Charles Kupchan - The Persian Gulf and the West (RLE Iran D) (Routledge Library Editions: Iran)

During the postwar era, the most vociferous and divisive debates about national security within the Western community have focused upon the Third Worldthe peripherynot upon Europe. Though far more attention and resources have been devoted to European security, the debate about Europe has taken place within fairly narrow margins. Within both individual states and the NATO alliance, there has been a steady consensus about the overriding importance of deterring Soviet aggression against Western territory. There have indeed been wide differences of opinion about how best to erect a credible deterrent and what military strategy to adopt should deterrence fail. Yet, this debate has essentially focused upon identifying the most appropriate means to achieve recognized and generally accepted ends.

The debate over security in the periphery has been much wider in scope; it has addressed both ends and means. The crux of the problem is that it has proved to be very difficult to identify what geographic areas in the periphery are worth fighting for. In what cases and under what circumstances are vital Western interests at stake? Some areas of the periphery are of intrinsic value because of the raw materials that they contain or because of their strategic importance. Other areas are of extrinsic value; they become important because of the global nature of the Cold War and the perceived need to maintain the credibility of the Wests defense commitments. Calculations of the costs and benefits of intervention also turn on the nature of the apparent threat. A Soviet or Soviet-backed invasion of a pro-Western state is likely to have far greater implications and elicit a sharper Western response than indigenous regional conflict which challenges the status quo. The central dilemma of regional security for the Western community has been to identify how to characterize and how to respond to the wide range of interests and threats that have emerged in different regions of the periphery.

This book focuses upon one particular area of the peripherythe Persian Gulfas a means of delving into the postwar debate about regional security. The Persian Gulf serves as a rich case study for such an investigation because of the variable, yet consistently prominent position that it has occupied in Western conceptions of global security. The Persian Gulf has been of steadily increasing intrinsic importance since 1945 because of growing Western dependence on its oil reserves. It has also emerged as a focal point of U.S. Soviet competition for regional political influence; Western interests have been defined in terms of maintaining global commitments and credibility. Despite the consistent presence of East-West tensions, the threats to these interests have by no means come only from the Soviets. Regional anti-Western and anticolonial sentiment, endemic conflict among local states and the relationship between the Gulf and the Arab-Israeli dispute have repeatedly threatened to throw the region into turmoil.