flexing US military muscles
By Paul Lawson Two speeches US Secretary of State James Baker on the 4th and 5th September sum up American war aims in the Gulf. In the first, he said that the US aim was not just to get Iraq out of Kuwait, but to 'ensure a stable Middle East' -under American domination.
In the second speech he stated: "America must lead, and our people must understand that. only American engagement can shape the peaceful world our people deeply desire.' It could not be clearer. In the post cold-war era, the US expects to assume the role of world cop, which it started to lose after being defeated in Vietnam.
The opportunity for the US to resume the role of world policeman has been created by the deepening peaceful coexistence policy of Gorbachev. Without the sharp move to the right in Soviet foreign policy, the prospect of a US strike against Iraq would be much less. In the Gulf crisis the US has been able to count on Soviet support - just as Gorbachev gave the green light at the Malta summit for the US invasion of Panama.
Throughout the 1980s the US under Reagan and "defence chief Casper Weinberger tried to use its military predominance to strengthen its political - and thereby economic -leadership of the West. The second cold war, star wars and the ideology of the 'evil empire" was the result. But the struggle to assert US hegemony was waged with particular forcefulness in the Middle East.
The background to US intervention in the Middle East in the 1980s was not simply a desire to combat waning Soviet influence in the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 27, October 1990
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US marine: in defence of the 'free world"... region, and the general strategic aim of defending the oilfields. It was also about the fierce economic competition between the major imperialist powers in the region. 1983 figures, for example show imports to the region from Western Europe at $63 billion, from the US at $23.4bn and from Japan at $10 bn.
When the Reagan administration came to power in 1980 it immediately sought to deepen its military alliances with Israel and reactionary Arab govemments. By the end of 1981, the Pentagon had carried out joint desert exercises with Egyptian forces ('Operation Bright Star'), signed a strategic co-operation agreement with Israel and proposed to Congress an increase of 325 per cent in foreign military sales in the region. Egypt's foreign minister, Abed elHalim described Bright Star as a rehearsal for a possible joint operation in the Gulf.
Reagan also decided on the upgrading of Saudi Arabia's F-15 fighters, the construction of new air bases in Saudi Arabia and the permanent stationing of AWACs over the horizon' radar planes in the Gulf. America used the IMF to relax loan conditions to countries its regarded as key 'strategic assets" like Egypt and Israel- while imposing harsh conditions on countries like Morocco and Tunisia which are less important to it.
Warfighting
The overall scheme of US attempts to dominate the region is to rely first on the alliance with Israel, and then on drawing reactionary Arab regimes ever closer to it's economic and military interests. In the 1980s it began prolonged military intervention to achieve these objec-
tives, Warplanes from the Navy's Sixth Fleet engaged Libyan fighters over the Gulf of Sidra in August 1981. US troops went to the Sinai peninsula to "supervise' the withdrawal of Israeli troops, agreed at the Camp David accords. In August 1982 marines landed in Lebanon as part of the multi- national force to oversee the israeli expulsion of the PLO fighters, and to restore the authority of the right wing Christian Maronite govemment. Beginning in the autumn of 1983 the US increased its involvement in the conflict, using sea and air forces to attack Lebanese and Syrian positions around Beirut airport, and then in the coastal hill towns.
By 1984 US forces were militarily involved in the Gulf as result of the Iran-Trag war. During the war the US did not regard either Iran or, Iraq as stable "assets". But it was concemed not to allow a victory for Iran, which could have had profound destabilising effects on the region, or to allow the complete disruption of oil supplies. In February 1984 a destroyer launched missiles against an Iranian patrol aircraft. This was followed up by US mine-sweeping operations, the attack on an Iranian mine-laying ship in September 1987, the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner and the bombardment of Iranian oil rigs.
Strategic consensus
A key problem for US foreign policy, in balancing between its alLiance with Israel and keeping the reactionary Arab regimes in tow, has been the persistence of the Pales tinian issue. The State Department has a policy of trying to maintain diplomatic initiatives on this ques tion, without ever doing anything
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that might lead to a solution to the problem, or indeed seriously embar- rass Israel. In the early 1980s the US succeeded in pushing through the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Sinai, but Israel repeatedly launched attacks into Lebanon, annexed the Golan Heights and cracked down harshly against the Palestinians in the occupied territories. By 1982 these developments had un- dermined Reagan's at- tempt to win a 'strategic consensus" in the region. In Egypt and Bahrain cooperation military with the US was increas- ingly questioned, and the provocations against Libya proved in counterproductive winning closer friends in the Arab world. The strategic quan- dary was resolved by full-scale Israeli in- vasion of Lebanon in June 1982. The Israeli bombing of Beirut was highly embarrassing for Reagan in the region. But in the end, despite tactical differences with the Israelis, the ad- ministration had to decide which side it was on. It decided that its strategic interests in the region were best served by firming up its al- liance with Israel and waving the big stick very publicly. In August 1982 eight hundred American marines landed in Beirut with the objective of supervising the withdrawal of the PLO guerrillas and shoring up the government of fascist street-fighter Bashir Gemayel. The marines helped to ensure government control of the airport and secure the south east environs of the city. They had another function - to ac- custom US public opinion to the sight of their military forces in action in the Middle cast. The whole operation was scuttled when pro-Iranian forces blew up the central US barracks, killing more than 200. The marines were "redeployed' out of Lebanon in February 1984. At this point the US had thorough- ly succeeded in alienating the reac- tionary Arab regimes. Reagan-Weinberger team pressed on, sanctioning new Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and conduct- ing joint naval exercises with Israel. Page 20
SUPPLEMENT by the new US-Israeli strategic ac- cord. Attention now lumed away the Gulf. THEI PALESTINIANS US Intervention in the Gulf pushes Intifada into the background its closer to US foreign policy objec- tives. The Gulf replaced was Command'. a force But the tised repeatedly.
Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia were all particularly dismayed from Lebanon to the "tanker war' in
All the Arab regimes became increasingly alarmed at the consequences of the destruction in the Gulf, and the likelihood of an Iranian victory in the ground war. The US recemented
alliances with right wing Arab regimes by its tilt towards Iraq. After US military engagement against ran became a fact the Arab regimes drew
Throughout the 1980s the United States prepared to fight a war in the Gulf. The speed of the military response to the invasion of Kuwait shows that this was the implementation of a long-planned operation. This preparation took the form first of the Rapid Deployment Force', which
by the "Central comprising 300,000 army, navy and airforce personnel which has been created to deploy rapidly from the USA and the Pacific towards the Middle East. War fighting in the desert has been prac-
Instability in the Gulf
The Iran-Irag war and the rising ambitions of Saddam Hussein's
regime have a common historical root, namely the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1978. Before this, im- perialist hegemony in the region was ensured through a primary alliance between the US and Iran which had a massive and lavishly equipped amy, and only secondarily through alliance with Saudi Arabia. It might be thought that the Sad- Hussein dam regime could begin to substitute for as the major power in the region on which America could rely. But there is a major objection to this from Israel - namely that Iraq is an whose Arab country tanks and planes could reach the Israeli border with Jordan in less than a day. The drift of US policy, in rejecting the idea of a close alliance with Iraq, has been to opt for strengthening Saudi Arabia combined with direct US upping military involvement in the region. Bush has now seized the initiative to bring to fruition all the efforts of the 1980s. He has im- posed on Saudi Arabia absolute subordination to Harris . US political and military - objectives. He has united most the Arab regimes behind US military inter- vention. He has seized on an issue that pushes the question of the Palestinian intifada into the background and leaves Isracl in a strong position something which has only been aided by the very low profile which Israel has adopted in To complete this operation re- quires one thing: a rapidly won war against Saddam Hussein. To increas- ingly adopt direct military interven- tion as the central fact of foreign policy in the region means that military intervention must be suc- cessful. Anything less - either a negotiated settlement which gives Saddam concessions, or a prolonged bloody war which no one wins rapid- ly, could lead to an enormous upheaval in the Arab world and en- danger some of the US's key allies. The next few months will sce whether the militarisation of US foreign policy in the Middle Bast has SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 27, October 1990