Don’t Go It Alone

Two considerations--two inhibitions, really--ought to guide American policy in the aftermath of this week’s confrontation with Iran in the Persian Gulf. The Reagan Administration should not be in any rush to build up U.S. military strength in the area in response to Iran’s serious but also quite possibly transitory challenge to American naval forces. And certainly even greater care had better be taken to avoid steps that create an impression that the United States has placed itself on the side of Iraq in its long and vicious war with Iran.

These concerns are prompted by word from Reagan Administration officials that more warships may soon be sent to the gulf and the adjacent Arabian Sea to provide extended protection to commercial shipping. Asked to define what the Administration may be thinking of, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater insists that nothing has changed, that “our policy . . . is to protect the open navigation of the gulf.” But if that’s policy, then indeed there has been a change. Up to now U.S. protection has been extended only to ships, including 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers, that have been granted a sort of honorary American status. One result of this carefully limited approach has been the occasional sad spectacle of American warships being forced to stand by as Iranian forces attacked unarmed neutral shipping.

If maintaining free navigation in an international waterway is indeed the aim of policy--and that is a perfectly respectable goal--then surely every non-belligerent ship going about its peaceful business is entitled to the same degree of protection. Given the huge volume of traffic in the gulf, that is too big an order for the United States to fill on its own no matter how many more ships and planes might feasibly be diverted from other global assignments. But even if the wherewithal existed, the fact remains that security in the gulf is by rights an international obligation.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has raised the idea of the gulf being divided into zones, with protection in each the responsibility of a different maritime country. Nunn is among the many Americans worried that the United States might stumble into an open-ended unilateral commitment to defend the gulf, a process that sooner or later could put this country on a course leading to war with Iran. The best way to avoid both these unwanted possibilities is by getting agreement that the protection of international shipping in the gulf is truly an international responsibility, to be shared in by all nations that have the means to contribute.