The Arab Gulf is arming itself, but why, asks Ayman El-Amir Gulf Arab states are going on a shopping spree for the purchase of sophisticated Western weaponry at an estimated cost of $60 billion. A recent report in The New York Times, of which The Daily Telegraph had published another version two months earlier, said the lethal weapons order would include Apache attack helicopters, cruise missiles, Typhoon fighters and tanks, in addition to other war accessories. Saudi Arabia, which already has US-installed and operated Patriot anti- missile batteries, will reportedly spend $50 billion, representing the lion's share of the military package. The UAE has earmarked almost $8 billion to buy fighter aircraft, missiles and other military materiel. Other states vying for modern armament are Kuwait and Oman. And money is no problem. The oil revenues of Middle Eastern producing countries in 2006 is estimated at more than $400 billion, based on an average price of $57 per barrel. Suddenly, the Gulf Arab region has become a vendor's paradise for Western arms manufacturers. An arms race is accelerating in the region, with incalculable consequences. The question is: for what purpose? Self-defence in the face of a threat is a historically legitimate right of individuals and nations. In the past two decades, military conflict in the Gulf region surpassed cyclical violence that has ravaged the Middle East since the State of Israel was created almost 60 years ago. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and fought a senseless war for most of the 1980s. It left deep political scars and more than one million casualties on both sides. Then Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 in a revenge war over oil prices, which took another war by a US-led international coalition in 1991 to dislodge his army from Kuwait. After a decade of international sanctions, the Bush administration concocted flimsy pretexts to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003. The Gulf region has turned into a cobweb of wrecked nerves. There is the confrontation between the US and Iran over the latter's nuclear activities, with veiled threats of US military action ("all options are on the table," says US Vice-president Dick Cheney). Iran is also accused of stoking violence in Iraq, to which the US is responding with harassment of pro-IranianIraqi politicians. The US and Israel are actively cultivating sedition between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and in Lebanon. US invasion, intimidation, hegemony and military bases and facilities have spread insecurity throughout the region. If self-defence in a jittery region is legitimate, then it is equally a legitimate question to define the enemy against whom the Gulf States will defend themselves. Saddam Hussein is gone and it is unlikely that Iraq in its present, and possibly medium-term state of chaos, will think of threatening its neighbours again. A terrorist spillover of the civil war in Iraq is a potential threat, but nothing that the present strength of military forces cannot handle. An even more distant likelihood is that the Gulf Arab States want to show some military muscle as a way of pressuring Israel on the matter of its murderous campaign against the Palestinians in the occupied territories. They all believe that conflict could and should be settled by negotiations. A more unlikely scenario still is that when these states are armed to the teeth they would become a potential Arab peacekeeping force that could control the situation in Lebanon, or the civil war in Iraq. That leaves only one possibility: building a string of military fortresses against Iran and thus relieve the US of the unsustainable financial and political burden of its presence as a foreign military power on Arab territory -- an irksome domestic problem for Arab regimes in the region. But would the Gulf States be willing to play the cat's paw in confronting Iran on behalf of the US? Not unless they see a clear and present danger. The US, through its occupation and oppression of Iraq, has seen to that by sowing the seeds of Sunni-Shia division, thus provoking a fratricidal war. It is doing the same in Lebanon with the help of Israel. Iran has conveniently been painted as the implacable "Shia" threat to the moderate, predominantly "Sunni", states of the Gulf, which also have a "fifth column" of Shia minorities. The neo-con maniacs of the Bush administration do not mind igniting a Sunni-Shia regional war that would mirror Iraqi pandemonium as part of their Middle East "constructive chaos" scenarios. That may even justify another massive US military intervention at some future point to protect the Gulf's energy sources that generate two-thirds of the world's energy supplies. It would be safeguarding global economic growth and saving Western civilisation from economic ruin. So, the need for Sunni Gulf Arabs to counterbalance the growing threat of Shia Iran is the primary objective. It may be that in the face of developing regional threats, Gulf States simply need to update their defence systems, albeit by adding attack helicopters, fighter aircraft and missiles. But what if, in the potential development of events, the US should launch a pre-emptive missile war against Iran's nuclear facilities? Iran may retaliate by raining missiles on the US Central Command in Qatar, the naval base in Bahrain, the staging bases in Kuwait or the Dhahran airbase. Would that be an act of aggression against these countries that would trigger counter-retaliation and, inevitably, a regional war? Or would it be no more an aggression against these independent, sovereign states than would an attack on Guantanamo Bay be regarded as an act of aggression against Cuba? And what if Israel undertakes to launch an air strike against Iran, secretly flying over these Gulf States without asking permission? The US war in Iraq is striking too many analogies with, and sustaining as many scars as, the Vietnam War. Iraq has been destroyed beyond recognition and as in the case of Vietnam the US is preparing to declare victory and run. This is signified by the announcement of the phased withdrawal of British troops from Basra by the years end. Obsessed with Iran and hard-driven by Israel, the Bush administration is preparing for Phase II in the Gulf region war -- withdrawal and fighting a war by Shia-Sunni proxies. This would turn the situation from a US-Arab alliance that is difficult to maintain into an Arab-Iranian conflict with the US reaping the benefits of backing the Sunnis against the Shias. It is a dangerously insane strategy that would plunge the region into an endless war that would, by comparison, dwarf the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the meantime, the foreign ministers of seven Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan met in Islamabad on the initiative of Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to discuss the possibility of working out solutions to the war in Iraq and the Palestinian problem. Two central players, Iran and Syria, were excluded, more because they do not fit into the coalition of the US- defined "moderates" than for any sectarian reason. Whether the coalition eventually turns into one of the long-abandoned, US- inspired Middle East military/political alliances of the 1950s or a credible force for peace in the region remains to be seen. Possession of advanced military weaponry is usually a standard of national pride for almost any country, and especially for the military. But military might creates a temptation for using it. The option is put on the table of political leaders when discussing a crisis situation. Such scenarios and their consequences are not hard to visualise, particularly in the present Gulf situation. On the opposite sidewalk to the entrance to the United Nations building at 1st Avenue and 42nd Street, there is a memorial plaque for Ralph Bunche, the legendary UN assistant secretary-general who worked so hard on peace issues -- a raison d'être for the founding of the world organisation. Engraved on the black stone plaque is the biblical saying: "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4). Will they?
