Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
made clear that the US would not try to replace Britain directly as the
policeman of the Gulf, but would instead bolster its local allies. So the
trickle of US weapon sales to the Gulf became a flood - to Saudi Arabia
in particular and, even more so, to the Shah of Iran.
One of Nixon's defence secretaries later said he had been under
instructions from the president “to sell the Shah anything he wants, short
of nuclear aircraft carriers”. The Iranian part of the Nixon strategy col-
lapsed in 1979 with the fall of the Shah and the arrival of Iran's Islamic
revolution.
But within a year the US had committed itself more closely than ever to
the defence of the Gulf. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December
1979 brought Soviet influence within a few hundred kilometres of the
Gulf and caused alarms bells to ring for Washington and its key Arab
allies in the region, already made nervous by the Iranian revolution.
The Carter Doctrine
Within a month, in his January 1980 State of the Union speech, President
Jimmy Carter proclaimed that “any attempt by an outside force to gain
control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the
vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be resisted by
any means necessary, including military force”.
To back his words, Carter established a Rapid Deployment Force, the
precursor of Centcom (see box), capable of quickly reaching the Gulf in
an emergency, and he set up several forward bases in the Gulf 's vicinity.
The Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a wider campaign waged by overt and covert
means against Soviet and left-wing influence around the world. It was not
particularly linked to the Gulf - or to oil - except that President Ronald
Reagan enlisted the support of Saudi religious fundamentalism in a US-
orchestrated campaign to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Into this anti-Soviet movement, Washington co-opted Arab nationalists,
a strategy that backfired horribly on the US in the form of the Taliban and
al-Qaeda terrorists. Reagan also showed how important the free passage of
oil to world markets was to the US when, in the later stages of the Iran-Iraq
war of 1987-88, he allowed Kuwaiti oil tankers to fly the Stars and Stripes
and gave them US naval protection from Iranian attacks. Reagan also suc-
cessfully pushed through the sale of very sophisticated Airborne Warning
and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to the Saudis.
