The Gulf War and Its Aftermath Halliday

7/28/2019 The Gulf War and Its Aftermath Halliday

1/13

The Gulf War and Its Aftermath: First ReflectionsAuthor(s): Fred HallidaySource: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 67, No. 2(Apr., 1991), pp. 223-234Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Royal Institute of International AffairsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2620827 .Accessed: 05/08/2011 08:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Blackwell Publishing and Royal Institute of International Affairs are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-).

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=blackhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=riiahttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2620827?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2620827?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=riiahttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black


2/13

The Gulf War and ts ftermath:

first eflections

FRED HALLIDAY

Fred Halliday traces he reasons ehind addam Hussein's nvasion f Kuwait nAugust ggo and draws ut some of the political nd security onsequencesf thewar and the easefireor the Gulf states ndfor he WeVsternllies.

The crisis unleashed by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait must count not only as oneof the major international ostwar crises, ut as a unique occurrence n severalrespects. f t bears comparison n the evel of conflict with Korea and Vietnam

and in drama with Cuba, it differs rom all of these n being the first majorpostwar crisis not to have an overriding East-West dimension. For the firsttime, one member of the United Nations has been not merely nvaded, butcompletely ccupied and annexed by another. With this ame the displacementof hundreds of thousands of people from Kuwait and Iraq, disruption n theinternational rade of two major oil producers, nd worldwide economic andfinancial uncertainty. The coalition of forces led by the United States inresponse to the invasion the 'Desert Shield' that became a 'DesertStorm' then deployed a force of well over half million personnel n Arabia.

The scale of the war can only be grasped by looking at it on various evels.The casualty evel was far ower than in the major post-I945 wars (compareKorea with 4.5 million killed, Vietnam with over 2 million, Lebanon with250,000, the Iran-Iraq War with 500,000 or more); but in terms of themobilization nvolved and weaponry used, this was, after Korea, the greatestinterstate onflict ince the Second World War.

The rise of new technologies side, what distinguished hiswar at the militarylevel were three other characteristics. he first was the extreme symmetry ncasualties tens of thousands killed on the Iraqi side, a few dozen on the sideof the coalition. The precedents were those of pre-i9I4 colonial wars, n whichsuperior technology and organization made metropolitan armies almostinvulnerable nd able to inflict errible osts on their pponents. The inflictionof casualtiesnorth of Kuwait from the 24 to the 26 February was an inflatedversion of the fate that befell he Tibetan army at the battle of Guru in MarchI904: led into battle by intransigent enerals nd lamas alike, they ost 700 deadasagainsthalf dozen wounded in the British xpeditionary orce. The second

Ititertiatiotial Affairs 7, 2 (1991) 223-234 22392


3/13

Fred Halliday

distinguishing haracteristic was the manner in which the war ended adecisivecalling of a halt by Bush, at a moment when in strictly military ermshe could have pressed on to Baghdad. Here, the analogy that presented tself,of an equally political decision to halt when the road ahead lay clear, was theChinese decision to stop its war with India in October I962. In both cases aClausewitzian caution prevailed over military momentum. The third, andperhaps most dramatic distinguishing eature of this war was the ecologicaldisasterwhich accompanied t, following the raqi decision to blow up the oilwells in Kuwait during their retreat. his was not the first ime that war hadbeen accompanied by ecological destruction: he destruction f forests ndfarmlands n the First World War, the impact of two nuclear bombs in the

Second World War, and the widespread use of chemical defoliants n Vietnamwere serious nough. In this ase,however, there was no military urpose n anunprecedentedly estructive ction which did much to pollute the atmosphereacross a wide area of West Asia.

As a Middle East conflict t had three unique features. irst, t was the firstsignificant onflict nvolving the armies of Arab states. econd, the nter-Arabdivision was compounded by the fact that the whole of the Arab world,including North Africa, was involved, and by implication both in the war and

in any future eace process of the three non-Arab states of the region, srael,Iran and Turkey, the latter two hitherto xcluded from nter-Arab politics.Third an insight bscured by the degree of anti-American entiment oundfor a long time in the region this was the first ime that US forces have inmajor numbers ntervened n the region, the two much smaller nterventionsin Lebanon (of i958 and I982-4) excepted.

For the Middle East there has been no comparable crisis nvolving bothregional and extra-regional orces ince the First World War, which saw thecollapse of the Ottoman Empire and the intervention f British nd Frenchforces, together with their Arab allies, in what became Iraq, Syria, andPalestine. Subsequent interventions-in the Second World War, Suez, theBritish wars in Oman are, by comparison, secondary. The differences ndcomparisons re, however, nstructive. n the one hand, this war will not havethe degree of mpact that followed the First World War, in that hemap, in thesense of the state divisions, f the region will not be significantly ltered, norindeed should, n the majority f the cases,the political character f the regimesin power. On the other hand, the past contains everalwarnings or hepresent.

Like Desert Storm, ampaigns f the FirstWar involved a mainly xternal orcewith some token Arab political ttachments: he atter, ike the armed forces fsome occupied countries n the Second War, for political not military urposes.Moreover, the history f the First World War was one of the maintenance fa disparate oalition by means of public unity but private divergence f goals.Specifically, ehind the goal of defeating he Turks, contradictory romiseswere made: the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Husayn-Macmahon corre-spondence, the Balfour Declaration. It does not require much imagination ordistrust) o see that comparable and equally contradictory ommitments ave

224


4/13

The Gulf War and its aftermath

been made to a variety f actors n this war, and that he political consequencesthereafter may equally arouse rancour and dismay. The coalition may havesurvived the war: it is less likely to survive the peace.

Three broad political lessons of wars would seem to be especially worthremembering n this context. The first s that, n all wars, states fight for avariety f goals and these may well change as the war progresses. he motivesof the tates hat fought n the Second World War were economic, strategic ndideological all at the same time: the same mixture pplied now. The shifting fwar aims is common, as the debates among the Allies about what to do withGermany n both world wars ndicated. econdly, relations etween allies bothbefore and after wars are never easy, and there is always an element ofcompetition between them. The Arab participants n the coalition have theirown variant genda, asdo the non-Arab states. qually the United States,whileseeking to rally the maximum international upport n the West, may also beable to use its military redominance n the war and the postwar situation oexert everage against ts allies, notably Japan and Germany, nd to argue thatany new international rder hould follow ts priorities. hird, even when warsdo not alter frontiers, hey do bring about great trains within ountries whichmay in the aftermath f war produce political nd ideological changes. As with

the 948, I967 and I973 Arab-Israeli wars, the mpact of this war on the Arabworld will only be visible years fter t has ended. Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamicsentiment id not produce the nsurrection hat Saddam anticipated. Whetherthese are really spent forces or. whether hey are capable of further mpact onthe region, cannot yet be assessed.

These general considerations hould be enough to indicate the extent towhich the uncertainties f the current war in the Gulf are common to all suchconflicts. hey should suggest heir wn admonitions. Whatever the outcomeand whatever he duration f the conflict, hiswar will not solve' the problemof the Gulf, nor of the Middle East more generally. A range of policy ssueswillemerge from t which will remain to bedevil governments-as they did afterthe two world wars and after he various Arab-Israeli wars.

Why did Saddam invade?The long-term background to the Iraqi invasion needs no rehearsal. raq haslong had a dispute with Kuwait, on occasiondenying he egitimacy f Kuwait

as a separate state altogether, n others questioning the delimitation of thefrontiers etween them. In I96I it took the former pproach, in I973 it laidclaim to some Kuwaiti islands. At the same time, raq had been a restless ower:the egitimacy nd credibility f the Ba'thist regime, nd of Saddam Hussein nparticular, depended upon his attaining new foreign policy successes andenhancing raq's international osition.

It was in the ate I970S that raq began to pursue this new international oleas the champion of Arab radicalism gainst Egypt, n particular gainst Sadat'sopening to Israel, nd as the opponent of revolutionary ran. From I980 to I988

225


5/13

Fred Halliday

Iraq fought ran to a standstill. ollowing that ceasefire, t was expected that,exhausted, raq would accept peace and rebuild. But it did not: having forcedIran to accept peace on its terms, t then blocked the peace process by raisingnew demands, n particular or he revision f the Shatt l-Arab river boundary,and began to assert tself more forcefully n the Arab world. Iraq soughthegemony, not coexistence.

The decision to invade Kuwait came against this background, nd reflectedfive broad elements f the situation n the early part of I990. First, he mpassewith Iran. Iraq's attempt to impose a capitulationist eace on Iran did notsucceed. ran refused o renegotiate he Shatt l-Arab frontier, r to release raqiprisoners f war. After he new Iranian government had consolidated n lateI989 after Khomeini's death, it was clear that Iraq had been blocked on itseastern rontiers. econd, the economic crisis within raq. In the ate 970s, Iraq,by then discovered to have oil reserves econd only to Saudi Arabia's in theregion, was in a strong conomic position. But eight years f war turned t ntoa net debtor (to the tune of around $70 billion), and despite governmentattempts opromote the private ector nd domestic griculture, raq remainedin a weak position even after 988. The fall n world oil prices compoundedthis. The seizure of Kuwait offered solution at several evels a distraction

from domestic resentment t economic mismanagement, he possibility ofacquiring Kuwaiti assets and investments, nd the seizure of the oil wellsthemselves.

Third, the Cold War had ended. The fall of the communist regimes inEastern Europe, and in particular he fate of Ceau?escuin Romania, led to awidespread debate n the Arab world about possiblefuture emocratization nIraq and elsewhere. Despite their help to him in the past, Saddam suspectedboth Soviet and US intentions owards him. This led him to adopt a morehostile ttitude o the United States n particular, nd from arly 990 he wasopenly criticizing Washington. He called for he withdrawal f US forces romthe Gulf and an Arab financial oycott of the United States. He no longer felthe needed the US backing he had used against ran: he now saw benefit nconfronting he West.

Fourth, raq's dispute with Kuwait. On top of the long-standing borderissues, n I990 Kuwaiti relations with Iraq deterioriated s a result f four newquestions the Iraqi demand that ts debt to Kuwait incurred n the war withIran be cancelled; the related demand that Kuwait pay compensation or raq's

defence of Arab interests n that war; the charge that Kuwait, along with theAmirates, had deprived Iraq of oil revenues by producing above its OPECquota and so pushing down the price of oil; and the charge that Kuwait hadtaken oil unfairly from the Rumaila field, which straddles the two states'frontier.

Fifth, talemate n the Arab-Israeli context. The situation n the Arab worldwas not an instigatory ause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but it was animportant part of the background and provided an opportunity or Iraq toreassert ts claims to regional eadership. or the two yearsprior oAugust 990

226


6/13


the Arab world had been dominated by the failure o make progress n theArab-Israeli dispute. The Palestinian ntifadah rom November I987 and thePLO's concessionof Israel's right o exist n November I988 raised hope of abreakthrough. nstead, nothing happened, while the majority of Arab statesmaintained olite relations with the West. On top of that, n the course of I989and I990 there ame the beginning of mass SovietJewish migration o Israel.A climate of frustration, ocused on the Palestinian ssue, developed, one thatIraq could take advantage of.

In this explosive situation, negotiations between Kuwait and Iraq failed tomake progress. he Kuwaitis were over-confident; hey eem to have imaginedthat raq would never invade, and they were not minded to conciliate even

where the raqis had, by general greement, ome cause,as on the oil prices ssueand over Rumaila. The Iraqis saw an opportunity o assert heir power, andwhen negotiations failed they took a sudden decision to invade. 2 Augustfollowed. It is possible to argue that Saddam had decided weeks or monthsbefore to invade Kuwait. But while the logic of events had built up overmonths, with contingency lans for such a move having been prepared yearsbefore, t is quite plausible that Saddam took his decision on the spur of themoment, much as he seems to have done in I980 when he decided to attackIran.

The fallout for Gulf politics

The core of the current risis s Iraq itself, nd the link that has long existedbetween the dictatorial regime of the Ba'th Party within and the aggressivepolicies it has pursued abroad. Iraq is a country with a strong, well-educatedmiddle class ncluding n its ranks many skilled professionals: hey could formthe core of a system hat ould address he country's evelopment problems ndput the oil revenues o good use. Saddam Hussein has abused this class,but hisability to survive and to transform raq as he has done rests partly upon thereluctant upport he has received from t. The question that s now posed iswhether n the aftermath f Ba'th rule more rational, competent nd peace-oriented government could emerge in Iraq, commanding the support of ademocratic majority.

The outcome depends upon a number of factors, s yet incalculable. Firstthere s the question of the longer-run mpact of the defeat, nd in particular

whether t leads to the effective reakdown of Ba'thist control, nd law andorder, n the country. n the atter ase there could well emerge a situation fcivil war, with rival ethnic, eligious nd political groups vying for power or,in Lebanesefashion, ontrolling articular its of territory. uch an eventualitycould also bring in outside powers, not least Iran and Turkey. A secondpossibility is a relatively weak, unstable military regime at the centre,reminiscent f the period between the fall of the monarch nd the advent of theBa'th to power between i958 and I968. A third possibility s the replacementof the Ba'th by a strong nationalist/military egimeemerging from the army,

227


7/13

Fred Halliday

less ggressive nd more benign than the Ba'th but basically onstituting morehuman version f the same.This may well be what sections f the armed forces

themselveswant, and it may also be what those outside who are consideringhe

future f the country would want: for the coalition states, nd for those suchas Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia who are advising them on postwar raq andare harbouring lements f an alternative egime, hetemptation must be to gofor the most calculable substitute.

There are, however, a range of opposition forces hat aspire to replace thecurrent egime in Baghdad by a more open, civilian, and pluralistic egime.The four main constituents f the opposition-dissident Ba'th and armyofficers, ommunists, Kurds and Islamists have formed a coalition with apolitical programme that would allow for a transition to a democraticgovernment. Among other hings, his alls for he mplementation f the 970agreement n Kurdistan, which could avert pressure or Kurdish ecession ndbreakup of Iraq by giving the Kurds some autonomy. Were this programmeto be implemented, hen the ong-run goal of establishing stable, democraticand peaceful government n Iraq would be achieved. Just as war destroyedmilitaristic ictatorship nd brought democracy and prosperity n Germanyand Japan, o it could in Iraq. But the prospects or such an outcome are not

good. The coalition tself s frail, nd various outside forces, otably Syria andIran, have their own candidates for power; the coalition and particularly heSaudis are unlikely o want to accept democracy n Iraq, so near themselves;and the conditions inside Iraq are not going to be propitious to such ademocratic ransition.

The question of democratic politics s, however, also posed for the otherstates f the peninsula, nd in particular or he monarchies f Saudi Arabia andKuwait. In both cases the royal families have in the past made promises ofreform when under pressure, ut have not implemented hem later on. Thehuman rights records of these regimes have been criticized by internationalbodies, although they pale into insignificance efore that of the republicanrevolutionary egimes they adjoin, namely Iraq, Syria and Iran. The lack ofdemocracy played a part, however, in the onset of this crisis: first, ecause itenabled Saddam Husseinto poseas the champion of popular resentment gainstthe 'Croesuses', the parasitic rich monarchs of these states, both within thepeninsula nd among Arabs in other poorer states; and second, because in thecase of Kuwait the disastrous iplomatic mishandling f the crisis by the al-

Sabah family nd the unnecessary rovocation of the Iraqis over the oil issuewas in part motivated by a desire to use conflict with Iraq to quell domesticdissent. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Kuwait has a constitution which allows fordemocratic politics and limits the powers of the Amir: this has been littlerespected by the Amir, however, and in I986 he dissolved the duly electedparliament. On past showing and despite promises to the convention ofKuwaiti politiciansheld in Jidda ast October the al-Sabah were reluctant oallow a democratic pening n Kuwait, or to subject the country's inances ndreconstruction ork to public scrutiny. Given the serious ncidence of corrupt

228


8/13

The Gulf War and its ftermath

administration nd incompetence hown by the royal family n the 98os, therewas considerable concern among Kuwaitis about the pattern of the postwarsystem n their ountry.

The issueof democracy s equally posed for Saudi Arabia itself. One of thepressures n the al-Sabah not to liberalize has been from Saudi Arabia, and itcan be assumed that current preferences f many Saudi princes are for arestoration f strong Amiri control within Kuwait once it is liberated. Yet inneither audi Arabia nor Kuwait are the ruling families f one mind, and, asin other ountries, he difficulties f promoting democracy annot be attributedmerely o the elf-interest f the rulers. emocracy takes imeto develop in anysociety it took centuries o do so in Britain, he United States nd France, nd

is relatively recent n a range of major countries ncluding Germany, taly,Spain, Greece and Japan, et alone Eastern Europe. In addition to the socialandeconomic tensions present n these societies, here re three particular easonswhy a move to democracy may be especiallyhard. First, hese re fragmentedsocieties,without common political nd social values: Iraq and Syria have beenruled by small minorities Sunni Arabs and Alawite officers espectively), hileSaudi Arabia, it is often forgotten, s a modern creation, the result of theconquest of the peninsula by the Saudi tribes in the I920S. Second, thecontinued nterstate ension, ocusedboth on the Arab-Israeli nd on the Gulfarenas, militates gainst confidence n democracy: the degree of militarizationof these societies' internal and external systems ncouraged army rule andrepressive ecurity. hird, there s the fact, unique to the region, that many ofthose pressing from below for democracy have themselves n undemocraticprogramme: the slamist orces,which in most cases appear to be the strongestcontenders orpower in a more open context, im not to establish democraticgovernment r one that respects human rights r international orms, but toimpose their wn populist but coercive regimes, s the example of Iran shows.The results f recent lections n Jordan nd Algeria ndicate that n exchangefor the established and often stale undemocratic regimes, vigorous andpopularly backed undemocratic regimes are waiting to take their place.Quite apart from the international rientations f these regimes which arevery hostile to the non-Islamic world) and their probable incompetencein administration nd international conomic management, such successorgovernments, owever democratically lected, would not bring the expectedbenefits, whether political or economic, to the peoples in question.

There is, of course, one additional reason for the lack of development ofdemocracy n the region over the whole of the modern period, and that s thepolicy pursued by outside powers. In a curious combination of self-servingmyths, Western nd Soviet policy has accepted the dea, engagingly sserted ymost Middle Eastern rulers, hat n some way or other the region s not ripe'for democracy, r alternatively hat n some countries here re different ormsof consultation nd legitimacy n operation, unseen by external bservers withtheir nept, universalistic, riteria. One has only to contrast he policy pursuedby the United States owards communist ictatorships n Eastern urope or the

229


9/13

Fred Halliday

Third World with that owards range of undemocratic egimes n the MiddleEast, traditional monarchies nd nationalist epublics like. Patchy as the USrecord may be throughout the world, and overshadowed as it is byconsiderations f strategy nd convenience, here s a marked contrast etweenthe degree of pressure nd sanction xerted against Soviet-style nd (since themid-Ig7os) right-wing hird World dictatorships, nd the enduring ndulgenceof undemocratic regimes in the Middle East. The Soviet Union, with itssupport for national democratic' and 'socialist oriented' regimes Iraq, Syria,Libya, South Yemen, Nasserist Egypt) has no better record. t was, indeed,the fear that this ndulgence might come to an end that was one of the mainreasonsfor Saddam's sudden turning gainst the United States n late i989 and

early I990. It remains o be seen, however, whether here will be any clearerWestern and Soviet commitment o democracy n the region, and whether,even if there s, it will lead to clear or long-sighted olicy implementation.

The many faces of regional security

The term regional security' s usually used as a portmanteau o cover at leastthree different lements of security the maintenance of peace between

regional states by means of some kind of acceptable military balance' and aformal set of treaty arrangements; he stability of the regimes themselvesagainst internal and external opposition; and the management of externalrelations with the region, n both strategic erms i.e. so as to keep out rivaloutside powers) and economic ones, most notably oil. The myth of those whopropound security systems s that such systems benefit all forces equally,whereas this s necessarily ot so. The regimes n power benefit t the expenseof their often coercively uppressed) ubjects; the regional powers associatedwith such a system ompete for gainsand influence within ny alliancesystem;and great powers from outside propose 'security' systems hat are to theirparticular dvantage and seek to minimize or completely xclude the nfluenceof their rivals. This latter point was as clear to Dr Kissinger n the post-I973situation n the Middle East as it was to Mr Brezhnev n Eastern urope in i968.

In the case of the Middle East this ssue is clearly of vital importance. Theregion spre-eminent n the contemporary world in the degree of the nterstatewar and the attendant rms races and tension; and its interstate ompetitionis more complex than anywhere else in the world because it involves not

just a bipolar conflict, s was the case with the Cold War in Europe, but aset of interlocking onflicts Arab-Israeli, Iran-Iraq, Iraq-Syria, Iraq-SaudiArabia, Saudi-Yemeni, Syrian-Lebanese, yrian-Jordanian, gyptian-Libyan,Moroccan-Algerian, Palestinian-Syrian, nd so forth. The history f formaland informal treaty organizations in the region is one of weakness,incompleteness nd failure: by the Arab League in the I940s, by the BaghdadPact-CENTO in the g5os and I960s, by the Twin Pillar' approach n the Gulfin the I970s, by the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab CooperationCouncil, which failed to protect member state and foundered on 2 August

230


10/13


I990. The problems are well known: no organization can be created thatincludes srael and the Arabs, or even the Arabs and Iran or Turkey; the Arabsthemselves re divided, as the rival GCC-ACC lineup prior to the Kuwaitinvasion showed, followed by the breakup of the ACC itself; he Arabs as awhole are reluctant o sign formal reaty greements with the Western powersthat have a direct nterest n supporting hem and in guaranteeing ccess to oil;and Arab public opinion is hostile o Western roop deployments ven where,as in Saudi Arabia, these troops are there o protect he country rom xternalattack.

The ability f ocal and external orces o build a system hat meets the goalsof egitimate egional ecurity s therefore imited, nd this will be exacerbated

by some of the ikely onsequences of the Gulf War-widespread anti-Westernfeeling n major Arab states, he weakened legitimacy f Middle East coalitionstates, the enhanced position of Iran (which will use its power to opposearrangements t does not like), the refusal f Israel to make any concessions nthe Palestine ssue, nd increasing iscord among the great powers about whatkind of solution to come up with. The defeat of Iraq, however, and the senseof urgency which many even the Saudis will feel, may lead to somedevelopment, within obvious guidelines. These might include, first, themaximum use of indigenous military orces, notably those of Egypt; second,the deployment of multilateral eace-keeping forces under UN, Arab Leagueor Islamic auspices, t least to act as a buffer etween Kuwait and Iraq; third,the deployment s far s is practically ossible of Western military apabilitieson sea and in the air, with actual troops (as distinct from prepositionedequipment) kept out of the region, possibly in Turkey or other NATOcountries; fourth, concerted effort o seek (if not find) a solution to thePalestinian uestion; and fifth, reater ttention o programmes of economicand social development designed to rebuild destroyed ountries, otably raq,and to remove the widespread problems found n much of the rest f the Arabworld.

The difficulties ith this programme for security re evident, however. Inthe first lace there s a direct onflict etween the ong-term need to establish,develop and maintain viable democratic regimes n the region and the moreimmediate concerns f security. aced with this choice, there s a presumptionthat the Arab regimes nd their Western backers will choose stability, .e. thestatus uo, over the riskier ath of democratization. hey will point to what

happens when the lid does come off in Iran, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia toreinforce heir ase.Second, any remotely foreseeable ecurity ystem will fail to address the

Palestinian uestion. The Israelis o not appear to be going to compromise. ThePLO may be discredited, not least among the Gulf Arabs, but will notdisappear, et alone allow a viable alternative epresentative o emerge. f thereis a substitute or the PLO it is the more intransigent amas, inspired y Iran.Welfare programmes lone are not going to do much to quell Palestinian nger.There is no 'developmental fix' as far s the Palestinian ssue s concerned, no

231I


11/13

Fred Halliday

killing the intifadah ith kindness, ven assuming there was agreement withinIsrael and the Arab world on helping rather han punishing nd marginalizingthe Palestinians.

Third, the major regional powers have their wn postwar genda, each of anincompatible kind. Turkey does not, unless there s a complete breakdown ofgovernment n Baghdad, want to acquire Iraqi territory; he oil of northernIraq has only 20 years to go and Ankara does not want another four millionKurds within ts borders. But it does want a new security ole in the region, san ally of the United States nd as an influential ower in a region where Turkswill point out) all the trouble is caused by quarrels between their erstwhilecolonies.

Iran not only does not want Turkey to have a role in the Gulf, but it wantsto exclude Egypt, Pakistan and the Western forces as well. In the currentclimate n Iran it is almost inconceivable that any Tehran government ouldjoin a formal treaty organization with Western powers or the conservativeArabs, however loosely defined. For Iran the ssue s simple: the Kuwait crisisshows the need for the traditional egional hegemon to reassume he mantle ofmaintaining rder. The area is not called the Persian Gulf for nothing. SaudiArabia, on the other hand, seesthe war as both a threat nd an opportunity: tfeared, easonably, nvasion by Iraq, and it will allow US troops to remain fora considerable period. It wants to make sure, however, that it controls thepostwar settlement: hat there will follow re-establishment f political controlin Kuwait, establishment f a more friendly Arab nationalist regime inBaghdad, the polite exclusion of Iran, the return of Turkey to pre-crisisabstention. On the issue of Israel, Iran retains he classic rejectionist tance,refusing o accept the legitimacy f any Jewish tate. The Saudis have also tolook to the disarray n which the world Islamic community finds tself, witheven groups that were hitherto unded by the Saudis, such as FIS in Algeria and

various Egyptian forces, now supporting addam Hussein.On the outside, the preconditions or securing ccess to oil and maintaining'stability' are not so propitious either. The United States will not bear thefinancial nd human costs of a large Gulf deployment ingle handed, not leastbecauseof domestic opposition on financial rounds, but its OECD allieshavean ambivalent ttitude-on the one hand refusing oplay military nd financialrolescomparable to the United States, n the other uspecting hatonce the waris over the US will use the leverage' it has acquired over Gulf oil supplies toexact concessions from Japan and Western Europe in future conomic andsecurity egotiations. he paradox is that he other OECD states re suspiciousof what they ee as a re-establishment f US hegemony, but are ready for theUnited States to accomplish t. The US public, as distinct rom the Pentagonand the White House, is not that concerned about hegemony or dying forKuwait, but does want to see a reassertion f hegemony as against theirincreasingly ntrusive ommercial competitors.

232


12/13


The economic dimension

Beyond the issues of international trategy nd internal politics within these

countries ie a set of questions pertaining o the oil industry nd the place of theregion n the world economy. In one sense, xternal nterest as focused on thewrong aspect of the economic impact of this war. Most attention was paid towhether t would provoke a rise n oil prices, but after he nitial uncertaintiesof August the world supply made up the five million barrels day of ost raqiand Kuwaiti output, nd the outbreak of war inJanuary id not disrupt utputor transportation rom the lower Gulf. Far more important were two othersless immediately uantifiable, spects of the crisis: the impact on the budget

deficits nd hence on the overall economic prospects f the United States andBritain, nd the mpact on international ommercial and financial onfidence.The former s hard to quantify, inceno one could say what the war was goingto cost the coalition states, n particular he United States. With an annualmilitary xpenditure f $300 billion, he dditional xpenditures ssociatedwiththe war (of, say, $So billion mostly covered by contributions y other states)might not seem so large. Compared to the costs of the other major crisis hathit the US government's inancial alculations n I990, the savings and loanscrisis, he Kuwait crisis ppeared small ndeed, estimates f the atter's ost overa number of years running from $soo to $i,Soo billion. Nevertheless, hedistortions f the US and British udgets may well have long-term eflationaryeffects. ven more so, the fall n business onfidence nd the mpact on certainespecially ulnerable ectors-airlines, ourism-meant that he broad, ong-runand macroeconomic mpact of the war have been considerable, owever stablethe oil price will have been shown to be.

Against this background, t is nonetheless ossible to identify ourparticulareconomic issuesthat any assessment f the war must confront.

Oil prices:The war was in part caused by an oil price dispute within OPEC,between the high-price group including raq and the low-price grouping ofKuwait, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. One lesson which has probably beenlearnt by OPEC states, n the Gulf at least, s that uch playing with oil pricesis too dangerous to be worth t. A consensus n favour of holding oil prices stherefore ikely o emerge. f there s a greater ntegration f Iran nto the Gulf,and a desire o promote the rebuilding f raq under a new regime, upport forrelatively higher prices s also likely.

Productionevels:This political and economic interest n holding prices will, ofcourse, run up against the fact that when Kuwaiti and Iraqi production comeon stream gain they will either push down prices or entail that others whohave raised output since August lower their production once again. This maytake time a year or two to achieve. In the longer run from i995onwards the world oil market will more and more come to be dominated bya core of Gulf states: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Iraq. They will be able

233


13/13

Fred Halliday

to maintain prices, provided they are united, and the knowledge that theirdomination sgoing to increase may act to consolidate OPEC discipline ooner.

Sovietoutput: efore 990 the USSR produced about I2 million barrels f oila day, of which 3-4 million were exported. n addition t supplied substantialamounts of gas to Western Europe. The crisiswithin the USSR has hit outputof oil and gas in several ways: levels of output have fallen because of strikes,management s not taking nvestment nd maintenance decisions, output ofinvestment oods (centred n Azerbaijan) has been hit by strikes. his has ledto a marked fall n production nd exports. Output in January 99I was over8 per cent down on I990, and the current oviet budget predicts hat il exports

will fall by Soper cent n 1991. Some Soviet experts now predict hat by I992or I993 the USSR will be a net oil importer. or Eastern Europe the changeswithin the USSR are doubly threatening, ince they nvolve both cutbacks nphysical upplies and rises n price to world levels, as well as, from JanuaryI99I, Soviet insistence hat all payment be in dollars. This means that EastEuropean demand for oil on the world market will increase n the months ndyears ahead. Even if Soviet and Gulf prices are the same, the East Europeansmay calculate that non-Soviet supply is more reliable than the intermittentexports of a troubled USSR.

Security f upply: Given the tensions nd conflict hat have long prevailed n theGulf, not least the Iran-Iraq War and the attendant anker war, it is strikinghow little il supplieshave been disrupted ver recent years. The Kuwait crisishas followed the same pattern. There remains, however, a long-term oncernin the outside world that Gulf oil supplies will be threatened, f not by directattack, hen by political conflict within tates nd by interstate ars, and thatmeasures need to be taken to insulate as far as possible this supply from the

political nvironment n which t takes place. No system an operate gainst hewishesof governments n the region, nd it s n their ong-run nterest o ensurethat oil keeps flowing. Any broader system of regional security, with orwithout the presence of external military forces, will need to address thisquestion. The technical preconditions or ecure supply nvolve the protectionof production nd refining acilities nd the guarding of tanker hipping anesand pipelines.Given past and recent xperience, his hould not be too difficultto organize. What is more difficult s the overall political nvironment: ere the

focus returns othe

question addressed bove,of

the regimesn

these countriesand the ability of the oil-importing tates o find reasonable common groundwith egitimate nd stable governments. he security f oil ultimately erivesfrom the political strength nd legitimacy f the states n the region.

I0 March 991

234

The Gulf War and Its Aftermath Halliday

Documents