Persian Gulf Security: Lessons of the Past and the Need for New Thinking

PERSIAN GULF SECURITY:. LESSONS OF THE PAST AND THE NEED FOR NEW THINKING Shireen T. Hunter F,or more than four decades, the Persian Gulfhas witnessed superpower competition, regional rivalry, conflict, and chronic political instability. These problems have arisen for various reasons. The region holds most of the world's oil and a considerable part of its natural gas reserves. It is strategically located in close proximity to the former Soviet Union (and now the emerging Muslim nations of Central Asia), the Indian subcontinent , and the Arab heartland. Moreover, the region is a dividing line between the Arab and Iranian, as well as the Shi'a and Sunni, worlds. Finally, the Persian Gulfs oil resources have been an especially significant factor in intra-Arab rivalry as those Arab countries with few resources and large populations have sought to control them. Even when judged by Persian Gulf standards, the 1980s were particularly turbulent. The dynamics set in motion by the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, most notably the necessity felt by the Gulf Arabs and the West to check the spread of the Iranian revolution, greatly contributed to the development of the "Saddam Hussein phenomenon." This cycle of revolution, war, and containment finally culminated in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Shireen Hunter is Deputy Director of Middle East Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her most recent publications include Iran and the World: Continuity in a Revolutionary Decade and Iran After Khomeini (forthcoming, 1992). 155 156 SAISREVIEW Many explanations have been offered for Iraq's actions, including some related to Saddam's character. The invasion, however, was not merely the result of the megalomania and lust for power of a single individual. Rather, Saddam's actions in many ways were the inevitable consequence of a particular brand ofArab nationalist ideology and vision pushed to its logical extremes. In the past, the same ideology and vision were behind Nasser's efforts to undermine moderate regimes and dominate the Persian Gulf by military action in the Yemeni civil war in the early 1960s. At the time, regional countries viewed the Egyptian intervention in Yemen as a back-door attempt at controlling the region and its wealth. There was, however, a difference between Egypt's intervention, a proxy operation in support of one of the warring Yemeni factions, and the blunt Iraqi aggression against a neighboring Arab state. The Iraqi invasion led to the most formidable projection of foreign military power ever into the Persian Gulf. Thus, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the response to it, were historic watersheds in intra-Arab, Persian Gulf, and international politics. They coincided with, and were made possible by, an even greater historic watershed, namely the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the socialist bloc. As with other historic events, the Persian Gulfwar and its aftermath led to much talk about a "new world order." This new order was first to be established in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. Yet nearly a year after the end ofhostilities, the outlines ofthis new order are not clear. However, given the fundamental systemic changes which the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the socialist bloc have brought, it is quite clear that challenges to Gulf security and the policies needed to deal with them will be significantly different from those of the past. Despite opportunities for a "new order" in the Persian Gulf, many old causes of instability and barriers to developing cooperation and lasting security arrangements persist. Principal Threats to Persian Gulf Security Traditionally, the principal threats to regional security have stemmed from Soviet expansionism and regional radicalism. Long before the Bolshevik revolution, imperial Russia competed with Britain over control of the Persian Gulf and its resources. The Bolshevik regime, despite its repudiation of the czars' policies, had imperial aspirations. The new regime, however, resorted to other means, notably the fomenting of socialist revolutions in the Persian Gulf littoral states in order to bring them under its control. In recent decades, the Soviet Union supported all types ofradical governments in the Persian Gulfregion and its periphery, PERSIANGULFSECURITY 157 regardless...