US Policy
The Cold Peace
March 26, 1985, will mark the sixth anniversary of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, brokered and signed in Washington, the culmination of the “Camp David process.” What have been the consequences of this pact, and where is the peace it was supposed to usher into the region?
Peck, The Reagan Adminstration and the Palestine Question
Juliana S. Peck, The Reagan Administration and the Palestine Question: The First Thousand Days (Washington, DC: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1984).
The Reagan Administration in the Middle East
Under the Reagan administration, the United States has waged “the second Cold War” with particular forcefulness in the Middle East. Washington has moved combat forces into the region repeatedly since 1981: to engage first Libyan warplanes over the Gulf of Sidra, then Lebanese militias and Syrian forces outside Beirut, and most recently Iranian air and naval patrols in the Persian Gulf. These military operations have accompanied political steps that have moved the US away from an emphasis on close relations with “moderate” Arab regimes in favor of closer strategic ties with Israel. From the administration’s perspective, such policies have provided a coherence to American relations with this part of the world that was lacking during the Carter years.
Getting to the War On Time
Fifty thousand troops move across the desert in 100 degree-plus temperatures. F-18 jet fighters scream through the air and strafe the rock and sand below. Tanks maneuver over rough terrain to pound enemy positions. A buzzer goes off in a soldier’s helmet: The computer-guided laser network at the Army National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, is telling this soldier that in a real war he would be dead.
Militarism, Monetarism and Markets
The policies of the Reagan administration strive to recapture the nearly unlimited US power of the 20 years following World War II. Through the late 1960s and 1970s, US global dominance steadily declined in all but the military realm. This decline occurred during a period of intense global economic integration. Since 1979, in a belated response to this loss of hegemony, US state managers have embraced a radically aggressive and destructive new policy comprising three main elements: monetarism, militarism and markets. In an attempt to reverse recent historical trends, they have embarked upon an adventurist foreign policy while simultaneously attacking the economic wellbeing of both the traditionally high-wage US working class and the disenfranchised poor.
Intervention and the Nuclear Firebreak in the Middle East
The “deadly connection” — the link between interventionism, conventional warfare and nuclear war — has now become a major issue for the peace movement. This, in turn, has compelled those working on nuclear disarmament questions to begin to deal with the Middle East and US policy there. The reason for this is simple. When we look at specific regions of the world, it is obvious that the Middle East is the area where the connection arises in its most acute and dangerous form — the area where a nuclear war is most likely to break out.
From the Editors (November/December 1984)
Ronald Reagan’s resounding reelection victory on November 6 represents a daunting challenge to progressive forces in this country, a challenge that would have been awesome enough even if the Democrats had managed to win. Indicative of the dangers that lie ahead was the administration’s fabricated “leak” on election night that Soviet MiG fighter jets were en route to Nicaragua. This assertion proved completely false, but still served the administration’s purpose of whipping up support for greater US military intervention there. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger then tried to maintain the official distortion level by insisting that Nicaragua was importing massive quantities of offensive weapons.
Commanding the Center
Although President Jimmy Carter pledged in January 1980 to “use any means necessary, including military force” to ensure “the free movement of Middle Eastern oil” and created the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) for intervention in the Third World, the American military presence in the Middle East was still relatively small when President Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981. [1] Over the past three years, the Reagan administration has substantially expanded the size and strength of American military forces surrounding the Middle East.
US Ready to Intervene in Gulf War
The current phase of the war between Iran and Iraq has prompted a level of US military intervention in the Gulf region that is new and unprecedented in both qualitative and quantitative terms, and holds the risk of a more direct combat role on Iraq’s behalf. Since early 1983, the stalemate in the war appeared to be working in Iran’s favor. Its greater weight in terms of population and economic resources gave it the edge in a strategy of attrition. Beginning in the fall of 1983, Iraq threatened to counter by attacking Iran’s oil exporting capacity. This campaign finally began in March and April 1984, with missile attacks against oil tankers near Iran’s Kharg island loading facility.
From the Editors (May 1984)
One of the great achievements of the capitalist class in the United States has been its ability to enlist the enthusiastic support of the trade union leadership in this country for a foreign policy of intervention and counterrevolution, a policy clearly against the interests of the organized working class here. One recent instance was AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland’s presence on the panel headed by Henry Kissinger which endorsed the Reagan Administration’s war against Central America. The interest of US corporate leaders in a policy supporting rightwing oligarchies and juntas is directly related to the preservation of low-wage, unorganized labor havens for their “runaway” shops and factories. These in turn are used as levers to wrest concessions from workers in this country.
Brzezinski, Power and Principle
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).
In the title of his account of four years as Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski offers two concepts that, in his view, should guide US foreign policy. As with so much in this tart apologia, his argument is as often about individuals as about abstractions. “Principle” is a reaction against the realpolitik of the Kissinger era, and its neglect of the human rights issue. “Power” is a riposte to the moralism and “guilt” of Brzezinski’s main rival, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
From the Editors (January/February 1984)
It has become quite the rage in Washington lately to declaim “state terrorism” as the new scourge of humanity. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post recently featured extensive inquiries into the attacks against US and Israeli targets in Lebanon, and US and Kuwaiti targets in the Gulf. Before the ink was dry, the chorus of Reagan, Shultz and Weinberger were denouncing “state terrorism” from every pulpit and grandstand as the major affliction of civilization in this decade. Never mind that acts of armed resistance against military occupation—such as in Lebanon—are now routinely labeled “terrorist” by the learned men who edit the Times and the Post.
Israeli, American Military Confer on Combat Stress
On January 2-6, 1983, I attended the Third International Conference on Psychological Stress and Adjustment in Time of War and Peace, sponsored by Tel Aviv University. The first two conferences in the series, convened in 1975 and 1978, were also held in Tel Aviv. According to the organizers, the conferences were designed to 1) facilitate the exchange of knowledge within the international scientific and professional community on topics of war-related stress and adjustment, and 2) enable Israeli scientists and professionals to exchange ideas and insights about various programs initiated during and after the October war of 1973.
US Aid to Israel
The General Accounting Office (GAO), often referred to as “the congressional watchdog agency,” began a full-scale investigation of US aid to Israel in early 1982, without any public announcement or official congressional sponsor. The report was completed in early 1983 and circulated to the relevant government agencies for comment, as is customary. These included the State and Defense Departments, the Agency for International Development (AID) and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Israeli Embassy also had the opportunity to review the text, on the grounds that some information had been obtained from classified Israeli sources.
Conventional Arms Sales
For years, US leaders have attempted to muffle opposition to overseas arms sales by arguing that transfers of conventional, non-nuclear munitions reduce the risk of nuclear war. If we provide our allies with adequate conventional defenses, the argument goes, they will not be motivated to acquire nuclear defenses. But conventional arms sales to the Middle East have not reduced the risk of nuclear war. In fact, the opposite is true: Cascading arms sales to the region are making nuclear war more, not less likely.
AirLand Battle Doctrine
The US Army has recently adopted an aggressive new warfighting doctrine called AirLand Battle. Its precepts now constitute the Army’s basic “how to fight” principles for a decade of “intense, deadly, and costly” battles. The Middle East is one of three major theaters—along with Europe and Korea—in which the Army intends to use its doctrine.
On the Beach
There are two kinds of beaches in US defense planning. The first is the shoreline that US Marines typically storm in a real or rehearsed military intervention. The second belongs to the domain of the nuclear strategists. When their “limited” nuclear war games go astray, simulating escalation into all-out thermonuclear war, the strategists privately label this outcome a “beach,” after the title of Nevil Shute’s popular novel of nuclear apocalypse, On the Beach. In this era, when two military superpowers envelope the globe with the reach of their nuclear weapons, the question inevitably arises: Is it possible for the Rapid Deployment Force to storm the beaches of the Persian Gulf without leaving all of us on the beach of nuclear annihilation?
The War in Lebanon
On Sunday morning, June 6, 1982, 40,000 Israeli troops, with hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, rolled across the 33-mile border with southern Lebanon. Israeli seaborne troops landed on the Lebanese coast at Sidon and near the mouth of the Zahrani River, while the Israeli air force continued the intense bombing of Palestinian camps in the south and around Beirut begun two days earlier.
The Arc of Crisis and the New Cold War
The latter half of the 1970s witnessed a sustained and geographically diverse series of social upheavals in the Third World which, taken together, constituted a lessening of Western control in the developing areas. In Africa, the Ethiopian revolution of 1974 was followed by a series of changes in the remaining embattled colonies attendant upon the revolution in Portugal: in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (1975) and, as a consequence of the independence of Mozambique, in Zimbabwe (1980). The Southwest Asian region was transformed by the revolutions in Afghanistan (1978) and Iran (1979). In Central America there was a triumphant revolution in Nicaragua (1979), and continuing unrest in El Salvador and Guatemala.
From the Editors (October-December 1981)
This is our one hundredth issue, and our tenth anniversary. The variety and scope of the articles, and the size of the magazine, go beyond anything we have attempted before. At the same time, this issue incorporates and represents much of what MERIP has tried to do over its ten years past. We are very pleased to feature here Roger Owen’s insightful assessment of the Arab world’s last decade in the economic sphere. Fred Halliday addresses head on the official contentions of US policymakers concerning the Soviet role in the region, and situates the “new cold war” in the global and regional upheavals of the past ten years.