Foreign Policy in Focus Special Report: Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East

Even prior to the Gulf War, the United States had thrown its immense military, diplomatic, and economic weight behind the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Though they rule over less than 10% of the Arab world’s total population, these regimes control most of its wealth. Prior to the war, it was difficult for the United States to engage in military exercises or even arrange a port call without asking for permission months in advance. Not any more.

Figure 1
Oil Reserves and U.S. Imports
Region	Oil Reserves (billions of barrels)	% of U.S. imports
Middle East	673.7	23.5
(Persian Gulf)	(667.0)	(23.4)
South & Central America	89.5	.23.2
North America	85.1	29.7
Africa	75.4	16.9
Former Soviet Union	65.4	0.1
Asia/Pacific	43.1	1.7
Europe	20.7	4.4
Sources: BP Amoco, Statistical Review of Worl Energy 1999 (Chicago: BP Amoco, 1999) Available on the internet at: http://www.bpamoco.com/worldenergy/ Energy Information Administration, "Imports of Crude OIl and Petrolium Products into the United States by Country of Origin." Available on the Internet at: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petrolium/data_publications/ petrolium_supply_annual/psa_volume1/current/txt/table21.txt

There is now an effective, permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf. The financial costs are extraordinary—running between $30 and $60 billion annually, according to conservative estimates—and are shared by the U.S. and the gulf monarchies. Though there appears to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington that there is a clear strategic imperative to maintaining such an American presence, there are critics—even among conservatives—who argue that such a presence is too costly for the American taxpayer and creates a situation where American military personnel are effectively serving as a mercenary force for autocratic sheikdoms.

Most Persian Gulf Arabs and their leaders felt threatened after Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait and were grateful for the strong U.S. leadership in the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. At the same time, there is an enormous amount of cynicism regarding U.S. motives in waging that war. Gulf Arabs, and even some of their rulers, cannot shake the sense that the war was not fought for international law, self-determination, and human rights, as the Bush administration claimed, but rather to protect U.S. access to oil and to enable the U.S. to gain a strategic toehold in the region. It is apparent that a continued U.S. presence is welcome only as long as Arabs feel they need a foreign military presence to protect them.

Iraq still has not recovered from the 1991 war, during which it was on the receiving end of the heaviest bombing in world history. The U.S. has insisted on maintaining strict sanctions against Iraq to force compliance with international demands to dismantle any capability of producing weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the U.S. hopes that such sanctions will lead to the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, Washington’s policy of enforcing strict sanctions against Iraq appears to have had the ironic effect of strengthening Saddam’s regime. With as many as 5,000 people, mostly children, dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases every month as a result of the sanctions, the humanitarian crisis has led to worldwide demands—even from some of Iraq’s historic enemies—to relax the sanctions. Furthermore, as they are now more dependent than ever on the government for their survival, the Iraqi people are even less likely to risk open defiance. Unlike the reaction to sanctions imposed prior to the war, Iraqi popular resentment over their suffering lays the blame squarely on the United States, not the totalitarian regime, whose ill-fated conquest of Kuwait led to the economic collapse of this once-prosperous country. In addition, Iraq’s middle class, which would have most likely formed the political force capable of overthrowing Saddam’s regime, has been reduced to penury. It is not surprising that most of Iraq’s opposition movements oppose the U.S. policy of ongoing punitive sanctions and air strikes.

In addition, U.S. officials have stated that sanctions would remain even if Iraq complied with United Nations inspectors, giving the Iraqi regime virtually no incentive to comply. For sanctions to work, there needs to be a promise of relief to counterbalance the suffering; that is, a carrot as well as a stick. Indeed, it was the failure of both the United States and the United Nations to explicitly spell out what was needed in order for sanctions to be lifted that led to Iraq suspending its cooperation with UN inspectors in December 1998.

The use of U.S. air strikes against Iraq subsequent to the inspectors’ departure has not garnered much support from the international community, including Iraq’s neighbors, who would presumably be most threatened by an Iraqi biological weapons capability. Nor have U.S. air strikes eliminated that capability. In light of Washington’s tolerance—and even quiet support—of Iraq’s powerful military machine in the 1980s, the Clinton administration’s exaggerated claims of an imminent Iraqi military threat in 1998, after Iraq’s military infrastructure was largely destroyed in the Gulf War, simply lack credibility. Nor have such air strikes eliminated or reduced the country’s biological weapons capability. Furthermore, only the United Nations Security Council has the prerogative to authorize military responses to violations of its resolutions; no single member state can do so unilaterally without explicit permission.

Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East

Since the Gulf War

Continuing Storm:
The U.S. Role in the Middle East