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The Persian Gulf i n US. Strategy A Skeptical View Robert H. Johnson U n d e r the Carter and Reagan administrations the Persian Gulf came to be defined as the third major theater of U.S.-Soviet military competition (afterEurope and Northeast Asia), with a high priority in U.S. military planning and force procurement. The near-consensus on the threat and the stakes in the Gulf has led to much discussion of the ”how” of U.S. policy, much less attention to the “why.” But a fundamental re-examination of the bases of U.S. strategy has become increasingly necessary with the growing pressures on the U.S. defense budget ; the rapidly changing climate of U.S.-Soviet relations; the shift in Soviet policy toward the Third World, including its withdrawal from Afghanistan; and the defeat of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. This article addresses the question of whether the Gulf deserves its current status and priority in U.S. grand strategy and whether a multi-division rapid deployment force is likely to provide a useful response to the most probable threats. In the four major parts of the argument that follow I seek to demonstrate that the U.S. view of the threat and the stakes had its source in misunderstandings of the events of the 1970s; that a severe oil supply crisis in the 1990s-and probably beyond-is much less likely than generally assumed ; that the potential threats to U.S. interests from the Soviets, the Gulf oil producers, or local conflicts have almost certainly been overstated; and that a rapid deployment force capable of large-scale intervention on the ground is very unlikely to be useful in dealing with either the more probable or the more unlikely threats. I conclude that a strategy that limits direct U.S. military involvement mainly to air and sea power makes a great deal more sense. The first draft of this article was prepared while the author was a Visiting Fellow at the Overseas Development Council. Earlier drafts had the benefit of comments by Charles A. Kupchan, Harry J. Shaw, Robert B. Shepard, Michael E. Sterner, Christopher Van Hollen, and Stephen M. Walt. This assistance is gratefully acknowledged, although the author, of course, assumes full responsibility for the final product. Robert H. Iohnson is Harvey Picker Professor of International Relations, Emeritus, Colgate University, and a former member of the National Security Council Staff and of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council. International Security, Summer 1989 (Vol. 14, No. 1) 0 1989by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 122 Persian Gulf in U.S. Strategy I 123 Understanding the Past Beginning in the late 1960s the Persian Gulf acquired increasing significance for the United States as a consequence of the British withdrawal from East of Suez, announced in 1968and completed in 1971; the growing dependence of the United States on Gulf oil; and the gradually increasing Soviet involvement in the area.’ THE CRITICAL EVENTS Three events in the 1970s were crucial to the definition of the threat in the Gulf and to subsequent U.S. military planning. The first was the 1973 oil embargo imposed by Arab oil producers on the United States and the Netherlands in the midst of the 1973 Middle East war. The embargo and the related (and more important) cut in Arab oil production precipitated a price rise, stimulated fears of a future effort by producers to use the oil weapon to ”strangle” the West, and generated proposals for the use of U.S. military force to seize the oil fields in the event of such a strangulation effort.* The second development was the 1979Iranian revolution which destroyed the principal pillar of the two-pillar (Iran-Saudi Arabia) U.S. policy in the Gulf and sharply increased U.S. fears about stability in the region. Chaos in Iran led to a drop in oil production which helped trigger another large rise in world oil prices. Finally, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was widely viewed as posing a major military threat to the Gulf, and led to President Carter’s statement in...

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