Gains for Soviet Policy in the Middle East

Gains for Soviet Policy 1 ShahramChubin i n the Middle East I Renewed and intensified superpower competition in the Middle East and Persian Gulf in recent months has come at a time when the region is in an era of historic transformation . On a profound level it is anachronistic to see two states contend for power and influence over a region neither understands, cares for, or is likely to be able to influence more than marginally. On another level the process and result of the competition could seriously affect the autonomy and prospects of the peoples of the region. The sense of powerlessness, lack of control, and susceptibility to manipulation by outside forces have of course been increased by the jockeying for position, solicitation of diplomatic support, and request for base and access rights of the great powers. This intensified pressure for alignment, according to which local actions are interpreted in terms of the East-West competition, increases the sense of impotence of the local states which watch the game being played out over their heads. The precise relevance of this game to their needs is as shrouded in mystery as the eventual outcome is a source of anxiety. The possibility of a superpower arrangement made at their expense worries the regional powers almost as much as more pressing and immediate security threats. As small states, the regional powers’ interests are local while those of their patrons are global; the possibility that their interests may be sacrificedin a wider arrangement is therefore ever present. A related concern is the possibility of conflict in the region unrelated to the region itself; if Afghanistan was a Soviet “breakout” from potential encirclement, it was the Arabs and Iran, and not China, that paid the c0sts.I Even this regional theater thus can be an arena rather than a stake in great power rivalry. This paper was prepared for the Woodrow Wilson Center, International Security Studies Program Core Seminar on ”Security in the Middle East and Gulf Region in the 1980s,” September 9, 1981. Shahram Chubin is Director of the Program on Regional Security, the International Znstitufe for Strategic Studies, London. 1. The Soviet strategy of storing up chips to exchange at an appropriate time is generally recognized. For Soviet offers linking their actions in Egypt to those of the United States in Iran, see Kissinger’s The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980; Boston: Little, Brown and Company), pp. 583, 1,288, 1,292. International Security, Spring 1982 (Vol. 6, No. 4) 0162-28891821040122-31$02.5010 @ 1982by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 122 Soviet Middle East Policy I 123 The Competition of Superpower lntrusion Undoubtedly the most disruptive force in the Middle East and especially in the Persian Gulf is that of modernization. Constituting a multiple challenge that requires often contradictory responses, it is intrinsically destabilizing and immune to fine-tuning. The simultaneity of its demands, the disorientation it wreaks politically, socially, economically, culturally, and psychologically , is nowhere the same and never entirely predictable. With even the best possible intentions such forces cannot be controlled or even influenced by outside powers, although they may be exacerbated. Neither of the superpowers is therefore in a position to do much to touch the deeper forces within these societies, and neither is more than marginally relevant to the most profoundly destabilizingtrend in the region. Each can, however, reduce these complexities by supporting ”moderate” or “progressive” regimes and by interpreting the interplay of social forces tactically. On this level it may be argued that with so little knowledge of the area and with so little relevance to its variety of development needs, the most useful role for outside powers is to balance one another. The Soviet Union may be unattractive as a model, limited as a technological partner, unacceptable as an atheistic state, and undependable as a military ally. Faced with all this local nationalism and the complexities of modernization the Soviets would, perhaps inevitably, some argue, learn the limits of influence. There are several problems with this proposition. First, the Soviet Union is not alone in its ignorance of the region. Indeed the West, and...