US-made F-15 jet fighters of the Saudi Royal Air Force perform on January 1, 2013, in Riyadh. (AFP PHOTO/FAYEZ NURELDINE)[/caption]While everything in the Middle East seems to be in flux—Syria is mired in civil war and other states that have experienced revolutions of one kind or another are facing their own economic and political crises—some facets of the American relationship with the Middle East remain unchanged.
Despite the American withdrawal from Iraq, President Obama’s reluctance to intervene in Syria, and the cautious response to the election of Mohamed Mursi, US policy in the Middle East has been very consistent in its desire to maintain the security relationship with the Arab monarchies of the Gulf.
From the point of view of international security and military power, the US has been keenly interested in the Gulf since 1945, although it preferred to keep a low profile in the thirty years after the end of World War II. All of this changed after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The US was forced to scramble for a new approach—and a big part of this was the Carter Doctrine, which President Jimmy Carter announced in 1980. Following this declaration, the US stepped up its military presence in the Gulf in a big way.
Since then, the number of American troops stationed in the region has twice spiked massively—once to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, and again during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. On both occasions, the number of American soldiers reached six figures before sharply declining again. Since the withdrawal from Iraq in Obama’s first term, the US presence has declined drastically—but only relative to the enormous presence that existed beforehand.
In fact, American military presence in the Gulf remains formidable, and the US shows every intention of retaining its links with the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It has even attempted (unsuccessfully) to persuade the new Iraqi government to let some troops stay. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is still headquartered in Bahrain, and the forward headquarters of Central Command (CENTCOM), the leadership of American military forces in the Middle East and East Africa, is still the huge Al-Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar.
With the downfall and execution of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, American worries about Gulf security have shifted to two other big concerns: terrorism and Iran.
Both of these were on display this month, with the US conducting two back-to-back major military exercises with its regional allies. The first, Eagle Resolve 13, was the latest of a series of annual exercises conducted in a GCC state each year. It was Qatar’s turn to host this year, and the field portions of the exercise involved scenarios simulating different kinds of terrorist attack, including hijacked aircraft and oil platforms, and an attack with chemical weapons on Doha.
This exercise officially concluded on Monday after one week of drills. Immediately afterwards, another exercise began, this one set to last for three weeks and involving the naval forces of the US, several GCC states and other allies. International Mine Clearance Exercise (IMCE) 13 is ostensibly not aimed at Iran specifically, but Iran is believed to have built up a substantial arsenal of several thousand mines and is the only state around the Gulf that has actually used mines in combat, in the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988.
More worrying to the US and its Gulf allies, Iran has also made threats in the past to “close” the Straits of Hormuz to sea traffic when tensions have been high. Lacking much of a surface fleet and with only a small force of submarines, Iran would have to rely on mines and missiles to accomplish this, although American military superiority would probably make this a suicidal task for Iranian forces.
Coupled with the huge arms sales to Gulf Arab states, it is clear that the US intends to retain a substantial role in Gulf security. One of the latest arms deals, the sale of several dozen Boeing F-15 combat jets to Saudi Arabia, was worth almost USD 30 billion in total, and was one of the largest ever conducted under the American Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
At the end of last year, the US also agreed to sell its latest anti-ballistic missile system to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, at a cost of almost USD 8 billion in total. The move is likely a response to concerns about Iran’s ongoing nuclear program, and its possession of intermediate-range rockets similar to the Scuds that Saddam Hussein used to bombard his enemies. The announcement of that sale followed on the heels of another major anti-mine exercise conducted by the US and its allies in the Gulf, last September.
Overall, these exercises also show why the US remains concerned with security in the Gulf, a region far from its own shores. Speaking to London’s Guardian newspaper last week, the American admiral in command of this month’s exercise said: “Japan gets about 75% of their oil from the Gulf, China gets about 70%, so imagine the effect on China's economy if oil stops suddenly stops flowing. The effect would be immediate. It is important to the whole world those water ways are free-flowing."
