T SHE SOVIET UNION has recently taken an unexpected interest in Mid dle Eastern oil. During the decade of the 1950s and into the early 1960s, a Soviet surplus in oil permitted the USSR to export oil to world markets at an increasing rate. The Soviet's only interest in the Mid Eastern petroleum industry was in its contribution to Western military industrial power. Not needing the region's oil for its own use, they soug to discredit the Western oil companies as agents of Western imperialis" Oil," it was argued," had for decades enslaved the peoples of the Middl East; was it not high time for them to be liberated from these shackles? Had not the people a better title to the huge revenues than the company shar holders?"'What better way to weaken the West than by encouraging t local governments to seek their independence of the oil companies b nationalization?

Nevertheless, oil was not the most productive seed of discontent avai able. The growing Arab-Israeli conflict and the latent anti-Westernism the Arabs proved far more susceptible to exploitation. The Soviet Union concern for the security of its southern borders, exacerbated by the est lishment of the Baghdad Pact, also played a critical role in drawing the USSR closer to the Arabs. Following the 1955 Soviet-Egyptian arms deal the Soviet Union rapidly built a position of power and influence in the regio as it skillfully took advantage of a shared objective with the Arabs-the removal, or reduction, of Western influence. By the middle 1960s, Soviet oil exports to the West had reached their peak. European countries such as Italy, Austria, West Germany and Gree imported oil at reduced prices from the USSR in those years, as did Jap The Western oil companies became alarmed at this apparent" oil offensiv not so much for the loss of markets or for concern over national securit but for the threatened disruption of the carefully balanced oil pricing syste Western observers also feared that the USSR sought a political gain fro this economic offensive, namely replacement of Western oil operations Soviet ones in the uncommitted nations in order to gain political influen