Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988 (review)

Covering a period at the end of the 1980s, Harold Lee Wise's fine narrative of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf is much more relevant to the current standoff with Iran than to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. That said, because Middle East oil fueled U.S. combat efforts in Korea and Vietnam and because much of the Western world became dependent on Arab and Iranian oil, the area by the 1970s rose sharply in importance for U.S. war planners who worried about a Soviet thrust south to seize the oil fields. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, less than a year after the fall of the Shah in Iran, exposed Western military vulnerability in the region.

The West's vulnerability stemmed from the British decision in 1967 to withdraw all British forces stationed east of Suez by the end of 1972. In light of U.S. military commitments to Europe and Asia, the Nixon administration chose not to increase the token U.S. naval presence in the Middle East and instead to sell billions in arms to Saudi Arabia and Iran. This so-called twin-pillars approach complemented the Nixon Doctrine, which sought to induce U.S. allies to bear more of the burden for their own defense. The arms buildup in the region did not deter the Soviet Union, which built up its own naval presence in the Indian Ocean, establishing bases at Aden and in Somalia.

Wise provides little historical context for the infighting within the U.S. military about the prudence of establishing what became known as U.S. Central Command. Once established, the new command had to depend on the largesse of other unified commanders for forces, as well as contend with the issue of service parochialism; for example, senior naval officers who did not believe an ashore general could command afloat units. Though Wise made extensive use of interviews when gathering information for Inside the Danger Zone, he failed to sit down with former Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral James "Ace" Lyons or former U.S. Central Command Marine General George Crist to gain the background on the creation of a command organization that remained dysfunctional until the Navy's Middle East Force and the Joint Task Force Middle East were placed under the command of Vice Admiral Anthony Less.

Bungled U.S. initiatives in the region also led to what became a major U.S. naval commitment. The leaked news that the Reagan administration had dealt with Iran to win the release of hostages undermined stated U.S. positions within the Arab world and damaged Washington's credibility. Wise documents the impact of the Iran-contra scandal in the Middle East and the opportunity to save face by offering to reflag Kuwaiti tankers under a U.S. imprimatur and safely escort them. An additional potential flashpoint was the Soviet offer to move Kuwaiti oil in Soviet tankers.

Having established the short-term context that led to what became known as Operation Earnest Will, Wise ably provides a chronology of such events as the SS Bridgeton hitting a mine, the capture of the Iran Ajr minelayer, Operation Nimble Archer, the USS Samuel B. Roberts mining, Operation Praying Mantis, and the tragic shooting down of an Iranian Airbus airliner. In doing so he provides a synthesis of previous writings on these events, including Michael A. Palmer's Guardians of the Gulf: A History of America's Expanding Role in the Persian Gulf: 1833–1992, Randy Edwards and Jeffrey Levinson's Missile Inbound: The Attack on the Stark in the Persian Gulf, and David C. Crist's 1998 dissertation, "Operation Earnest Will, The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1986–1989." Crist, the son of the aforementioned CENTCOM commander and a historian with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is revising his excellent dissertation for publication. Wise's work complements Brad Peniston...