The Soviet Factor

Not very long ago, the outbreak of a shooting war in the waters of the Gulf would have been viewed in Washington with nightmarish apprehension—as a fuse burning its way quickly towards World War III.

In accordance with the conventional wisdom of many U.S. policy-makers and countless ordinary Americans, any scenario for such an outbreak presupposed that the Soviet Union would be the instigator—or would, at any rate, be working hard to exploit the crisis to further its ambitions for "warm water ports," or even to deprive the Western world of its principal source of oil.

High-level military alerts would immediately come into force, and the U.S. would begin making its own military moves to defend an area that a number of presidents had stated was of "vital interest" to the United States. Within hours, the nightmare of nuclear holocaust could become reality.

When shooting in the Gulf actually did escalate to critically dangerous levels in May and June, however, Washington did not react as though doomsday were imminent. In fact, its response to unprecedented attacks on Saudi and Kuwaiti oil tankers was relatively low-key: shipping 400 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Saudi Arabia and making some public declarations that the U.S. did not intend to intervene militarily, unless asked to do so by the Gulf countries.

So, hey—whatever happened to World War III, anyway?

What happened was that the United States found itself in a crisis in which the Soviet Union was on the same side—that's what. Although there was nothing about this development that fit the pattern of the scenario that so many Americans had been losing sleep over for so many years, it should not really have come as a surprise.

At the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war 45 months ago, there was, it is true, some reason for believing that it might contain the seeds of a future superpower confrontation. At that time, the U.S. was effectively neutral—although politically hostile to Iran because of the hostage crisis then still underway. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was estranged from its erstwhile ally, Iraq, and was providing arms and other support to Iraq's enemy, Iran.

For the last year or so, however, the U. S. and the Soviet Union have been clearly drifting, willy-nilly, into the same corner. The biggest shift has been made by the Soviet Union, which dropped its support for Iran and began resuming its arms shipments to Iraq. What triggered the Soviet switch was a crackdown by Iran on the local Tudeh (Communist) Party, during which Iranian Communists were executed and members of the Soviet embassy expelled. But there had already been signs that the "loose cannon" of radical Shiite fundamentalism was beginning to worry the Soviets—in great part because of the potential disruptive effect it could have on the Soviets' own Muslim population.

The U.S., at the same time, was making an increasingly visible tilt towards Iraq—loosening previous restrictions on U.S. economic support, lobbying other nations to cease supplying Iran with weapons, and publicly blaming Iran, but not Iraq, for the recent escalation of attacks on Gulf shipping. In the U. S. view, the prospect of an Iranian victory that could endanger the stability of the Arab oil suppliers on the other side of the Gulf began to outweigh the U.S.'s earlier preference not to take sides in a conflict between two countries with which it had many outstanding differences.

Main Obstacle: Iran

Although many of the Soviet and U.S. motivations for staking out their present positions are different, there has also been evidence of an underlying, common concern: neither wants the war to get out of control, and neither wants to reach a super-power confrontation. In the view of both countries, Iran has become the principal obstacle to these goals, since Iraq has agreed to a United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire followed by negotiations. Both the U. S. and the Soviet Union have also approved the U. N. resolution, while Iran has rejected it.

In other areas of the Middle East, the Soviets have not been on the "same side" as the U.S., and confrontation is always a possibility to be reckoned with. However, it is the prevailing view among Western diplomats in the region that the Soviets have not been following an aggressive policy, but have adopted a strategy of letting the United States make the mistakes, and then moving in cautiously to take advantage of them.

The major U.S. actions that the Soviets have been able to exploit during the past few months include the debacle in Lebanon, the U.S. failure to get Israel to stop working towards a de facto annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the highly visible "strategic alliance" it has forged with the Israelis. All these developments combined to create a sense of despondency about U.S. policies even within those Arab countries that have been the most hostile towards the Soviets and the most anxious to have friendly relations with the U.S.

So far, the only major ally the Soviets have in the Middle East is Syria. Although they stood by circumspectly in June, 1982, and did not intervene as Israel clobbered Syria's Soviet-equipped ground forces in Lebanon and knocked about one-quarter of its Soviet-equipped air force out of the skies, they moved in quickly afterwards to replace the losses with more sophisticated hardware.

Syria emerged within a few months with a stronger military machine than it had before the Israeli invasion, and was soon able to play a predominant political role within Lebanon and to thwart U. S. efforts to establish a Lebanese regime which would be under U.S. and Israeli influence.

Nonetheless, the Soviets have prudently turned down frequent Syrian requests to extend their treaty pledge to protect Syria from attack by including the Syrian presence in Lebanon. And they have managed to bear it—if not grin—when the Syrians have rejected a number of requests from the Soviets: for example, to open up the Syrian pipeline for exports of Iraqi oil, or to stop the attacks in Syrian-controlled northern Lebanon against the forces of another Soviet ally, Yasser Arafat.

The increasing disillusionment with U. S. policies has, however, given the Soviets a readier entree in many other countries of the Middle East. A high-level Soviet delegation has visited Beirut, where it was received courteously and with more than passing interest by President Gemayel and other Lebanese leaders. A similar mission has visited Jordan, where the government is considering the purchase of some Soviet military hardware to make up for what it has not been able to get from the United States. Egypt, meanwhile has agreed in principle with Moscow to exchange ambassadors after a three-year break. And angry officials in North Africa bluntly told travelling U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz that the Soviet Union was now becoming an important factor in the Middle East because of U.S. encouragement of disruptive policies by Israel.

A Traditional Presence

The truth is that the Soviet Union has always been a factor in the Middle East, with legitimate interests there—Syria, 5,000 miles from the U.S., is less than 300 miles from the Soviet Union—and many Western and Arab observers believe that the failure of the U.S. to acknowledge this fact has been a major cause of the on-and-off tensions of the past several years.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia Hermann F. Eilts wrote recently: "Like it or not, the Soviets are there—in Syria, Iraq, South Yemen and Ethiopia—and are improving their position elsewhere because of perceived American unreliability. Failure to perceive this is ostrichlike. They have neither more nor less legitimacy in the Middle East than we do."

A growing number of observers, including Mr. Eilts, argue that an international conference on the Middle East with Soviet participation—which, in fact, was not so long ago a goal of U.S. policy—may be the only way to limit Soviet mischief-making while reaching a settlement that is fair and durable. Many Arab governments, including Egypt, the U.S.'s closest Arab ally, have also declared publicly that the Soviet Union should not be excluded from any broad Middle East peace effort. So has Jordan's King Hussein, who told Time magazine during a recent interview:

"The U.S. is in a position to launch peace initiatives in the Middle East; the Soviet Union is not. But the Soviet Union can block progress on any peace initiative from which it is excluded. So why not involve the Russians and call their bluff?"