History - (Part IV)

Interventions Involving Iran and Arab-Israeli Issues

The Carter Doctrine

The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led to an upsurge of U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Washington increasingly became a direct participant as the strategy of relying on regional surrogates became less viable after the Iranian revolution.

The Soviet invasion came a year and a half after the Afghani Communist party overthrew the republican government of Prime Minister Daoud Khan. Daoud had come to power in 1973 in a coup against his cousin, King Amanullah. Daoud destroyed the king's rigorous neutrality between the United States and the Soviet Union by moving closer to traditional adversaries (and U.S. allies) Pakistan and Iran. The shah of Iran provided massive aid and promised to build a railroad to the Iranian border that would reduce Afghanistan's reliance on the Soviet Union. The indigenous communist takeover occurred after Daoud removed Communists from his cabinet and convened a meeting of religious and political leaders who approved a new constitution and elected him president for six years. The Soviet invasion was prompted by widespread discontent with the communist leader Hafizulla Amin, whose regime harshly violated tribal rights and customs.(203)

Although the invasion represented the Soviets' first direct use of force near the Middle East since World War II, some American observers saw it as the inauguration of a new communist aggressiveness. They regarded it not only as a way of saving the Communists in Afghanistan but also as a means of achieving the long-held Soviet objective of gaining a warm-water port. The Soviets' move into a country so close to the Persian Gulf was viewed as a violation of the U.S. sphere of influence. Thus, in his January 1980 State of the Union message, President Carter issued what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine, pledging to defend the gulf even if it meant going to war. "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region," Carter said, "will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force." Privately, the president said it was "the most serious international development that has occurred since I have been President."(204)

Carter's presidential doctrine had a new name, but that did not mean the contents were new. It had long been the U.S. position that war would be justified to protect U.S. interests in the gulf area. Three years earlier, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) had declared, "Threats to the continuous flow of oil through the Gulf would so endanger the Western and Japanese economies as to be grounds for general war."(205) In fact, U.S. efforts to strengthen the nation's defensive alliances and military capabilities in the region were begun before the Soviet invasion, because of the revolution in Iran. As Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state, wrote, "The [Iranian] hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan simply accelerated measures already under way."(206)

To carry out the Carter Doctrine, the administration imposed sanctions against the Soviet Union, including a grain embargo and U.S. withdrawal from the 1980 Olympic games held in Moscow. It also established the Rapid Deployment Force (later joined with other forces to become the Central Command) and asked Congress to authorize registration for a military draft. Finally, it furnished military equipment to the Afghani resistance, a policy continued by the Reagan administration and formalized in the Reagan Doctrine. Carter's policies had the effect of drawing the United States closer to the authoritarian regime of President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.

Thus, Carter followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in his determination to let nothing loosen the American grip on the Middle East. As had those of previous administrations, the measures he initiated enabled the U.S. government to gain new powers and military facilities.

The Iran-Iraq War

Iran and Iraq have been adversaries since at least the seventh century A.D. Their latest clash erupted when the Shi'ite Muslim leader the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979 and encouraged Iraq's majority Shi'ites to revolt against the secular Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein. Iraq responded by trying to incite the Arabs in Iran's Khuzistan province, an area long disputed by the two countries. At first border clashes grew out of mutual antagonism, and then, in September 1980, Iraq's army invaded Iran. Saddam hoped to establish himself as the Arab leader who put down the Persians and regained control of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway and islands held by Iran. Iraq made early gains in the war and then called for a cease-fire in December 1981. It was not until July 1988 that Iran finally agreed to a cease-fire; by that time Iran had partially reversed its fortunes and even threatened Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

When the war broke out, the United States declared its neutrality. But that did not stop the U.S. government from aiding Iraq's war effort to keep Iran, which had humiliated the United States in the hostage crisis, from prevailing. In fact, the American "tilt" toward Iraq began before the invasion. The Carter administration furnished Iraq, through Saudi Arabia, exaggerated reports of Iran's military weakness as a way of encouraging Saddam to invade. Author Dilip Hiro has written that according to then Iranian president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, secret documents purchased by his government described "conversations in France between several deposed Iranian generals and politicians, Iraqi representatives and American and Israeli military experts."(207) President Carter's hope was that Iran's dire need for spare parts would force it to deal with the United States and free the 52 American hostages it still held. When the war began, the Carter administration criticized the invasion to "soften up" the Iranians. But the plan did not work because Iran turned to Vietnam for parts, which the U.S. military had left behind. The Reagan administration furnished the Iraqis with intelligence on Iranian troop concentrations and damage assessments of Iraqi attacks on Iran. After removing Iraq from the list of countries supporting terrorism, the administration began providing $500 million in annual commodity credits, which enabled the nearly bankrupt nation to obtain wheat and other food. The United States provided another $500 million in Export-Import Bank guarantees for an oil pipeline. Those measures gave Iraq critical support in the eyes of other potential lenders. With U.S. approval, American allies, such as France, armed Iraq with, among other things, Super Etendard fighters equipped with Exocet missiles. The Reagan administration also encouraged Arab financial assistance to Iraq and urged American allies to stop selling weapons to Iran.(208) In 1984 Reagan resumed diplomatic relations with Iraq.

Finally, in 1987, in response to attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf during the war, the United States escalated its involvement by agreeing to reflag 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers and to deploy a major force of warships in the gulf. President Reagan had turned down an earlier invitation to provide U.S. escort services for Kuwait's tankers but changed his mind when the Soviets offered their services. Reagan justified his policy as ensuring freedom of navigation, but the prime beneficiary was Iraq, which was bankrolled throughout the war by Kuwait, whose oil tankers the United States was pledging to protect. The United States also tilted toward Iraq diplomatically by supporting UN resolutions condemning Iran and demanding that it accept a cease-fire.(209)

Of course, U.S. involvement in the gulf was dangerous. Shortly after the reflagging, an Iraqi warplane attacked the USS Stark, killing 28 men. The Reagan administration accepted Iraq's claim that the attack was an error and its apology, but the president then blamed Iran for the tragedy. There were also clashes with Iran. A U.S. Navy helicopter damaged an Iranian warship in the fall of 1987, and when Iran struck a U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker with a Silkworm missile, U.S. naval forces destroyed two Iranian offshore drilling platforms. Several months later a U.S. frigate hit an Iranian mine and almost sank. In retaliation, the U.S. Navy destroyed two more oil platforms and sank six Iranian warships. The restrained nature of the U.S. response drew criticism of the Reagan administration from people, including former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who thought Iran was being treated too leniently. Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), for example, called for the mining of Iran's waters.(210) The tragedy of U.S. intervention reached a peak in July 1988, when the U.S. cruiser Vincennes downed a Ira nian commercial airliner, killing 290 civilians. (The crew said it had mistaken the airliner for a fighter plane during a battle with Iranian speedboats.) Two weeks later, Iran formally accepted a cease-fire with Iraq.

The importance of the de facto alliance between the United States and Iraq, which continued until shortly before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, cannot be overstated. By siding with Iraq against Iran, the United States granted legitimacy to Saddam Hussein as the world's guardian against Muslim fanaticism. His use of chemical weapons against Iran brought the mildest criticism because of who his victims were.(211) Moreover, the various forms of aid had a direct effect on Iraq's ability to hold out against Iran's long onslaught. At the end of the war, Saddam had a huge military establishment and believed that he was the savior of the Arab world. When Kuwait refused to forgive the large debt Saddam owed, he concluded that the Kuwaitis were ungrateful free riders who had taken him for granted. That conclusion explains, in part, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.(212)

It is sobering to realize that some foreign policy experts urged Washington to support Saddam Hussein during the war against Iran on the grounds that an Iraqi victory was preferable to an Iranian one. Daniel Pipes and Laurie Mylroie, for example, wrote that "the fall of the existing regime in Iraq would enormously enhance Iranian influence, endanger the supply of oil, threaten pro-American regimes throughout the area, and upset the Arab-Israeli balance." They favored "other economic steps" to help Iraq in addition to the commodity and Ex-Im Bank credits. "Such measures," they wrote, "would assert U.S. confidence in Iraq's political viability and its ability to repay its debts after the war's end, and would encourage other countries--especially Iraq's Arab allies and European creditors--to continue financing Iraqi war efforts."(213)

Pipes and Mylroie anticipated the argument that a triumphant Saddam Hussein would be bad for American interests and responded:

But the Iranian revolution and seven years of bloody and inconclusive warfare have changed Iraq's view of its Arab neighbors, the United States, and even Israel. . . . Its leaders no longer consider the Palestinian issue their problem. [Its] allies have forced a degree of moderation on Iraq. . . . Iraq is now the de facto protector of the regional status quo.(214)

The consequences that Pipes and Mylroie feared from an Iranian victory have come as a result of Washington's backing Iraq. That typical backfire is not simply a hazard of foreign policymaking. It is inherent in the nature of war and lesser state conflict, in which the law of unintended consequences rules. Sheer hubris alone permits so-called experts to make pronouncements about how distant peoples' affairs should be managed and with exactly how much force.(215)

Unfortunately, the fresh example of the Iran-Iraq War has not deterred either the policymakers or their expert allies in the private sector. As if their support for Iraq had been a resounding success, they embraced Syria's Hafez Assad and Iran in the conflict with Iraq, blind to what effects that may have in coming years.

The New Gulf War

Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, underscored more than one irony of prior U.S. policy. U.S. aid to Saddam during his eight-year war with Iran is only one of those ironies.(216) Another is that although President Bush emphatically rejected Saddam's attempt to link the invasion to the plight of the Palestinians, Bush may yet face enormous Arab pressure to address that problem.

Bush offered several reasons for his response to Saddam's actions, a response that included the cobbling of an international coalition of nations. The initial military deployment was to deter an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. Then, ostensibly to drive Iraq from Kuwait, Bush went to the United Nations to have an economic blockade, an act of war, imposed, although American ships were already in place. Vowing to usher in a "new world order," Bush declared that, in the first test of the post-cold-war world, unprovoked aggression and the toppling of a "legitimate" government (read: quasi-feudal monarchy) by a tyrant comparable to Hitler could not be tolerated. The Munich analogy was rolled out more than once. Although American intervention was lightly shrouded in the mantle of the United Nations and collective security, Bush made it clear that no country but the United States could have spearheaded the effort. Bush and other public officials, including Secretary Baker and Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, raised the less lofty issue of oil and the purported danger to the U.S. economy ("our way of life"), although that argument had been discredited early in the crisis.(217) When the specter of Iraq's controlling 40 percent of the proven oil reserves did not spook the American public, President Bush insisted that the intervention was not about oil but about aggression. He also defended his policy in terms of protecting the Americans held hostage by Saddam Hussein, although they were not taken hostage until after the policy was launched, and of the economic damage being inflicted on the fledgling democracies of Eastern Europe, although the rise in oil prices resulted from Bush's own embargo.

Two days after the November election, the president announced a doubling of the military deployment to provide an "offensive option." Faith in the blockade was abandoned. On Thanksgiving Day 1990 Bush added a new justification of the possible need for war: Saddam's apparent effort to develop nuclear weapons, which, Bush implied, would endanger the American people. The speech followed by days the publication of a New York Times opinion poll in which a majority of respondents had said that a nuclear threat was the one reason they would be willing to support military action against Iraq. Thus, in faithful Orwellian 1984 fashion, the official U.S. attitude toward a recent ally turned 180 degrees.

The hollowness of the Bush administration's reasons, particularly the highly selective stand against aggression, indicates that the president sees the Middle East as his predecessors saw it, as a U.S. sphere of influence in which rival interests may not compete. Saddam's offense did not lie in occupying a neighbor (partners Turkey, Syria, China, and the Soviet Union, as well as Israel, had done that), or in murdering "his own people" (China's leaders and Syria's Hafez Assad had done that), or in having nuclear weapons (several unsavory states have them and more are in the process of acquiring arsenals). Rather, his offense lay in upsetting the status quo in an area where the United States had vowed repeatedly to go to war, if necessary, to prevent adverse change. Bush's policy was a reaffirmation of U.S. claims in the Middle East, in case anyone thought that the end of the cold war made them obsolete. As he put it, the lesson of the war against Iraq is that "what we say goes."(218) Related reasons for the policy include the need for a new mission for a defense establishment threatened by the public's demands for a peace dividend; the desire to test new weapons; and the need to distract the public from troubling domestic issues, such as the exploding budget deficit and higher taxes.

One outcome of U.S. intervention has been immense Arab pressure on the United States to settle the Palestinian question, something that worries Israel. Bush's Arab coalition partners have a strong case when they argue that the United States cannot justify its double standard for Iraq and Israel. Unfortunately, few in the region will argue that Bush should disengage and let the parties solve the problem themselves. At best, Arab pressure may prompt him to change the nuances of U.S. intervention, but it is doubtful Bush will be willing or able to try to change the Shamir government's position on the occupied territories. Israel, for one thing, managed to rehabilitate its public image in the United States by its decision to stay out of the war.

The war against Iraq, though executed quickly and with light American casualties (let's not forget the death and destruction inflicted on Iraq), will have continuing unfortunate consequences, besides the massacre of Kurds and Shi'ites at Saddam's hands. It was a grotesquely logical denouement to 45 years of U.S. policy in the Middle East.(219)

Conclusion

Perspective

It is easy to miss the forest for the trees. The forest in this case is a vast system set up to enable some Americans to manage events--the lives of others, that is--in the Middle East. Each of the U.S. policies and actions, in Iran and in the Arab-Israeli dispute, has been aimed at bringing about certain results, desired by U.S. policymakers, by regulating the behavior of others, sometimes through the application of force (directly or by proxy) and at other times through the application of money. The question never asked is, quo warranto? Who anointed the United States? The Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines command all the awe that presidential names and upper-case letters can evoke, but did those presidents have the consent of the people at whom those doctrines were directed? At best, they satisfied themselves with the proxy consent of autocratic rulers. That is a peculiar attitude for leaders of a democratic country.

U.S. policy by its very nature is never ending. Those whom the policy seeks to mold resist it, and change always upsets expectations. As John Bright asserted in assessing similar 19th-century British policies, "The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and spending their time and money to accomplish."(220)

Whether the United States was trying to keep the shah of Iran in power or trying to prevent the rise of Arab nationalism and nonalignment, its policy was a blunt instrument applied presumptuously to subtle and complicated prob lems. One journalist has likened it to playing pool with a 20-foot cue stick. It would have been a miracle had the result not been chronic turmoil. The impracticality of the policy would have been a stumbling block even if the United States had not been on the side of injustice. Unfortunately, critics of U.S. policy usually believe that U.S. power, influence, and money have merely been put to the wrong use. Critics of the pro-Israel policy, for example, often think that U.S. diplomacy should have been more evenhanded or should have tilted toward the Palestinians. Such critics fall short in their analyses. The real question is, what business do American elected officials have determining the fate of people in the Middle East? Those people do not exist for our convenience or for our energy security. The oil is not ours. Nor is it America's place to ensure justice in the region. Government in the United States was to be strictly limited by the Constitution. Its purpose was to guard the peace and security of the American people at home, not to extend American power hither and yon for grandiose schemes. John Quincy Adams expressed that distinction in his address of July 4, 1821: "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

Reshaping the world was to be achieved only by example. As Sen. Robert A. Taft put it in 1951:

If we confine our activities to the field of moral leadership we shall be successful if our philosophy is sound and appeals to the people of the world. The trouble with those who advocate this [interventionist] policy is that they really do not confine themselves to moral leadership. They are inspired with the same kind of New Deal planned-control ideas abroad as recent Administrations have desired to endorse at home. In their hearts they want to force on these foreign peoples through the use of American money and even, perhaps, American arms the policies which moral leadership is able to advance only through the sound strength of its principles and the force of its persuasion. I do not think this moral leadership ideal justifies our engaging in any preventive war, or going to the defense of one country against another, or getting ourselves into a vulnerable fiscal and economic position at home which may invite war. I do not believe any policy which has behind it the threat of military force is justified as part of the basic foreign policy of the United States except to defend the liberty of our own people.(221)

Interventions Involving Iran and Arab-Israeli Issues

The Carter Doctrine

The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led to an upsurge of U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Washington increasingly became a direct participant as the strategy of relying on regional surrogates became less viable after the Iranian revolution.

The Soviet invasion came a year and a half after the Afghani Communist party overthrew the republican government of Prime Minister Daoud Khan. Daoud had come to power in 1973 in a coup against his cousin, King Amanullah. Daoud destroyed the king's rigorous neutrality between the United States and the Soviet Union by moving closer to traditional adversaries (and U.S. allies) Pakistan and Iran. The shah of Iran provided massive aid and promised to build a railroad to the Iranian border that would reduce Afghanistan's reliance on the Soviet Union. The indigenous communist takeover occurred after Daoud removed Communists from his cabinet and convened a meeting of religious and political leaders who approved a new constitution and elected him president for six years. The Soviet invasion was prompted by widespread discontent with the communist leader Hafizulla Amin, whose regime harshly violated tribal rights and customs.(203)

Although the invasion represented the Soviets' first direct use of force near the Middle East since World War II, some American observers saw it as the inauguration of a new communist aggressiveness. They regarded it not only as a way of saving the Communists in Afghanistan but also as a means of achieving the long-held Soviet objective of gaining a warm-water port. The Soviets' move into a country so close to the Persian Gulf was viewed as a violation of the U.S. sphere of influence. Thus, in his January 1980 State of the Union message, President Carter issued what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine, pledging to defend the gulf even if it meant going to war. "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region," Carter said, "will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force." Privately, the president said it was "the most serious international development that has occurred since I have been President."(204)

Carter's presidential doctrine had a new name, but that did not mean the contents were new. It had long been the U.S. position that war would be justified to protect U.S. interests in the gulf area. Three years earlier, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) had declared, "Threats to the continuous flow of oil through the Gulf would so endanger the Western and Japanese economies as to be grounds for general war."(205) In fact, U.S. efforts to strengthen the nation's defensive alliances and military capabilities in the region were begun before the Soviet invasion, because of the revolution in Iran. As Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state, wrote, "The [Iranian] hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan simply accelerated measures already under way."(206)

To carry out the Carter Doctrine, the administration imposed sanctions against the Soviet Union, including a grain embargo and U.S. withdrawal from the 1980 Olympic games held in Moscow. It also established the Rapid Deployment Force (later joined with other forces to become the Central Command) and asked Congress to authorize registration for a military draft. Finally, it furnished military equipment to the Afghani resistance, a policy continued by the Reagan administration and formalized in the Reagan Doctrine. Carter's policies had the effect of drawing the United States closer to the authoritarian regime of President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.

Thus, Carter followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in his determination to let nothing loosen the American grip on the Middle East. As had those of previous administrations, the measures he initiated enabled the U.S. government to gain new powers and military facilities.

The Iran-Iraq War

Iran and Iraq have been adversaries since at least the seventh century A.D. Their latest clash erupted when the Shi'ite Muslim leader the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979 and encouraged Iraq's majority Shi'ites to revolt against the secular Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein. Iraq responded by trying to incite the Arabs in Iran's Khuzistan province, an area long disputed by the two countries. At first border clashes grew out of mutual antagonism, and then, in September 1980, Iraq's army invaded Iran. Saddam hoped to establish himself as the Arab leader who put down the Persians and regained control of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway and islands held by Iran. Iraq made early gains in the war and then called for a cease-fire in December 1981. It was not until July 1988 that Iran finally agreed to a cease-fire; by that time Iran had partially reversed its fortunes and even threatened Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

When the war broke out, the United States declared its neutrality. But that did not stop the U.S. government from aiding Iraq's war effort to keep Iran, which had humiliated the United States in the hostage crisis, from prevailing. In fact, the American "tilt" toward Iraq began before the invasion. The Carter administration furnished Iraq, through Saudi Arabia, exaggerated reports of Iran's military weakness as a way of encouraging Saddam to invade. Author Dilip Hiro has written that according to then Iranian president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, secret documents purchased by his government described "conversations in France between several deposed Iranian generals and politicians, Iraqi representatives and American and Israeli military experts."(207) President Carter's hope was that Iran's dire need for spare parts would force it to deal with the United States and free the 52 American hostages it still held. When the war began, the Carter administration criticized the invasion to "soften up" the Iranians. But the plan did not work because Iran turned to Vietnam for parts, which the U.S. military had left behind. The Reagan administration furnished the Iraqis with intelligence on Iranian troop concentrations and damage assessments of Iraqi attacks on Iran. After removing Iraq from the list of countries supporting terrorism, the administration began providing $500 million in annual commodity credits, which enabled the nearly bankrupt nation to obtain wheat and other food. The United States provided another $500 million in Export-Import Bank guarantees for an oil pipeline. Those measures gave Iraq critical support in the eyes of other potential lenders. With U.S. approval, American allies, such as France, armed Iraq with, among other things, Super Etendard fighters equipped with Exocet missiles. The Reagan administration also encouraged Arab financial assistance to Iraq and urged American allies to stop selling weapons to Iran.(208) In 1984 Reagan resumed diplomatic relations with Iraq.

Finally, in 1987, in response to attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf during the war, the United States escalated its involvement by agreeing to reflag 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers and to deploy a major force of warships in the gulf. President Reagan had turned down an earlier invitation to provide U.S. escort services for Kuwait's tankers but changed his mind when the Soviets offered their services. Reagan justified his policy as ensuring freedom of navigation, but the prime beneficiary was Iraq, which was bankrolled throughout the war by Kuwait, whose oil tankers the United States was pledging to protect. The United States also tilted toward Iraq diplomatically by supporting UN resolutions condemning Iran and demanding that it accept a cease-fire.(209)

Of course, U.S. involvement in the gulf was dangerous. Shortly after the reflagging, an Iraqi warplane attacked the USS Stark, killing 28 men. The Reagan administration accepted Iraq's claim that the attack was an error and its apology, but the president then blamed Iran for the tragedy. There were also clashes with Iran. A U.S. Navy helicopter damaged an Iranian warship in the fall of 1987, and when Iran struck a U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker with a Silkworm missile, U.S. naval forces destroyed two Iranian offshore drilling platforms. Several months later a U.S. frigate hit an Iranian mine and almost sank. In retaliation, the U.S. Navy destroyed two more oil platforms and sank six Iranian warships. The restrained nature of the U.S. response drew criticism of the Reagan administration from people, including former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who thought Iran was being treated too leniently. Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), for example, called for the mining of Iran's waters.(210) The tragedy of U.S. intervention reached a peak in July 1988, when the U.S. cruiser Vincennes downed a Ira nian commercial airliner, killing 290 civilians. (The crew said it had mistaken the airliner for a fighter plane during a battle with Iranian speedboats.) Two weeks later, Iran formally accepted a cease-fire with Iraq.

The importance of the de facto alliance between the United States and Iraq, which continued until shortly before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, cannot be overstated. By siding with Iraq against Iran, the United States granted legitimacy to Saddam Hussein as the world's guardian against Muslim fanaticism. His use of chemical weapons against Iran brought the mildest criticism because of who his victims were.(211) Moreover, the various forms of aid had a direct effect on Iraq's ability to hold out against Iran's long onslaught. At the end of the war, Saddam had a huge military establishment and believed that he was the savior of the Arab world. When Kuwait refused to forgive the large debt Saddam owed, he concluded that the Kuwaitis were ungrateful free riders who had taken him for granted. That conclusion explains, in part, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.(212)

It is sobering to realize that some foreign policy experts urged Washington to support Saddam Hussein during the war against Iran on the grounds that an Iraqi victory was preferable to an Iranian one. Daniel Pipes and Laurie Mylroie, for example, wrote that "the fall of the existing regime in Iraq would enormously enhance Iranian influence, endanger the supply of oil, threaten pro-American regimes throughout the area, and upset the Arab-Israeli balance." They favored "other economic steps" to help Iraq in addition to the commodity and Ex-Im Bank credits. "Such measures," they wrote, "would assert U.S. confidence in Iraq's political viability and its ability to repay its debts after the war's end, and would encourage other countries--especially Iraq's Arab allies and European creditors--to continue financing Iraqi war efforts."(213)

Pipes and Mylroie anticipated the argument that a triumphant Saddam Hussein would be bad for American interests and responded:

But the Iranian revolution and seven years of bloody and inconclusive warfare have changed Iraq's view of its Arab neighbors, the United States, and even Israel. . . . Its leaders no longer consider the Palestinian issue their problem. [Its] allies have forced a degree of moderation on Iraq. . . . Iraq is now the de facto protector of the regional status quo.(214)

The consequences that Pipes and Mylroie feared from an Iranian victory have come as a result of Washington's backing Iraq. That typical backfire is not simply a hazard of foreign policymaking. It is inherent in the nature of war and lesser state conflict, in which the law of unintended consequences rules. Sheer hubris alone permits so-called experts to make pronouncements about how distant peoples' affairs should be managed and with exactly how much force.(215)

Unfortunately, the fresh example of the Iran-Iraq War has not deterred either the policymakers or their expert allies in the private sector. As if their support for Iraq had been a resounding success, they embraced Syria's Hafez Assad and Iran in the conflict with Iraq, blind to what effects that may have in coming years.

The New Gulf War

Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, underscored more than one irony of prior U.S. policy. U.S. aid to Saddam during his eight-year war with Iran is only one of those ironies.(216) Another is that although President Bush emphatically rejected Saddam's attempt to link the invasion to the plight of the Palestinians, Bush may yet face enormous Arab pressure to address that problem.

Bush offered several reasons for his response to Saddam's actions, a response that included the cobbling of an international coalition of nations. The initial military deployment was to deter an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. Then, ostensibly to drive Iraq from Kuwait, Bush went to the United Nations to have an economic blockade, an act of war, imposed, although American ships were already in place. Vowing to usher in a "new world order," Bush declared that, in the first test of the post-cold-war world, unprovoked aggression and the toppling of a "legitimate" government (read: quasi-feudal monarchy) by a tyrant comparable to Hitler could not be tolerated. The Munich analogy was rolled out more than once. Although American intervention was lightly shrouded in the mantle of the United Nations and collective security, Bush made it clear that no country but the United States could have spearheaded the effort. Bush and other public officials, including Secretary Baker and Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, raised the less lofty issue of oil and the purported danger to the U.S. economy ("our way of life"), although that argument had been discredited early in the crisis.(217) When the specter of Iraq's controlling 40 percent of the proven oil reserves did not spook the American public, President Bush insisted that the intervention was not about oil but about aggression. He also defended his policy in terms of protecting the Americans held hostage by Saddam Hussein, although they were not taken hostage until after the policy was launched, and of the economic damage being inflicted on the fledgling democracies of Eastern Europe, although the rise in oil prices resulted from Bush's own embargo.

Two days after the November election, the president announced a doubling of the military deployment to provide an "offensive option." Faith in the blockade was abandoned. On Thanksgiving Day 1990 Bush added a new justification of the possible need for war: Saddam's apparent effort to develop nuclear weapons, which, Bush implied, would endanger the American people. The speech followed by days the publication of a New York Times opinion poll in which a majority of respondents had said that a nuclear threat was the one reason they would be willing to support military action against Iraq. Thus, in faithful Orwellian 1984 fashion, the official U.S. attitude toward a recent ally turned 180 degrees.

The hollowness of the Bush administration's reasons, particularly the highly selective stand against aggression, indicates that the president sees the Middle East as his predecessors saw it, as a U.S. sphere of influence in which rival interests may not compete. Saddam's offense did not lie in occupying a neighbor (partners Turkey, Syria, China, and the Soviet Union, as well as Israel, had done that), or in murdering "his own people" (China's leaders and Syria's Hafez Assad had done that), or in having nuclear weapons (several unsavory states have them and more are in the process of acquiring arsenals). Rather, his offense lay in upsetting the status quo in an area where the United States had vowed repeatedly to go to war, if necessary, to prevent adverse change. Bush's policy was a reaffirmation of U.S. claims in the Middle East, in case anyone thought that the end of the cold war made them obsolete. As he put it, the lesson of the war against Iraq is that "what we say goes."(218) Related reasons for the policy include the need for a new mission for a defense establishment threatened by the public's demands for a peace dividend; the desire to test new weapons; and the need to distract the public from troubling domestic issues, such as the exploding budget deficit and higher taxes.

One outcome of U.S. intervention has been immense Arab pressure on the United States to settle the Palestinian question, something that worries Israel. Bush's Arab coalition partners have a strong case when they argue that the United States cannot justify its double standard for Iraq and Israel. Unfortunately, few in the region will argue that Bush should disengage and let the parties solve the problem themselves. At best, Arab pressure may prompt him to change the nuances of U.S. intervention, but it is doubtful Bush will be willing or able to try to change the Shamir government's position on the occupied territories. Israel, for one thing, managed to rehabilitate its public image in the United States by its decision to stay out of the war.

The war against Iraq, though executed quickly and with light American casualties (let's not forget the death and destruction inflicted on Iraq), will have continuing unfortunate consequences, besides the massacre of Kurds and Shi'ites at Saddam's hands. It was a grotesquely logical denouement to 45 years of U.S. policy in the Middle East.(219)

Conclusion

Perspective

It is easy to miss the forest for the trees. The forest in this case is a vast system set up to enable some Americans to manage events--the lives of others, that is--in the Middle East. Each of the U.S. policies and actions, in Iran and in the Arab-Israeli dispute, has been aimed at bringing about certain results, desired by U.S. policymakers, by regulating the behavior of others, sometimes through the application of force (directly or by proxy) and at other times through the application of money. The question never asked is, quo warranto? Who anointed the United States? The Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines command all the awe that presidential names and upper-case letters can evoke, but did those presidents have the consent of the people at whom those doctrines were directed? At best, they satisfied themselves with the proxy consent of autocratic rulers. That is a peculiar attitude for leaders of a democratic country.

U.S. policy by its very nature is never ending. Those whom the policy seeks to mold resist it, and change always upsets expectations. As John Bright asserted in assessing similar 19th-century British policies, "The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and spending their time and money to accomplish."(220)

Whether the United States was trying to keep the shah of Iran in power or trying to prevent the rise of Arab nationalism and nonalignment, its policy was a blunt instrument applied presumptuously to subtle and complicated prob lems. One journalist has likened it to playing pool with a 20-foot cue stick. It would have been a miracle had the result not been chronic turmoil. The impracticality of the policy would have been a stumbling block even if the United States had not been on the side of injustice. Unfortunately, critics of U.S. policy usually believe that U.S. power, influence, and money have merely been put to the wrong use. Critics of the pro-Israel policy, for example, often think that U.S. diplomacy should have been more evenhanded or should have tilted toward the Palestinians. Such critics fall short in their analyses. The real question is, what business do American elected officials have determining the fate of people in the Middle East? Those people do not exist for our convenience or for our energy security. The oil is not ours. Nor is it America's place to ensure justice in the region. Government in the United States was to be strictly limited by the Constitution. Its purpose was to guard the peace and security of the American people at home, not to extend American power hither and yon for grandiose schemes. John Quincy Adams expressed that distinction in his address of July 4, 1821: "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

Reshaping the world was to be achieved only by example. As Sen. Robert A. Taft put it in 1951:

If we confine our activities to the field of moral leadership we shall be successful if our philosophy is sound and appeals to the people of the world. The trouble with those who advocate this [interventionist] policy is that they really do not confine themselves to moral leadership. They are inspired with the same kind of New Deal planned-control ideas abroad as recent Administrations have desired to endorse at home. In their hearts they want to force on these foreign peoples through the use of American money and even, perhaps, American arms the policies which moral leadership is able to advance only through the sound strength of its principles and the force of its persuasion. I do not think this moral leadership ideal justifies our engaging in any preventive war, or going to the defense of one country against another, or getting ourselves into a vulnerable fiscal and economic position at home which may invite war. I do not believe any policy which has behind it the threat of military force is justified as part of the basic foreign policy of the United States except to defend the liberty of our own people.(221)

Interventions Involving Iran and Arab-Israeli Issues

The Carter Doctrine

The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led to an upsurge of U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Washington increasingly became a direct participant as the strategy of relying on regional surrogates became less viable after the Iranian revolution.

The Soviet invasion came a year and a half after the Afghani Communist party overthrew the republican government of Prime Minister Daoud Khan. Daoud had come to power in 1973 in a coup against his cousin, King Amanullah. Daoud destroyed the king's rigorous neutrality between the United States and the Soviet Union by moving closer to traditional adversaries (and U.S. allies) Pakistan and Iran. The shah of Iran provided massive aid and promised to build a railroad to the Iranian border that would reduce Afghanistan's reliance on the Soviet Union. The indigenous communist takeover occurred after Daoud removed Communists from his cabinet and convened a meeting of religious and political leaders who approved a new constitution and elected him president for six years. The Soviet invasion was prompted by widespread discontent with the communist leader Hafizulla Amin, whose regime harshly violated tribal rights and customs.(203)

Although the invasion represented the Soviets' first direct use of force near the Middle East since World War II, some American observers saw it as the inauguration of a new communist aggressiveness. They regarded it not only as a way of saving the Communists in Afghanistan but also as a means of achieving the long-held Soviet objective of gaining a warm-water port. The Soviets' move into a country so close to the Persian Gulf was viewed as a violation of the U.S. sphere of influence. Thus, in his January 1980 State of the Union message, President Carter issued what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine, pledging to defend the gulf even if it meant going to war. "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region," Carter said, "will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force." Privately, the president said it was "the most serious international development that has occurred since I have been President."(204)

Carter's presidential doctrine had a new name, but that did not mean the contents were new. It had long been the U.S. position that war would be justified to protect U.S. interests in the gulf area. Three years earlier, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) had declared, "Threats to the continuous flow of oil through the Gulf would so endanger the Western and Japanese economies as to be grounds for general war."(205) In fact, U.S. efforts to strengthen the nation's defensive alliances and military capabilities in the region were begun before the Soviet invasion, because of the revolution in Iran. As Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state, wrote, "The [Iranian] hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan simply accelerated measures already under way."(206)

To carry out the Carter Doctrine, the administration imposed sanctions against the Soviet Union, including a grain embargo and U.S. withdrawal from the 1980 Olympic games held in Moscow. It also established the Rapid Deployment Force (later joined with other forces to become the Central Command) and asked Congress to authorize registration for a military draft. Finally, it furnished military equipment to the Afghani resistance, a policy continued by the Reagan administration and formalized in the Reagan Doctrine. Carter's policies had the effect of drawing the United States closer to the authoritarian regime of President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.

Thus, Carter followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in his determination to let nothing loosen the American grip on the Middle East. As had those of previous administrations, the measures he initiated enabled the U.S. government to gain new powers and military facilities.

The Iran-Iraq War

Iran and Iraq have been adversaries since at least the seventh century A.D. Their latest clash erupted when the Shi'ite Muslim leader the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979 and encouraged Iraq's majority Shi'ites to revolt against the secular Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein. Iraq responded by trying to incite the Arabs in Iran's Khuzistan province, an area long disputed by the two countries. At first border clashes grew out of mutual antagonism, and then, in September 1980, Iraq's army invaded Iran. Saddam hoped to establish himself as the Arab leader who put down the Persians and regained control of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway and islands held by Iran. Iraq made early gains in the war and then called for a cease-fire in December 1981. It was not until July 1988 that Iran finally agreed to a cease-fire; by that time Iran had partially reversed its fortunes and even threatened Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

When the war broke out, the United States declared its neutrality. But that did not stop the U.S. government from aiding Iraq's war effort to keep Iran, which had humiliated the United States in the hostage crisis, from prevailing. In fact, the American "tilt" toward Iraq began before the invasion. The Carter administration furnished Iraq, through Saudi Arabia, exaggerated reports of Iran's military weakness as a way of encouraging Saddam to invade. Author Dilip Hiro has written that according to then Iranian president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, secret documents purchased by his government described "conversations in France between several deposed Iranian generals and politicians, Iraqi representatives and American and Israeli military experts."(207) President Carter's hope was that Iran's dire need for spare parts would force it to deal with the United States and free the 52 American hostages it still held. When the war began, the Carter administration criticized the invasion to "soften up" the Iranians. But the plan did not work because Iran turned to Vietnam for parts, which the U.S. military had left behind. The Reagan administration furnished the Iraqis with intelligence on Iranian troop concentrations and damage assessments of Iraqi attacks on Iran. After removing Iraq from the list of countries supporting terrorism, the administration began providing $500 million in annual commodity credits, which enabled the nearly bankrupt nation to obtain wheat and other food. The United States provided another $500 million in Export-Import Bank guarantees for an oil pipeline. Those measures gave Iraq critical support in the eyes of other potential lenders. With U.S. approval, American allies, such as France, armed Iraq with, among other things, Super Etendard fighters equipped with Exocet missiles. The Reagan administration also encouraged Arab financial assistance to Iraq and urged American allies to stop selling weapons to Iran.(208) In 1984 Reagan resumed diplomatic relations with Iraq.

Finally, in 1987, in response to attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf during the war, the United States escalated its involvement by agreeing to reflag 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers and to deploy a major force of warships in the gulf. President Reagan had turned down an earlier invitation to provide U.S. escort services for Kuwait's tankers but changed his mind when the Soviets offered their services. Reagan justified his policy as ensuring freedom of navigation, but the prime beneficiary was Iraq, which was bankrolled throughout the war by Kuwait, whose oil tankers the United States was pledging to protect. The United States also tilted toward Iraq diplomatically by supporting UN resolutions condemning Iran and demanding that it accept a cease-fire.(209)

Of course, U.S. involvement in the gulf was dangerous. Shortly after the reflagging, an Iraqi warplane attacked the USS Stark, killing 28 men. The Reagan administration accepted Iraq's claim that the attack was an error and its apology, but the president then blamed Iran for the tragedy. There were also clashes with Iran. A U.S. Navy helicopter damaged an Iranian warship in the fall of 1987, and when Iran struck a U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker with a Silkworm missile, U.S. naval forces destroyed two Iranian offshore drilling platforms. Several months later a U.S. frigate hit an Iranian mine and almost sank. In retaliation, the U.S. Navy destroyed two more oil platforms and sank six Iranian warships. The restrained nature of the U.S. response drew criticism of the Reagan administration from people, including former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who thought Iran was being treated too leniently. Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), for example, called for the mining of Iran's waters.(210