News Clips: Into the Gulf (1988)

Foreign Policy News Clips: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Foreign Policy News Clips: 1979-1990, edited by Harry Kreisler

1/29/88: Into the Gulf

II. Why Are We There?

"President Reagan decided in March to protect Kuwait's oil tankers in the Persian Gulf after being told by his senior Cabinet advisors that it could be done without any increase in American naval forces there, according to administration officials.

"A reconstruction of the decision and its consequences up to now, based on interviews with dozens of officials at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, shows that the policy makers considered few alternatives and did not see the move as momentous."

Stephen Engelberg and Bernard Trainor, New York Times, 8/23/87, p. 1

"When the Reagan administration has embarked on a new foreign policy venture, the President has often signed a document known as a 'National Security Directive' outlining the strategy behind the policy.

"But this bit of paperwork was not prepared in the case of America's recent military buildup in the Persian Gulf. The reason, officials say, was simple: Nobody thought a formal new interagency study of our gulf policy was necessary. The decision to reflag and escort Kuwaiti tankers had broad support within the administration and didn't require any formal decision directive from the president."

David Ignatius, Washington Post, 8/23/87, p. 1

"For the United States, there are three reasons to enter the Gulf despite belated allied support and a local balance of military power that can never be regarded as propitious.

"The need to keep sea lanes open for the movement of crude oil, even though the U.S. imports only a fraction of the outflow. In the absence of better tactical options, policing the sea lanes, one might argue, is the price of political leadership.
"The objective of ensuring equilibrium and security in the Iran-Iraq War, not victory for Iran, and if possible an amicable and timely end to the dispute. Holding the trump card of control over oil exciting the region could help.
"While the Soviets at the moment seem to have their hands full, a continuing necessity is to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence into the Gulf area beyond Afghanistan.

"However, these objectives may be ranked as to importance, either with forethought, or merely with hindsight, the danger is that the pursuit of the first two objectives may destroy the third. U.S. policy ironically may facilitate Soviet expansion, not prevent it."

Charles F. Doran, Christian Science Monitor, 11/12/87, p. 18

"An unpublicized offer by Kuwait to allow the U.S. Navy, for the first time, to set up a big ocean-going barge as a floating naval base inside Kuwaiti territorial waters has been turned down in a surprise decision by the Reagan administration, according to a knowledgeable official in the region."

Patrick E. Tyler, Washington Post, 11/29/87, p. A1

"To critics in Washington, the story of the Reagan administration's growing entanglement in the Gulf vindicates their earlier predictions that the US would inevitably be sucked into the Gulf war, and that it would be forced, in the face of Iranian provocation, to take sides with Iraq. 'It is like watching a Greek tragedy,' says Admiral Eugene Carroll (Rtd.) of the Centre for Defense Information."

Lionel Barber and Andrew Gowers, Financial Times, 10/26/87. See page 20

"A question on the minds of a number of what might be called the capital's Weinberger watchers is why the man they view as Cap the Dove on the use of the United States forces in foreign engagements is acting like Cap the Hawk in regard to the Persian Gulf."

Bernard E. Trainor, New York Times, 10/9/87, p. 10

"Hostages aside, the long-standing U.S. obsession with Iran has been fundamentally geopolitical. If Iran goes left, it is claimed, then the Soviets will have a quick and easy route into the Middle East ... Geostrategic concepts, while superficially convincing, can lead us badly astray. The Gulf, it is often held, is a 'bridge' between Europe and Asia. But why the Gulf rather than Egypt, Suez and the Red Sea? As Professor Robert Johnson has observed, 'Since the globe is of a piece with every area ultimately connected to every other, it does not take a great deal of imagination to develop a geostrategic rationale for the importance of almost any country.' ... The hard truth that the geopoliticians do not like to confront is that Third World countries taken individually -- with the exception of China -- do not play a significant role in the balance of power. Geopolitical obsession does not guide the hand of wisdom. That is why, on Iran and Nicaragua, the Reagan administration has finally come unstuck."

Jonathan Power, International Herald Tribune, 12/11/86, p. 4

"An extraordinary remark was made by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger on ABC's This Week with David Brinkley on September 27. Though it got little attention in most newspapers, it cast an alarming light on what may be the Reagan Administration's real war aims in the Persian Gulf, from which the secretary was speaking.

"Weinberger expressed hope for an arms embargo against Iran that 'would gradually dry up Iran's capability of fighting.' Then he added, 'Short of that, I think, perhaps on a longer-range basis, there will need to be a totally different kind of government in Iran, because no one can deal with an irrational, fanatical government of the kind that they have now.'"

I.F. Stone, Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/4/87, p. 7E

"Instead the United States should indicate receptivity to a real change in leadership in Iran, one that would restore Iran's positive and modernist role in Southwest Asia."

William E. Colby, International Herald Tribune, 11/12/86, p. 4

"Since the Iran-Contra scandal broke a year ago to reveal tragic confusion and cross-purposes in the Reagan administration's Persian Gulf policy, able officials in the National Security council and in the State and Defense departments have managed to rebuild a coherent diplomatic and military strategy toward the explosively dangerous Iran-Iraq War-a strategy that is finally beginning to pay off. In the words of one architect of the policy, 'Pieces of a very complex international military and diplomatic effort are falling into place to put maximum pressure on Iran to end the war.'

"In the face of constant congressional criticism, this strategy has been founded on the basic assumption that the United States has no alternative but to remain in the Gulf. Any calculation of U.S. interest ends with the conclusion that there is an inescapable necessity to protect the oil and to prevent domination of the region and its resources by either fundamentalist Iran or the Soviet Union."

Cord Meyer, Washington Times, 11/20/87, p. F1

"The problems almost always revolve around obtaining an honest airing of alternative views. Two basic impediments are common:

"First is that of mind-sets at upper levels. If a policy has essentially been decided by political instinct, these prejudgments tend to overshadow the ensuing policy debate. Under these conditions opposing views may not be solicited at all, be actively discouraged, or merely ignored. Iran-contra-type impulses to shut out opposition altogether may have been extreme, but certainly not uncommon.

'When opposing views are not sought and given appropriate attention, it is a management failure,' says Henry Rowen of the Hoover Institute, 'and the principal person to do this is the president's national-security advisor.'

"Once a proposed or actual policy is known to be favored by an administration's leaders, the 'team player' imperative can be a fearsome thing to behold. True or not, ambitious professionals will perceive their careers endangered by playing an unpopular opposition role.

"Second is a structural problem that occurs whenever the use of military force or covert action is considered. In these cases, the same department both executes a policy and is the primary judge of its effectiveness."

Charles Waterman, Christian Science Monitor, 8/7/87.

"What on earth do America's leaders think they are doing? What warrant does experience give them for supposing that they know the interests of other countries better than those countries know their own interests? The United States must rid itself of the superpower fallacy before the superpower fallacy costs more American lives, American influence and American credibility."

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., International Herald Tribune, 6/19/87, p. 4

"The alarm now being expressed by so many people over our deepening involvement in the Persian Gulf, together with the growing opposition to any additional help for the Contras in Nicaragua, are warning signs on the American fever chart. They point to a relapse into the sickly condition in which we found ourselves as a nation only a few short years ago."

Norman Podhoretz, San Jose Mercury News, 6/12/87, p. 7B

"A great power that is respected-in-other words, a great power whose resolve to protect its interests is unquestioned-would have acted somewhat differently. Without much fanfare, it would have concentrated adequate military power to inflict serious damage on the potential opponent and would have quietly conveyed to that opponent its intentions. In this particular case, Washington should have informed Teheran, perhaps through a responsible third party:

U.S. flagships will continue to use the Gulf;
the United States will respond with military means against Iranian assets if any U.S. flagship is harmed;
the United States will react similarly if any U.S. facilities are subject to Iranian-sponsored terrorist action; and,
The United States has the capacity to destroy not only important Iranian military assets but also vital economic facilities and to impose a total naval blockade of Iranian maritime trade. In brief, the United States can render Iran helpless in its war with Iraq.

Following such a message, the United States pointedly could have sent in an unescorted freighter or tanker, even informing Iran of its schedule."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post, 8/6/87, p. 21

"The problem for the United States in the Persian Gulf today is to determine which of its several original objectives it can now achieve by its continued naval presence.

"At least five specific objectives were given in the various official statements at the outset of the current US involvement: preserving freedom of navigation, maintaining the flow of oil, keeping the Soviets out, protecting friendly states, and ending the Iran-Iraq war."

David D. Newsom, Christian Science Monitor, 11/18/87, p. 14

"Instead, U.S. officials rushed to approve the Kuwaiti tanker deal without even the benefit of a CIA analysis for one reason; to restore America's shattered credibility with moderate Arab states in the wake of the Iran arms-for-hostage revelations."

Jonathan Marshall, Oakland Tribune, 6/26/87, p. B8

"There is a serious case to be made for U.S. intervention in the Gulf war, meant to produce Iran's defeat. This case has not been made, nor have the means for carrying out such a policy been examined, nor the foreseeable costs. Yet the drift of U.S. action in the Gulf is toward such an intervention."

William Pfaff, Sun, 10/8/87, p. 11A

"Public support for a more active US role in the world has increased over the past four years, according to a survey of American attitudes towards major foreign policy issues conducted by the Gallup organization for the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations."

Stewart Fleming, Financial Times, 3/10/87, p. 6

"Just about the time the stock market was collapsing in a frenzy of panicked selling, the Reagan administration was moving another notch closer to war with Iran. In the Persian Gulf the U.S. Navy destroyed two Iranian platforms, declaring that it was 'retaliating' for an attack on a U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker. On Wall Street, investors tried to bail out of stocks whose inflated prices could no longer be supported by the realities of the economy.

"One event did not cause the other, but they are intimately linked. Policy-makers in Washington have refused to acknowledge this. But Wall Street, whose flights of fancy are always, sooner or later, tempered by brutal facts, knows better. The message from Lower Manhattan, echoed in stock markets around the world is that the United States is living on credit and the bills are now coming due."

Ronald Steel, Los Angeles Times, 10/21/87, p. 11

"The Defense Department, estimating that escorting reflagged Kuwaiti ships in the Persian Gulf would cost about $200 million a year in extra operating expenses, is preparing to ask Congress to restore millions of dollars cut from its 1988 operations budget request, Pentagon sources said yesterday."

Molly Moore, Washington Post, 9/5/87, p. 29

"As has been widely and grumpily noted, we get precious little oil from the Persian Gulf. Europe gets a lot and Japan gets a real lot. To protect that oil, Japan is doing nothing, Europe is doing a bit, and we're doing a lot. It's true that a cutoff of Middle East supplies would drive up prices up for all importers, regardless of their source. But the United States is still about two-thirds self-sufficient in oil, Europe about one-fifth self sufficient, and Japan totally dependent on oil imports. Somehow, the allocation of the burden seems out of whack."

Michael Kinsley, Los Angeles Times, 8/16/87, p. 5

"The Senate, still at odds over whether to impose war-powers limits on the U.S. tanker-escort operation in the Persian Gulf, yesterday called on the Reagan administration to induce foreign countries that benefit from the operation to help pay for it."

Helen Dewar, Washington Post, 10/8/87, p. A10