As oil, revolution, and war attract increasing attention to the Persian Gulf, articles and books about the area spew forth in the West. For the most part, they are written by overnight experts or sycophants, authors hobbled by deep ignorance of alien customs and blinded by the prospect of sharing in the vast wealth of the region if they say the right things. In J.B. Kelly's words, "a shuffling, endless procession of sages, oracles, sophists and sciolists" hold forth about the Gulf "with all the perspicacity of an Arabian Bedouin discussing the finer points of the United States Constitution."
Even were the competition not so dismal, Kelly's book would stand out as a tour de force. Mr. Kelly has wide knowledge, a sharp writing style, and a clear political vision, and he has written a large, wise, and angry study. Occasional excesses can be found in the work, but they do not detract from its main themes that succeed in debunking Gulf myths and alerting the West to the tragic course on which it is currently embarked. Kelly argues that the policies of Middle Eastern states towards the West are motivated by a deep hatred for Europe and by the hope that their new wealth and power will allow them to vanquish it. "The actions of the Arabs and the Persians before, during and since 1973, if placed in their historical, religious, racial and cultural setting, amount to nothing less than a bold attempt to lay the Christian West under tribute to the Muslim East."
The use of oil as a weapon thus expresses "powerful sentiments of grievance and resentment against the Christian West [which have been] long cherished by the Arabs, who deem themselves a chosen people, the repository of the true faith, the race of the Prophet, ordained by Providence to receive the submission of others." In contrast to this surge of Muslim confidence and aggression, the West has lost its nerve and sense of purpose.
This decline began already decades ago: "the collapse of the European empires in Asia and Africa was due less to the might of the anti-colonialist forces than it was to the sapping of the European powers' will to rule." This "will to rule" collapsed completely by the time Britain withdrew from Aden in 1967 and the Trucial States in 1971 — two little-known but significant events.
 J.B. Kelly. |
Some indication of this can be gathered from the fact that the sultans of Aden who did not flee their homelands quickly enough after the 1967 withdrawal were murdered; and by the fact that when the British complained about the expense of keeping forces in the Gulf, several of the Trucial sheiks offered to reimburse Britain for its efforts—an utterly trivial sum in contrast to the value of the oil in the region.
Still, the British persisted in abandoning their commitments in the Gulf. As Kelly puts it, "It was ... a betrayal of the trust placed in British steadfastness, a renunciation of an imperial power's recognized responsibilities to its subjects." In other words, "a betrayal of all [Britain] had done and stood for in the region for 150 years." This, despite Aden's incalculable value in controlling the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the Gulfs possession of the world's most precious raw materials.
Only loss of nerve can explain such blithe withdrawal. And like Britain a decade ago, the West today responds with indecision and appeasement to foes that are determined to impoverish, immobilize, and finally dominate us. Kelly decries the policies of the West for their amorality and harmfulness and blames all the "melancholy consequences" of the OPEC boom
on the failure of the Western powers to back the oil companies to the hilt from the early months of 1970 onwards, to stop Qaddafi in his tracks in the summer of that year, to prick the bubble of the shah's insensate illusions about his own power and consequence, and to help the companies gain the upper hand of OPEC at Tehran at the outset of 1971. The companies lost the contest, not because their adversaries were stronger but because their own governments were indecisive and they themselves were enfeebled by their own disunity.
Although the West has already let much go — its control of Aden and the Gulf to local potentates, its wealth to the oil producers — enough still remains in its hands to save the situation. Our strategic position can be maintained by holding tightly onto Oman; the oil problem can be ended by smashing the cartel: "There is . . . only one way to cope with OPEC surpluses [of wealth], and this is to reduce them to marginal limits — if not to erase them completely — by breaking up the cartel and forcing down the price of oil. All other expedients designed to soak up the surpluses are bound to prove, as they are proving, unavailing."
The imperial age came to an end in the aftermath of World War II, followed by a generation of retraction and withdrawal, Kelly presents a startlingly new argument for the post-post-imperial age; Europeans and Americans can yet turn back the tide that threatens to overwhelm them. They need only to throw off their guilt and purposelessness and once again reassert themselves on the world scene. Should they decide to do so, no one can stop them. And such moves would benefit not only them but also the many peoples of the world ravaged by their own rulers.
Two other excellent features of this book deserve mention. First, the work contains in chapters three to six the finest account in print of the internal history of Arabia and the Gulf, bringing places like Oman and Kuwait to life. I myself, a historian of the Middle East, found the information on each page almost all new; finally I shall be able to keep straight the difference between Abu Dhabi and Dubai — for better or worse, ever-more-important knowledge.
Second, Kelly writes with a savage but incisive pen. Two examples, taken almost at random, may convey some sense of his splendid prose. Concerning the much-vaunted foreign aid given by OPEC states:
To fend off the envious or the censorious among their fellow Arab governments (and those of the Afro-Asian world at large), they have made a great brouhaha about the sums they have donated as charity to needy lands or worthy causes; only to hurriedly amend their exaggerated estimates as they found the ragtag and bobtail of Asia and Africa beating a path to their doors, begging bowls outstretched.
Concerning radical Arab regimes:
their beau ideal of government is not the gentle and noble vision attributed to them by credulous Westerners, of popularly elected legislatures graced by the grave and dignified figures of so many Oriental Ciceros, Scipios and Gracchi. On the contrary, their paragons of political virtue are the self-perpetuating oligarchies and politburos of the kind that rule in Baghdad, Tripoli and Aden, composed of men of flinty and vulpine visage, backed by the apparatus of the thumbscrew and the rack, and animated by a virulent mixture of Marxist bigotry and Muslim fanaticism.
Above all, however, at a time when the position of America and Europe in the Middle East has never looked bleaker, Kelly's book stands out for the unique and accurate information it provides about a most critical area of the world, and for the author's clarion plea to the West that it fundamentally reassess its relations with the oil-producing countries of the Middle East before the opportunity to do so is irretrievably lost.
