U.S. Military Strategy in the Gulf (Routledge Revivals)

Origins and Evolution Under the Carter and Reagan Administrations

Amitav Acharya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317975403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1989, this title explores the nature and dimensions of the U.S. strategy in the Gulf in the formative years that followed the fall of the Shah, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war. It describes the formation of the U.S. Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and the U.S. Central Command, their force structure and the network of U.S. bases and facilities in the region. The role of pro-Western countries in the wider region, in particular Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, in the formulation of strategy is discussed in detail, along with a more general assessment of the achievements and failures of U.S. strategy in the Gulf towards the end of the 1980s. In light of the persistent struggle for peace within the Middle East, this is a timely reissue, which will be of great interest to students researching U.S. military strategy over the past thirty years.

1 Evolution of U.S. Interests and Objectives

DOI: 10.4324/9781315871332-1

Oil, containment, and stability

The Persian Gulf region’s prominence in U.S. global strategy is a fairly recent phenomenon. Although the United States recognized the importance of the region as part of a land bridge between three continents, its proximity to the Soviet Union, and its increasingly significant contribution to the world supply of petroleum, the Gulf did not become a primary zone in U.S. geographical planning until the 1970s. Unlike the major European powers, the United States did not at any stage have a colonial presence. Much of the early U.S. involvement in the region was in trade or the activities of American Christian missions in education and health. ¹ During the inter-war period, U.S. oil companies introduced the first major element of U.S. interest in that region by 1939 with half-ownership of a concession in Kuwait and exclusive concessions in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. ² In fact the oil companies were instrumental in bringing the region to the notice of the U.S. government. They sought and obtained the State Department’s diplomatic efforts to secure agreement on an ‘open door’ policy from the British government, which had been accused of discriminatory practices favouring British oil companies in the competition for oil concessions. ³ Yet the Persian Gulf was far from becoming a strategically important region for the United States. The world had not fully shifted from coal as the primary source of energy. Then too, the Gulf was producing only about 8 per cent of the total world oil output and the United States was almost self-sufficient in meeting its oil requirements.

The long-term strategic value of the region’s oil resources was recognized for the first time during World War II. The war brought into focus the critical importance of petroleum and its byproducts as ‘foundations of the ability to fight a modern war’. ⁴ Besides, U.S. energy planners realized that in the post-war period, Persian Gulf oil could serve as a ‘well head’ for European recovery as well as for U.S. domestic consumption so that depleting indigenous reserves could be saved for future requirements. ⁵ This realization was clearly reflected in the Roosevelt administration’s declaration, in 1943, that the defence of Saudi Arabia was ‘vital’ to the defence of the United States. The United States extended direct lend-lease assistance to the Kingdom (previously such aid had been given indirectly, through the British) to save it from serious financial trouble caused by the wartime disruption of Saudi oil production. ⁶ It also proceeded to consolidate the privileged position already enjoyed by U.S. oil multinationals in Saudi Arabia.

The immediate post-war era marked the evolution of two other U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region: containment of Soviet influence and the preservation of the conservative local regimes. Iran featured centrally in both these developments. The initial impetus for the U.S.-Iranian security relationship came from Iran’s young monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who during the war had succeeded his father after the latter’s forced abdication by the occupying powers, Britain and the Soviet Union. The new Shah solicited American friendship as a counterweight to these two traditional enemies. His efforts received a boost when 30,000 U.S. troops (non-combatant) were deployed in Iran in order to channel U.S. lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union (the Persian Gulf Command). ⁷ But the real breakthrough had to await the end of the war and the advent of the Truman administration. The Shah was able to convince the stridently anti-communist Truman administration of Russia’s territorial designs on Iran after the Soviets delayed the withdrawal of their troops from Azerbaijan in northern Iran beyond a previously agreed deadline. Suspicious that the Soviets were seeking to carve out a separate state with the long-term objective of its incorporation into the Soviet Union, Truman agreed to ask Moscow to complete the withdrawal. The Azerbaijan crisis came to be regarded as one of the ‘opening salvos’ of the Cold War. ⁸

U.S. interest in Iran as a Cold War partner grew steadily thereafter. Iran found prominent mention in the deliberations over the Truman Doctrine. When briefing congressional leaders on the administration’s efforts to combat the communist threat to Greece and the Middle East, Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson hypothesized that ‘like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east’. ⁹ Saudi Arabia also featured in the containment strategy by agreeing to provide base rights to the United States at Dhahran — an airfield built by the United States to facilitate wartime redeployment of U.S. forces to and from the Far East. ¹⁰ But Saudi cooperation was circumscribed due to divisions over the Palestinian issue. Iran, in contrast, lived up to its U.S. designation as the ‘strategic prize’ of the Near East. It participated in all major Western ‘containment’ activities in the region, including the Baghdad Pact (later called CENTO). It hosted U.S. military missions (as did Saudi Arabia) and became a major regional recipient of U.S. military aid. The alliance was formalized in 1959 when the two parties signed a Bilateral Security Pact. The pact provided for continued U.S. military and economic aid to Iran as well as an American commitment to take ‘appropriate action including the use of armed forces’ to assist the Iranian government in case of aggression against Iran. ¹¹

The third major U.S. interest in the Gulf, regime security in the friendly conservative states, came to the fore at the height of the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute in the early 1950s. The crisis, originating from the Iranian parliament’s nationalization of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, was aggravated by the prime ministership of the popular but erratic nationalist leader, Dr Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1951. Mossadeq’s refusal to compromise over the issue of nationalization invited a British-arranged boycott of Iran’s oil exports and precipitated a grave economic crisis in Iran. Moreover, Mossadeq spurred a political crisis by seeking to undermine the position of the Shah in the domestic power structure. The United States was initially reluctant to take sides, fearing that the alternative to Mossadeq could be a pro-Soviet radical regime in Teheran. But this changed after the domestic position of the Shah came under increasing nationalist attack. After briefly posing as a mediator, the United States expressed decisive support for the monarchy. President Eisenhower turned down an appeal by Mossadeq for economic assistance to stave off imminent bankruptcy of the Iranian state. With his position gravely weakened by the economic crisis, Mossadeq was finally overthrown in a pro-Shah coup in August 1953 to which the CIA provided considerable planning and financial assistance. ¹²

Thus, before the 1970s the three major U.S. interests in the Gulf had been clearly identified and pursued. Yet the Gulf remained somewhat peripheral to overall U.S. strategic planning for the post-war era. The United States was preoccupied with the consolidation of its alliance in Europe. So far as the Cold War was concerned, the distinctive focus was on the Far East, where the United States fought wars in Korea and Vietnam. There were no U.S. moves to establish a major military presence in the Gulf. A very minor exception to this attitude was the decision to station a three-ship (later increased to five ships) flotilla, called the Command Middle East Force, off Bahrain in 1949. The significance of the move, however, was primarily symbolic, to show the U.S. flag in this faraway region. The relatively low priority attached to the Gulf was also reflected in U.S. military aid policy. Even Iran, the centre of U.S. Cold War concerns in the Gulf, was frustrated in its efforts to obtain U.S. military aid at levels the Shah thought appropriate given his country’s proximity to the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Azerbaijan crisis, the United States delayed action on requests by the Shah for an urgent loan of $40–$50 million; only a scaled-down amount was subsequently approved. Similarly, Iran was placed in a lower category (Title 3 status) when the United States enacted the Mutual Defense Assistance Program in 1949 to govern its military aid priority. ¹³ The Shah felt dissatisfied with what he received as reward for his membership in CENTO and his conclusion of a bilateral security pact with the United States (after refusing a Soviet offer...