated that in a "best case" situation (that in which the United States is not immediately threatened by the Soviet Union), mobile intervention forces could include five divisions, some 56 fighter/attack squadrons, and three to four aircraft carriers. However, under "worst case" conditions (where the United States was faced with an immediate threat by the Soviet Union in NATO or elsewhere) only one division, 26 to 30 air squadrons, and only one carrier could be spared for a contingency role.¹¹

         In spite of their superior training and equipment, these force,

even under "best case" conditions, cannot be said to be decisive, given the build-up of regional forces (such as those of Iraq), given the nature of the terrain, and given the hostility that an assault would provoke in the local populations.

         Perhaps most important of all, the United States can call on no base facilities in the immediate area, nor on prepositioned, locally constituted stock-piles of heavy equipment and armament[4]. To fight a sustained land war so far from home would be a severe challenge to U.S. airlift and sealift capabilities.

         It is to meet these problems that President Carter is expected to ask Congress for appropriations to finance a new CX cargo plane (being developed by Lockheed) that could deliver troops, tanks and artillery direct from the U.S. to an overseas trouble spot, as well as specially designed equipment - carrying cargo ships - in effect floating arsenals which would be positioned near likely combat zones. But the first of these planes are not expected to be flying until the mid 1980s at the earliest.¹²

          To supply the need for Middle East base facilities, some American commentators, such as Mr. William Safire in the NewYork Times,¹³ have proposed that the U.S. should take long-term leases on the two airfields in the Sinai which Israel is now relinquishing to Egypt. These airfields contain all the latest equipment and would be immediately operational. From a military viewpoint, they would be of advantage in defending security interests in the region. But to suggest that the U.S. use them against Middle East targets is to ignore political realities, unless the Soviet aggression were to go beyond Afghanistan and threaten the Gulf directly, then perhaps other nations in the area might concede to the U.S. the use of their facilities.

          The conclusion, then, must be that at present the United States is  not fully ready to deploy military power unilaterally in a crisis affecting its access to Middle East oil.

Political Objections to the Use of Force

          Even if military intervention were a feasible option, it carries a strong risk of being counter - productive.

          Public opinion in the Middle East would not tolerate the use of force by an external power, and there would almost certainly be an explosion of popular anger directed against the local interests of the attacker. It is worth recalling that on the level of popular sentiment at least, the Arab world is united. An event in one area can spark off a chain - reaction of violence a thousand miles away. American citizens, installations and interest would not be spared in the whole area in the event of a U.S. armed intervention in the Gulf.

          The lesson of the Suez crisis a quarter of a century ago is still relevant. A Western armed intervention today would create the conditions for a "super-Suez", fatally damaging Western positions, encouraging violence, driving moderates into the ranks of the extremists.

          Taken together, do these arguments mean that military power has no role in the defense of Western access to oil?

          The answer is an unqualified "No". There are two areas where Western power still has a vital role to play.

          The first is in the deployment of "over the horizon" naval forces to perform a deterrent and stabilizing function and to be available to repel aggression against the Gulf region by the Soviet Union, its proxy forces, or local troublemakers. Such Western intervention would only be politically possible on the invitation of the local victim of aggression.

          The second role is in training, equipping, and generally strengthening the national forces of friendly states in the region, who must be given the prime responsibility for defending their national oil assets.

The Political Defense of Oil

          In the turbulent world in which we live the best defense of oil is political, not military. That is to say, policies need to be adopted which enjoy a wide measure of support from the citizens of the oil-producing countries. This is part of a wider adjustment to be made in the political and economic relations between industrialized and developing countries, if some measure of stability is to be given to the world. The truth is that, in the future, North - South relations are as likely as East - West relations to produce destabilizing conflict. Hence, the widely acknowledged need for a so-called "new international economic order". In terms of oil, this means a search for an international energy strategy which strikes a fairer balance between the interests of comsuming and producing nations.

          Briefly, the West must close the "psychology gap". Oil must be recognized as a scarce and finite resource. It must be restrained by producers in the interests of future generations. Oil revenues must be invested at home and abroad to generate real resources. Above all, development in the producing countries must be carefully tailored so as to resolve the conflict between modernization and traditionalism.

          To translate these abstract notions into practical politics is the challenge facing both the Western world and the leaders of the oil-producing states.

 

 

CHAPTER III

SUPERPOWER RIVALRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
THE CONCEPTUAL DEBATE

The Context

          It seems likely that the two superpowers will compete most strongly in the immediate future in those regions of Asia and Africa which contain strategic raw materials. Such "resource wars" are likely to be the conflicts of the future.

          In view of Western dependence on Middle East oil, and growing  Eastern bloc interest in it, the Middle East has already become a major area for superpower competition.

          In Europe, detente blunts the edge of competition. In the Middle  East, beyond the reach of detente, there is no such constraint on superpower competition.

          Undoubtedly, the continuous Soviet military build-up of recent years has tipped the strategic environment in favor of the Soviet Union. I refer in particular to (a) the strategic parity which the Soviets have achieved with the United States, and (b) the "global reach" they have reached by means of their long-range air mobility and improved weapons systems.

          In sum, the Soviet Union now has the capability, and appears to have the willingness, to intervene in the Third World thousands of miles from its own borders. At the same time, Western capabilities and willpower have seemed on the decline.¹

          These trends are a cause of great concern to countries whose subsoil resources make them the unwilling objects of international rivalry.

Strategic Concepts

          Since the end of the Second World War 34 years ago, the United  States has consistently sought to exclude the Soviet Union from the Middle East, while, with equal persistence, Moscow has tried to break through Western defenses in a bid to extend its influence over these strategically vital areas on its southern flank. There have been highs and lows in this struggle. From the mid-1950s until President Nasser's death in 1970, the Soviet Union made significant gains. Then the tide turned in favor of the United States, and by the mid-1970s the Soviet Union had been expelled to the periphery of the region. Now, at the beginning of the 1980s, the Soviet Union seems to be improving its position, while the United States has suffered grave reverses.

          Two strategic concepts have characterized American policy in the  years since the Second World War.

          The first was the so-called doctrine of "containment", associated  with the name of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. This doctrine, elaborated in the early 1950s, provided for the erection of a defense line along the "Northern Tier" of the area to prevent the expansion of Soviet power. Its most formal expressions were the Baghdad Pact of 1955 (of which the original signatories were Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, in association with the United Kingdom and the United States), and its successor, the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO).

          The second concept, developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was the so-called "Nixon Doctrine," in which the United States looked to local strategic allies for the defense of its regional interests.

          Today both these concepts are obsolete.

Containment

          Containment was never an effective strategy. Far from excluding  the Soviet Union from the area, the Baghdad Pact, by dividing the Arabs, provided it with a point of entry. Nasser's arms deal with the Soviet Union of 1955 - Russia's first breakthrough into the Middle East - was a direct reaction to the Baghdad Pact.

          CENTO was finally dissolved in September 1979, but it had lost all its teeth long before then, as Western relations with its constituent partners deteriorated. Iraq was the first country to defect from the Northern Tier strategy, following the overthrow of the monarcby in July 1958. But, of course, the deathblow to the concept came with the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979, resulting in the disintegration of Iran's armed forces and the country's shift from Western alliance to nonalignment.

          Turkey is the only Northern Tier country to remain an ally of the  West, but it is in a state of great political and economic turbulence, its armed services have been weakened by the prolonged U.S. arms embargo resulting from the Cyprus crisis, and the country as a whole is increasingly disillusioned with the West.

          As Dr. Shahram Chubin of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies comments:

... [Turkey's] willingness to allow the USSR easy access over its airspace can severely complicate Western problems of reaction time and logistics in Persian Gulf contingencies. . . The drift of Turkey away from the Western alliance threatens to cause lasting damage to Western interests in the Gulf, the Balkans and the Mediterranean.²

The Nixon Doctrine

          The Nixon Doctrine grew out of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In essence it was an attempt to disengage American combat troops from the war, while arming the Saigon regime so that it could fight for itself. Outlined by President Nixon on July 25, 1969 (at a news conference on Guam), it meant in effect the Vietnamization of the Vietnam war. Applied to the Middle East, the doctrine came to mean arming Israel, Iran, and to a much lesser extent Jordan as regional partners and strategic assets for American policy in the area.³

          These three states were viewed in Washington as regional peace keepers. The theory was that aid and arms to these chosen partners would serve as a substitute for a costly American military presence or for unpopular military intervention.

          Like the strategy of containment before it, the Nixon Doctrine has been outstripped by events. The Shah's power is no more; Jordan has slowly turned away from the United States in the wake of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty; and American-Israeli relations have, in turn, been strained by their divergent interpretations of the Camp David accords.

          It is self-evident that Israel cannot safeguard United States interests in the Middle East, and that any American reliance on Israel in this sense is foolhardy in the extreme. There are no foreseeable circumstances in which the United States could publicly make use of Israel or of Israeli facilities against an Arab state without grave damage to U.S.-Arab relations.

          For more than 3o years it has been clear that U.S. support for  Israel as it sought to expand its territory, destroy the Palestinian nation and impose its will on the entire Arab world, was the main source of anti- American sentiment in the area and the main threat to U.S. interests. Arab opinion has been outraged by America's continued backing for Israel, even when it was clear that Israel had little regard for American interests. Periodically - particularly in 1956, 1967 and 1973 - Arab anger and frustration have exploded in outbursts of anti-American feeling. It took many years for Arabs to forgive Britain and France for their collusion with Israel in the Suez campaign. Any present U.S. attempt to enlist Israeli aid in a local conflict would have very severe repercussions on the U.S. position in the area and on the security of America's friends. The U.S. appears to have learned this lesson, as may be seen by recent U.S. reluctance to take up Israel's offer of military facilities for the U.S. in any defensive action in the Gulf region. To sum up, one might say that Israel has made use of the

U.S. in the furtherance of its own interests, rather than that the U.S. could use Israel in the defense of its own interests. On the contrary, America's link with Israel must now be seen as a grave embarrassment not only to the U.S but to all who wish her well.

          The present position is that the West, and the United States in particular, find themselves without a viable strategic concept with which to confront Soviet and Soviet-inspired expansion as well as local conflicts in the area which the Soviet Union could exploit.

          Should the U.S. act unilaterally? Should it seek cooperation from  its allies in Western Europe and Japan? Should it encourage the formation of a regional security pact? Should it limit itself to arming and training local national armed forces on a bilateral basis? The wide range of these options highlights the present situation of repeated challenge and fast moving events. Clearly the search is on in the United States for a new strategic concept.

 

 

CHAPTER IV

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE PERIPHERY

          American - Soviet competition may conveniently be examined in two distinct geographical areas: a) the periphery of the Middle East, and in particular the Horn of Africa, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), and Afghanistan; and b) the heartlands of the Arab world embracing both the Mashrik and the Maghrib[5].

          In brief the Soviet Union has made significant gains on the periphery while the United States continues to be the predominant external force in the heartlands - although its position is by no means unchallenged.

          An immediate qualification is necessary. First, the days are long since passed when any part of the Middle East could be said to lie exclusively within the sphere of influence of an external power. Local nationalism has triumphed everywhere, although links of common interest and friendship, arms procurement and trade incline individual states toward one power block or another.

          A second qualification is that we do not live in a bi-polar world. A power increasingly to be reckoned with is China, and many Soviet initiatives must be interpreted less in terms of Soviet - American rivalry than in terms of the Soviet Union's competition with its communist adversary to the east.

          Given these complexities, it still makes sense to draw up a balance  sheet of American and Soviet gains and losses in the Middle East, in an attempt to identify the trend of events.

The PDRY in the Soviet Orbit

          Undoubtedly, the Soviet Union's most significant strategic gain is the foothold it has secured in the PDRY, a relationship which has recently been formalized by the signature in October I979 of a treaty of friendship and cooperation. The PDRY leader, Abd al-Fatah Ismail, must be judged the Soviet Union's closet political ally in the Arab world. His Yemeni Socialist Party has concluded a long-term agreement for cooperation with the Soviet Communist Party.

History of Soviet Penetration

          Soviet interest in the south of the Arabian Peninsula has a long history. As early as October 1955 the Imam of Yemen[6] signed a treaty with Moscow, the Soviet Union's first inroad into the Peninsula. The Imam was rewarded with small amounts of military and economic aid, largely to encourage his opposition to the British, then ruling Aden and its hinterland.

          In September 1962 the Imamate was overthrown and the Yemen Arabic Republic came into being. The stage was set for the long drawn out Yemen civil war (1962-1967), in which over 60,000 Egyptian troops armed and supplied by the Soviet Union fought the royalist Zaidi tribes who enjoyed Saudi support. President Nasser's defeat  in the June War of 1967 forced him to withdraw his army from Yemen. In the peace that followed, the YAR swung away from the Soviet - Egyptian camp, although some links with Moscow were retained.

          Meanwhile the British colony of Aden and its protectorates were moving toward independence under the name of the South Arabian Federation. Aware of Britian's intention to withdraw from South Arabia, King Faisal warned London that communist elements in Yemen would seize power if the British withdrawal were premature. King Faisal's advice to the British was that they should withdraw only after uniting the people of South Arabia under a strong government regulated by a constitution based on local customs and Islamic traditions. Regrettably, the British ignored this advice. As a result, when they pulled out in November 1967, an underground organization, the National Liberation Front (NLF), composed of pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninists and pro-Chinese Maoists, seized power in Aden and quickly overran the whole country. In November 1970 the pro-Soviet group ousted their rivals and proclaimed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen as a base for socialist revolution on the Peninsula. Since then Soviet, Cuban and East German advisers have poured in, bringing arms and aid.

          In 1978 the hard-line Abd al-Fatah Ismail became chairman of the - Supreme People's Council (after killing his chief opponent, President Rubayyi Ali), and has remodeled the PDRY government on East German lines.

          As a result of these events, the Soviet Union now has privileged access to naval and air facilities built by the British. Aden served Britain as a valuable regional strong point and listening post for over a century: the Soviet Union has now inherited these assets.

          Aden is the best port in that part of the world. It is better than Berbera in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden, where the Soviet Union earlier had facilities. Unlike Berbera, Aden has good docking, storage and repair facilities, and ample supplies of fresh water. Access to Aden facilitates the - Soviet Navy's forward development.

          More valuable still are the air facilities which the Soviet Union has secured in the PDRY. In the winter of 1977-1978, when the Soviet Union airlifted a vast volume of men and supplies to the embattled Ethiopian regime, the PDRY's airfields proved essential staging posts. It has been argued that the ability to give Aden as the destination made it easier for the Russians to obtain over flight permission from Turkey, Iraq and Iran. In the past year llyushin-38 ASW-reconnaissance patrol aircraft based on Aden have been flying on antisubmarine warfare and intelligence missions monitoring Western naval movements in the Indian Ocean.

PDRY Impact on Peninsular Stability

          The Soviet, Cuban and East German build-up in the PDRY has had an unsettling effect on the whole peninsula. The imposition on an Arab and essentially tribal society of an alien, authoritarian, disciplined system of government has had repercussions beyond the PDRY's boundaries. Refugees from this communist enclave bring tales of austerity and repression, but also of the growth of threatening military power.

          Part of the difficulty faced by Arab and Western leaders in confronting the challenge posed by the PDRY lies in uncertainty concerning Soviet intentions. Is the Soviet posture in Aden essentially offensive or defensive? In other words, does it see the PDRY as a springboard for carrying revolution throughout the Peninsula and the Gulf? Or does it view it rather as a strategic strongpoint in confronting U.S. and European naval power in the Indian Ocean?

          It is the first possibility that most concerns the states of the region. Evidence of communist expansionism has come in the systematic pressure put by the Aden regime on the YAR to the north and Sultanate of Oman to the east.

          It was only with considerable difficulty and with the help of external friends that the Sultanate of Oman managed to overcome a 12-year rebellion in the Dhufar province financed and supplied by the PDRY. To this day, the declared objective of the PDRY is the overthrow of Sultan Qaboos of Oman and his replacement by a People's Republic.

          If the PDRY, with Soviet support, were to succeed in subverting  Oman and changing its political character, the whole southern coastline of the Arabian Peninsula would fall under communist control. This would include the Musandam peninsula overlooking the strategic Straits of Hormuz through which tankers carrying oil from the Gulf must pass.

          The YAR, in turn, has faced a steady campaign of pressure, border incursions, and other harassment from the PDRY, culminating in a large scale military push in February-March 1979. Speedy help from the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia allowed the YAR to repel the invaders. The main obstacle preventing the expansion of Russian influence in the area is Saudi Arabia.

          It should be recalled that the Soviet Union is of course present in the YAR itself, as it has been since 1955, and more particularly since the overthrow of the Imamate. Were the Soviet influence to grow in the YAR  to anything like the level of dominance it enjoys in the PDRY, its ideological, political and military pressure would be felt far beyond the Yemens.

          Saudi policy towards the Yemens is, first, to stiffen the YAR's resistance to communist subversion by a generous program of material aid, touching every aspect of that country's life. At the same time Saudi Arabia believes that PDRY should not be allowed to fall wholly under Eastern Bloc influence, and with this objective Saudi Arabia has repeatedly attempted to improve relations with the PDRY and to bring it back into the community of Arab states.

          In sum, the Soviet presence in South Arabia constitutes a latent threat to both Saudi and U.S. security interests. This threat must be resolutely contained, by improving the defenses of regional armed forces and by a careful monitoring of the Eastern Bloc build-up so as to recognize long-term Soviet objectives.

Soviet Opportunism in the Horn of Africa

          Across the narrow straits of Bab al-Mandab, the southern entrance to the Red Sea, lies the Horn of Africa, where the Soviet Union has replaced the United States as protector of one of the most important African countries - Ethiopia.

          The Soviet presence in both the PDRY and Ethiopia gives Moscow a base from which it can influence not only the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, but also the Sudan and East and Central Africa. These twin positions on either side of the Bab al-Mandab represent Russia's principal gains on the periphery of the Middle East oil fields.

          They demonstrate Soviet willingness to exploit unstable Third World countries to its own advantage and at whatever risk to local and global peace. As Secretary Harold Brown declared in a wide-ranging review of American defense policy on January 25, 1979:

          Instability has been common in postcolonial Africa, and this instability has been seriously aggravated . . by Soviet and Cuban military involvement in a series of local conflicts, principally in Angola and Ethiopia. More than 3,000 Soviet military technicians and advisory personnel are now in Africa. Cuban troops - about 37,000 of them - and a much smaller number of East Germans are the main tools of this widespread intervention.²

Changing Alliances in the Horn

          The first major Soviet initiative in Ethiopia dates back 20 years to 1959, when Moscow granted Emperor Haile Selassie a loan of $102 million. The motive was to prevent or at least delay, Ethiopian recognition of Red China. So, the Chinese were kept out for another 12 years.

          In 1963, Moscow switched its attentions to Somalia, with an offer  of $30 million of military aid, outbidding a Western offer of $18 million. Building on this early success, the Soviet Union lavished further arms and aid on Somalia. The 1974 Treaty of Friendship was followed by help with dam building, with oil shipments, with the provision of fishing vessels, and with the military training of hundreds of Somalis. In return Somalia gave the Soviet fleet naval staging facilities at Kishayu in the south and at Berbera in the north where the Russians built a communications and missile handling facility for their Indian Ocean submarines.

          This ever closer relationship between Moscow and Mogadishu lasted until November 1977, to the mounting alarm of the Arab states and the Western powers.

          But events in Ethiopia were meanwhile undermining the Soviet - Somali relationship.

          In 1974 Haile Selassie was overthrown with the result that a left wing junta came to power, led eventually by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. The U.S. slowed down their arms deliveries and the government turned instead to the Soviet Union, which eagerly embraced this new ally. In February 1977 Colonel Mengistu went to Moscow and signed a friendship treaty. This was quickly followed by a flow of sophisticated weapons to Ethiopia.

          Clearly the Soviet Union hoped to include both Somalia and Ethiopia in its orbit. But Somalia's attempt to regain the Ogaden from Ethiopia destroyed this Soviet design. In November 1977 Somalia expelled its Russian advisers and renounced the Treaty of Friendship.

          Moscow in turn threw its weight behind Ethiopia, airlifting in powerful Cuban forces and heavy equipment in the winter of 1977-1978, which turned the tide against Somalia. Somalia lost the war and inherited the huge burden of some 350,000 refugees from Ogaden. But guerrilla activity against Ethiopia and its Soviet and Cuban protectors continues.

The Unsolved Problem of Eritrea

          The Soviet involvement in Ethiopia embroiled it in another of that country's conflicts - the long drawn out war which Addis Ababa had been waging against the Muslim Arabic-speaking liberation forces in Eritrea on the Red Sea coast. This is not the place to detail the complex politics of the Eritrean Liberation Movement, which is split into numerous factions on ideological grounds supported by many Islamic countries and others. In their long struggle for self-determination, first against Haile Selassie, and then against Mengistu, the Eritrean nationalists have received help from China and from many Arab countries. In recent years, as the Soviet Union has pushed for control of the Red Sea shoreline, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan have been among the principal backers of the freedom fighters.

          The Eritreans are still a long way from securing their independence, but their few thousand guerrillas still harass the powerful Ethiopian army and its Soviet advisers.

          In Eritrea, as in the Ogaden, the Soviet Union has had to pay for its direct intervention in Ethiopia, by finding itself involved in combat in two guerrilla wars. This has marked an ominous change in Moscow's policy which until the mid-1970s avoided using its own troops outside East Europe.³

Ethiopia as an "African Cuba"

          In the space of a very few years, from 1975 to 1977; Ethiopia switched from being the staunchest ally of the United States in Black Africa to the most reliable African friend of the Soviet Union and Cuba. There are signs that Colonel Mengistu, emotionally closer to Havana than to Moscow, sees himself as the Fidel Castro of the African continent. He has been deeply involved, with Cuban help, in training black nationalist guerrillas from Zimbabwe and Namibia, and in promoting the cause of the Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara. Thanks to Soviet weapons and training, his battle-hardened 250,000-man army is probably the best qualified of all Black African armies to give military help to revolutionary movements.⁴

          For the moment at least, Ethiopia appears to be solidly in the Soviet sphere of influence. Its 20-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow has brought it more than a billion dollars worth of military hardware. All Ethiopian officers allowed abroad, and most civilian students, go to Eastern Bloc training institutes.

          Some observers believe that the Soviet long-term plan is to encourage the PDRY, Ethiopia and Somalia (where the Soviets are trying to recover their lost ground) to form a Red Sea federation to consolidate the Soviet presence in the Horn of Africa. Such a grouping would be a direct threat to Kenya, the Sudan, and Saudi Arabia. Already Ethiopia and the PDRY have with Soviet encouragement signed (on December 3, 1979) a 15 - year Treaty of Friendship providing for close military cooperation.

          But there are many forces, both native to the area and external, which act as a restraint on the exercise of Soviet power. For one thing, it seems likely that Ethiopia is not simply a tool of Moscow's designs, but Colonel Mengistu is exploiting the Soviet alliance to restore central control over the backward and divided country he inherited from Haile Selassie.

          For another, many Arab, African and West European states are using their influence in Ethiopia, Somalia and the PDRY to set limits to Soviet expansionism.

          Has the United States done enough to defend its own security interests in this vital region? It must not be forgotten that the Horn of Africa is the back door not only to the Gulf but also to the Nile valley. Urgent steps must be taken to strengthen Somalia, Kenya and the Sudan in order to allow them to surmount their great economic difficulties and resist subversion from Ethiopia, the PDRY and their Soviet and Cuban backers.

Takeover in Afghanistan

          On the northern periphery of the Middle East, the Soviet Union has recently made another gain of great strategic importance by its invasion of Afghanistan. This move has fundamentally altered the balance of power in our part of the world.

          More brutally and clearly than ever before the Soviet Union has sought to demonstrate that it is the dominant regional power, with the means and the political will to impose its system and promote its strategic interests in countries beyond its frontiers.

          The Afghan crisis poses a grave challenge to the United States.Without the capability to intervene militarily on the same scale as the Soviet Union and without a coherent strategic doctrine the U.S. looks very vulnerable. Clearly, the United States Administration is mobilizing its resources, its concepts and its friends to respond to what is a very difficult situation with profound implications for the security of every independent state in the region.

          It is worth considering the immediate background to the Soviet  invasion. This Russian takeover of a nonaligned Muslim state was prepared by a number of subversive steps, notably a coup d'etat on April 27, 1978, which ended two centuries of rule by the Mohammadzai dynasty[7] and brought the communists to power, thus, permanently changing the course of Afghan history.⁵

          Although Islamic guerrillas are continuing their attacks against Russian troqps and their Afghan puppets, the chance of rescuing Afghanistan from the Soviet grip now looks remote. That country is being steadily and perhaps irreversibly absorbed into the Soviet bloc.

          At the time of the 1978 coup some Western observers argued that Afghanistan was of no great strategic importance. Unlike Turkey and Iran, it never provided bases for American forces or monitoring installations. It was not a member of Secretary Dulles's "Northern Tier". Its subsoil was not known to contain vital strategic raw materials. The United States appeared to accept Afghanistan's passage into the Soviet orbit with complacency. Only with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979 did the West wake up to the dangers which had been clear for all to see, and which the Soviets had clearly been planning for such a long time.⁶

          From the vantage point of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, the Afghan coup d'etat of April 1978 aroused considerable alarm and concern. By their hold over Kabul, the Soviets had not only acquired an instrument with which to influence events in Iran and Pakistan. They had also taken a giant step south in the direction of the Arabian Sea. What was true then is even truer today. Soviet military power is now poised on the every frontier of our region.

          To pin-point one area of possible disturbance, there are five million Baluchi tribesmen in Pakistan and Iran, deeply penetrated by left-wing separatist aspirations to destabilize the regional balance. In particular, Baluchis, using Afghanistan as a staging area, could attempt to separate Baluchistan from Pakistan. If such a move were successful, it would allow the Soviets to realize their long-held ambition to dominate both Afghanistan and Baluchistan, thus securing a warm water port - Gwadar - on the Arabian Sea.

          More immediately at risk is Iran itself, where left-wing forces, including the communist Tudeh Party, have lent their open support to Ayatollah Khomeini's rule of Iran. The Iranian revolution is moving steadily leftward, and it is possible to imagine a crisis situation in the not too far distant future when a left-wing regime in Tehran might call on Soviet troops for support. The port of Shah Bahar opposite Muscat on the Indian Ocean, which the Shah planned to develop as a major naval base, may one day provide facilities for the Soviet navy, allowing it to dominate the vital oil lanes of the Gulf of Oman.

          To an observer, such as myself, the lesson of the change in Afghanistan is clear. It confirms a trend which has been gaining momentum over the last decade: the Western powers, notably, the United States and Britian, are losing physical control of the area, while the Soviet Union is gaining it.

Twenty-five Years of Soviet Effort

          The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan may have taken the West by surprise, but it was in fact the result of a quarter of a century of steady Soviet influence including the proxy infiltration of the Afghan army by the neutralist-national wing of the Afghani Communist Party.

          This has taken two forms: arms and training for the army; and financial aid and technical training for economic development. In contrast, the Westei'n effort was half-hearted, small in scale, and lacking coherent objectives.

          On the army front, Soviet influence was first established in the1950's, when the Russians agreed to supply Afghanistan with arms, after the U.S. had turned down Afghan requests for military assistance in connection with the border dispute with Pakistan. Young Afghan officers thereafter spent up to seven years training in the Soviet Union, many returning to join the Khalq or the rival Marxist Parcham group. Since 1973, Russia has given annual scholarships to 300 Afghan officers, and at the time of the 1978 coup, there were some 2,000 Soviet advisers attached to the Afghan Army. They must undoubtedly have been informed of the Left's intention to seize power.⁷

          On the development front, Soviet assistance has totalled $1.5 billion over the last 25 years, far outstripping aid from any other country. Several thousand Afghans - public works and mining engineers, agricultural specialists, and so forth - were sent to study in the Soviet Union, and, at the time of the 1978 coup, there were between 2,000 and 3,000 Soviet civilian experts in Afghanistan, working on major projects under the seven year plan. The Soviet Union has tapped Afghan natural gas resources and takes delivery of the bulk and output.

          To sum up, from the time of the Taraxi government, a Soviet model of development, based on Soviet planning and Soviet - style industrialization, was accepted by Afghanistan, which thus, became the first country of south - western Asia - and the most backward - to begin a "socialist transformation".⁸

Consolidating Communism

          Over the past two years, these trends have been strongly confirmed. In the months before the invasion, the number of Soviet advisers, both civilian and military, steadily increased. In October 1978, Afghanistan introduced a red revolutionary flag, modelled after those of the Soviet Republics, from which the green of Islam disappeared altogether. This was quickly followed by a 20-year Treaty of Cooperation with the Soviet Union which bound these unequal neighbors together economically, politically and militarily.⁹ Meanwhile, Afghanistan's communist leaders initiated sweeping changes in land tenure, education and social relations.

          These radical measures of Marxist inspiration clashed with Islamic traditions of the population, and resulted in widespread uprisings in many regions and the assassination of Russians notably in Herat in the spring of 1979 when some 100 Soviet advisers were killed, of whom some were tortured in public. These spontaneous acts of rebellion grew until, by the summer of 1979, security was uncertain, even in the largest cities. But Afghanistan's Marxist rulers, with massive Soviet military support, ruthlessly crushed opposition, driving over 400,000 refugees over the frontier into Pakistan, and devastating the rebel areas.

          However, political turbulence continued. First, there was the bitter struggle between the Khalq and the Parcham Marxist groups, in which the Khalq emerged supreme. Then there was the further struggle between Nur Muhammad Taraki and his fellow conspirator in the coup of 1978, Hafizullah Amin, in which Taraki lost his life and Amin emerged supreme in mid-September 1979.

          Amin introduced a reign of terror, jailing and slaying thousands, but in spite of Soviet support he failed to crush the spreading revolt in the countryside. These were the circumstances in which the Red Army moved, in overwhelming strength, into Afghanistan at the turn of the year, killing Amin and installing in power a Soviet puppet, Babrak Karmal.

          Some would argue that the Soviet move was essentially defensive: that they could not tolerate the possible overthrow of the Communist ally on their borders and that they were worried that the current revival of Islam might influence the fifty million Muslims living under Communist rule in the Soviet Union.

          There may indeed have been a defensive element in Soviet thinking. But the overall impact of the move must be seen as essentially offensive. Coming as it did at the time of apparent U.S. regional weakness, when Washington was vainly seeking to secure the release of its hostages in Tehran, the Soviet move must be seen as a demonstration of strength with great regional implications.

          As in Ethiopia, the Russians in Afghanistan face a long drawn out, low level, guerrilla war. But it seems clear that without substantial outside assistance the Muslim opponents of the Afghan regime cannot hold their own against the might of the Soviet state.

          The Carter Administration has reacted vigorously to the crisis. It has curtailed grain shipments to Russia as well as transfers of high technology. It has threatened to rob the Soviet Union of the prestige and publicity it hoped to gain from the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. It has speeded defense cooperation with China. Most immediately, it has reversed its attitude to Pakistan and is taking steps to strengthen that country's military and economic potential.

          But the government of Pakistan has expressed some doubts about  the credibility and durability of America's renewed commitment to its defense. It would have wished for such support in the past when it was locked in combat with India, its regional opponent. Pakistan requested U.S. aid, but its call was not answered. Now that Pakistan - against its will - is confronting Russia near its borders in Afghanistan, it finds itself once again to be the dear friend of the United States. This uneven friendship causes the smaller, weaker nation to be concerned, and this is one of the reasons why President Zia brusquely rejected a U.S. offer of $400 million in military aid, stating that it was too little.¹⁰ A superpower must take into account the national concerns of regional states and not merely seek to co-opt them into a front against its rival superpower when a crisis erupts.

          Pakistan's attitude provides a pointer to the way many Arabs think. The Arab world, too, has for over 30 years wrestled with its "national question" - the attempt to secure a just and honorable settlement of the Palestine problem in the face of Israeli expansionism. In view of President Carter's stress on Human Rights and International Law, it must be pointed out that the unlimited U.S. support of Israel is a contradiction to these policies. The supreme right of self-determination must be defended for all nations, all peoples - including the Palestinians. The long, bitter struggle with Israel has colored the whole Arab experience of the last 40 yeas. It has destroyed many things that are important to the Arabs such as the occupation of our lands, and Jerusalem. The uprooting of the Palestinian people, leaving them homeless with no nation to belong to, has destabilized the whole area. The West must help to settle the Palestine problem once and for all, because, without a solution, everything is at risk. For a solution to be possible, Israel must withdraw to its 1967 borders, and allow the Palestinians the supreme, human right of self-determination. Until real progress is made on this issue, it is not easy for Arab states openly to declare their support for the United States in its regional contest with the Soviet Union or to offer military facilities to U.S. forces. This is the major handicap suffered by the United States' policy.

          To remove this handicap should be a top priority of the United States policy-makers as they struggle to respond to what President Carter has described as the gravest threat to world peace since the Second World War.