America Sails Into Difficult Gulf Straits While Losing Track of Its Own Interests

The United States is in the Persian Gulf now because Kuwait wants us there--and had us cornered. Are Kuwait’s geopolitical objectives the same as ours?

Kuwait is a city-state of a little more than 1.5 million people, 60% of whom are not Kuwaitis. It was established by the Sabah family, as a fort, in 1756 and has been owned and operated by them ever since. It is a monarchy, with a Sabah as king, a Sabah as prime minister, another as foreign minister, another as minister of defense. In Kuwait, what the Sabahs want, the Sabahs get.

Kuwait’s foreign policy is the Sabahs’ foreign policy. Like other monarchies, its cardinal objective is to keep Sabahs in power. It has not been easy. When Ibn Saud was conquering and incorporating the various principalities of the Arabian peninsula at the beginning of the century, the Sabahs, then a British protectorate, managed to hold the fort by establishing good ties with the Saud family. When they became independent in 1961, Iraq claimed the territory. The British had moved west of Suez, so the Sabahs used others to parry Baghad: the Shah of Iran; the United States, moving into the Gulf to fill the power vacuum, and U.N. membership.

To date the greatest threat to the Sabahs has been the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. Khomeini doesn’t want to annex Kuwait, but he has fired up the Shias and Sunnis as well. About 20% of Kuwait’s population is Shia; an Islamic government in Kuwait would mean that the Sabahs must go.

Kuwait’s request for reflagging and escorts is much more than an effort to shift to the United States the security costs of shipping. Kuwait is far from a bona fide neutral state in the Gulf War. And for cogent political reasons: It kept both Iran and Iraq busy. If Iran prevails in the war, the Sabahs will have to face the ayatollah’s ire. Even if the war is settled, the Sabahs will continue to watch an Islamic revolutionary government in Tehran most uneasily. Kuwait, as an entity, will survive an Iranian victory. The Sabahs are a much poorer bet.

What the Sabahs need is a resounding defeat of Iran. Even with Soviet weapons, Arab financial support and anything else money can buy, Iraq cannot deliver victory. The Soviets, already mired in Afghanistan, will not intervene directly. But they have their eyes on Iran, the big prize in the region; and as they demonstrated in the Somali-Ethiopian War, they can switch sides quickly if the price is right.

As the balance in the war began tipping toward Iran and the Iranian arms-sales revelations indicated that even the United States was trying to reposition itself with Tehran, the Sabahs, with great political cunning, turned to the United States and the Soviet Union with a request for naval escorts for Kuwaiti tankers. The idea that this was inspired by Iranian attacks on tankers is false. The tanker war has been an Iraqi war, to counter Iran’s advances on the ground. Iraq has sunk more foreign ships than Iran. And the tanker war had not seriously impeded Kuwaiti sales nor affected the world oil price.

The notion that Kuwait turned to the United States because of horror at our arms sales is a morality-play gloss. Kuwaitis have been superlative traders for centuries. They know virtually everyone has been trading with Iran, including Egypt, the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. arms deal with Iran was brokered by Adnan Khashoggi, who is very close to the Saudi throne. It is simply inconceivable that he would have been involved in a caper like this without a royal green light.

The Sabahs’ problem was the realization that both superpowers had concluded Iran could prevail in the Gulf War and were positioning themselves for deals with Tehran. The question was how to stop this. If Iraq had failed, the only alternative was a knockout by a superpower. From the Sabah perspective, any force that stopped Khomeini was better than an Islamic victory.

The invitation to Moscow was a stroke of genius, for it put tremendous pressure on the United States to get involved. Of course, Moscow promptly agreed. This was a bargain opportunity to increase its naval presence in a formerly Western sphere, in a non-belligerent and even virtuous way. The Soviet Union was gallantly providing security for oil shipments to the West. Moscow didn’t reflag Kuwaiti vessels. It leased its own, crew and all, to Kuwait. As a result, there was now a real and not a fictitious Soviet naval presence in the gulf. But the Soviets moved carefully and discreetly; even when a Soviet tanker was struck, they did not protest overtly. They haven’t lost sight of their real objective.

Now that we’re in, what do the Sabahs and Sadam Hussein’s government in Baghdad want? To keep the oil flowing? The oil is flowing. The Sabahs and Iraq view our entry into the conflict, not in terms of oil, but as an important new military asset. If the United States can be persuaded to attack Iran, whether preemptively under revised rules of engagement or in response to an Iranian or other attack, we will be drawn into the war. Once we’re involved, the Sabahs and Iraq can be expected to try to keep us there, for one or two punitive actions followed by U.S. withdrawal will no more change the military balance and probable outcome than did the U.S. raid on Libya.

What does Moscow want? No one seriously believes that Moscow is concerned with keeping gulf oil flowing to the West and will faithfully cooperate with the United States to that end. The Soviet Union, from the days of the Czars, has sought to expand south to the Indian Ocean. In terms of that long-term goal, Moscow gains if Washington helps Iraq, if it hurts Iran, if it presents itself as the major enemy of Islam, if it must ultimately withdraw from the gulf or reduce its presence--or if the entire initiative is widely perceived to have been a failure. An American attack on Iran, followed by a wave of terrorism against U.S. installations throughout the Islamic world, does not hurt the Soviets.

Moscow has already taken some advantage of our dilemma, affirming its desire to stay on good terms with Iran and calling, with ostentatious virtue for withdrawal of all foreign powers from the gulf. The gulf has been a Western zone since World War II (and a British zone since the 19th Century). Our presence there has aimed at deterring Soviet expansion; a withdrawal of “all” foreign powers in this context means U.S. withdrawal.

What do we want? Ignoring irrational lusts, like punishing Iran for previous humiliations, our geopolitical interest is to stem the extension of Soviet influence in the gulf. It is not to try to block deep, popular changes in the Arab world if the changes have no other effect on our geopolitics.

Khomeini is an unpleasant phenomenon. He doesn’t share our values. Arab elites appear to hate and fear him but he is astonishingly popular with much of the rank-and-file from the gulf to North Africa. Something seems to be occurring in the Muslim world on the scale of the Reformation. It may not be stoppable. Khomeini opposes Soviet expansion. Thanks to him, Iran and the zone it influences is better positioned to resist Moscow than it has been for the century since Russia annexed one-third of Persia. From the standpoint of our geopolitics, nothing has happened that would warrant our intervention.

Can we accomplish anything geopolitically useful with naval force? From a military and political standpoint, we cannot defeat Iran; indeed, if our messy punitive actions in Lebanon are any indication, attacks will be conducted from as far away as possible to minimize military losses and, above all, to prevent Iran from taking POWs. International public opinion, including our own, will be horrified. If the Administration tries to target the ayatollah and succeeds, it will not disrupt the government in Tehran but could provide Muslims with a martyrdom no less powerful than the crucifixion of Jesus. A likely consequence will be a deep and durable hatred of America.

Reagan cannot be faulted for using force, for the threat and use of military force is an ineluctable part of international politics. But force must be used for vital geopo litical purposes and not against them. We find ourselves, literally, in difficult straits, because we’ve lost sight of our interests.