Tottering equations
John Cherian
Jordan, which has been witnessing widespread street protests, bought
U.S. weaponry worth $431 million in 2010. Here, opposition supporters
hold a placard reading “The penniless people” during a demonstration in
Amman demanding sweeping government reforms.
Even as the Arab street is on the boil demanding the ouster of
authoritarian regimes, Western governments are busy trying to notch up
multi-billion-dollar deals in the region. In Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and
Yemen, United States-supplied weaponry and crowd control equipment such
as tear gas shells and rubber bullets have been used against protesters.
The oil-exporting states in West Asia have been splurging their money on
buying sophisticated weaponry worth billions of dollars, mainly from the
U.S., while allowing their economies to suffer. These lop-sided
priorities of the pro-Western regimes in the region are a factor that
has ignited the ongoing popular revolts.
Anti-government demonstrators stand on oil pipelines as tear gas begins to
dissipate in Riffa, Bahrain, where tens of thousands of
anti-government demonstrators were prevented from marching to
the royal court. Bahrain splurged $100 million on U.S. arms in
2010. |
British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the Gulf states in the
last week of February accompanied by representatives from leading arms
manufacturers. Cameron was not at all contrite on the issue of
funnelling high-tech weaponry into a volatile region. Britain, along
with France, had recently suspended weapons sales to Bahrain and Libya
after security forces there fired live ammunition on protesters. But the
big markets for international arms merchants are among the Gulf
sheikdoms and emirates, which are flush with petrodollars. Leveraging
the so-called threat Iran poses to its neighbours, the U.S. has already
sold weapons worth $50 billion in the region between 2006 and 2009. The
Obama administration has notified the U.S. Congress of potential
military exports to West Asia worth more than $100 billion in the years
2009 and 2010.
The Egyptian government purchased weapons worth more than $2 billion
from the U.S. in 2009. Egypt is the second biggest recipient of U.S.
military aid after Israel. Between 2001 and 2008, Egypt purchased
weaponry worth $10.4 billion. The recently deposed Zine El Abidine Ben
Ali government in Tunisia bought weapons worth more than $15 million in
2009. Jordan, another country that is witnessing widespread street
protests, bought American weaponry worth $431 million last year.
Tiny Bahrain, where the people have been on the streets since early
February, splurged $100 million on American arms in 2010. Some of the
weaponry was used against peaceful protesters in Pearl Square in Manama,
the capital, during a midnight raid by the security forces in the third
week of February. U.S. arms sales to Iraq after the 2003 invasion have
been worth $3.5 billion.
The United Arab Emirates alone is planning to spend $6 billion in
military purchases in the next eight years. In the last decade, the UAE
purchased around $10 billion worth of armaments from the U.S. One-third
of the total U.S. arms sales are to West Asia, with Saudi Arabia and the
UAE being the biggest customers.
Late last year, the U.S. signed one of its biggest deals, worth $60
billion, with Saudi Arabia. It includes the purchase of advanced
military aircraft, helicopters, missiles and bombs. Between 2001 and
2008, according to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI) and the United Nations, the Saudi kingdom
spent $34.9 billion in military purchases, twice more than the combined
defence procurements of China and India in that period.
A significant amount of the profits the Saudi state generates from
the oil bonanza is ploughed back into the pockets of U.S. companies
through multi-billion-dollar deals. Robert Baer, a former Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer with considerable experience in West
Asia, has written that a “tacit part” of U.S.-Saudi relations was “that
the Americans would buy Saudi oil and would provide the Saudis with
protection and security”.
The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs,
Andrew Shapiro, stated recently that the sale of sophisticated military
equipment to the Saudis was meant to further align the kingdom’s
military relationship with the U.S. and allow the kingdom to better
protect its oil infrastructure, “which is critical to our economic
interests”.
This “recycling” of petrodollars back to the West has now been
profitably extended by Washington to states such as the UAE and, in the
recent past, to Libya after the West rehabilitated Muammar Qaddafi on
the world stage. European Union states alone provided Qaddafi with
weapons worth more than $474 million in 2009.
The West’s embargo on arms sales to Libya was lifted in 2004. Now the
U.S. and the E.U. want to set up a “no-fly zone” over Libya following
the takeover of the eastern part of the country by rebel forces. An
economic and arms embargo has been imposed on the Qaddafi-led government
in Tripoli while arms and money are being supplied to the rebels holed
up in Benghazi. West Asia today is the most militarised region in the
world, while its people are the most repressed.
The alliance between the West and the authoritarian rulers has meant
excellent profits for the armaments industry. In 2006, the British
government, citing “national interests”, stepped in to stop a probe
against the arms manufacturer BAE for bribing Saudi officials to sweeten
a multi-billion-dollar deal.
Many of the more than 1,000 U.S. military bases around the world are
located in the volatile West Asia region. Qaddafi kicked out the
Americans from their military bases in Libya soon after the ousting of
the Libyan monarch King Idris in a military coup in 1988. But the
foothold the Pentagon lost in northern Africa was more than compensated
for by the permanent bases it established since in Saudi Arabia, Iraq
and many other Gulf states. The military bases the U.S. has set up in
the region after the two Gulf wars are among the biggest in the region.
The U.S. military presence near Islam’s holiest places in Saudi
Arabia in the 1990s was a highly emotive issue in the Arab world. Most
of those involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks were Saudi
nationals. In the last week of February, another Saudi citizen was
arrested in the U.S. for allegedly planning terror attacks. Although the
U.S. has pulled out a large number of its troops from Saudi Arabia, many
U.S. troops still remain in secret micro-bases near the capital, Riyadh.
In Oman, the U.S. uses the base on Masirah Island for its military
activities in the region.
The U.S. military bases in neighbouring Kuwait host around 15,000
troops. In Iraq, the occupying American military has an unspecified
number of bases. Washington has indicated that after the planned
withdrawal of the bulk of the U.S. forces from the country, it would
like to hold on to five big military bases. Bahrain hosts one of the
biggest American naval bases. Its strategic location astride the Strait
of Hormuz abutting Iran is crucial to the American game plan of
dominating the region militarily.
It also explains why the Obama administration is treating the ruling
Khalifa dynasty there with kid gloves while brandishing the big stick at
Qaddafi. President Barack Obama is continuing the policy of his
predecessor, George W. Bush, who saw the West Asian regimes as a bulwark
against America’s current bete noire in the region - Iran. Washington’s
goal in the region was to transform the Arab-Israeli conflict into one
between the Arabs and Iran. By overstating Teheran’s nuclear ambitions,
the West sought to drive a wedge between Iran and its neighbours. With
the Arab world now caught up in the vortex of revolutionary change, Iran
may no longer be seen as a threat by the new governments that are likely
to emerge.
The U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar played a crucial role in the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some years ago the U.S. agreed to sell 80
advanced F-16s to the UAE in a deal worth around $15 billion. In return,
the U.S. was allowed to build military bases there with access to the
only deep-water port in the Persian Gulf capable of accommodating
aircraft carriers.
The U.S. Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) released in 2010 noted that
the U.S. is “a global power with global responsibilities”. The U.S. has
400,000 soldiers rotationally deployed around the world. Gen. David
Petraeus, the head of the Central Command (CENTCOM), told the U.S.
Senate Armed Services Committee that the Arabian peninsula commanded
significant U.S. attention and focus because of the importance of “our
interests and the potential for insecurity”.
He described the countries in the region as “key partners”. Petraeus
said that the Obama administration was also planning to build expensive
missile defence systems in the Gulf region. The Obama administration
announced in November last that it planned to sell Patriot interceptor
missiles worth more than $900 million to Kuwait.
“All of these cooperative efforts are facilitated by the critical
base and port facilities that Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and others
provide for U.S. forces,” said Petraeus. The U.S. has deep security
relations with Jordan, which is also witnessing serious protests.
While speaking at the opening of the King Abdullah 11 Special
Operations Training Centre (KASOTC) built with American financing,
General Petraeus lauded Jordan as “a key partner which has placed itself
at the forefront of police and military training for regional security
forces”. The present popular upsurge in the Arab world, especially in
the oil-producing hubs where the American military presence is most
visible, is sending jitters down the spine of the U.S.
-Frontline |