Troubled Waters

While the U.S. has its own strategic interests to defend in the Persian Gulf | region, the West Europeans and Japan clearly have the most at stake in that dangerous area. Yet some U.S. officials complain that America's allies are not contributing enough to the gulf's defense, and Kenneth Timmerman, author of a recent study on arms sales to Iran and Iraq titled Fanning the Flames, agrees. Says Timmerman: "The Europeans are doing nothing to safeguard their own interests in the gulf."

At present levels of consumption, only 7% of America's oil comes from gulf producers, in contrast to nearly 25% of Western Europe's and 60% of Japan's. Some of the 5.7 million barrels of gulf oil consumed each day by Western Europe and Japan is pumped through pipelines to terminals in the Red Sea and Mediterranean. The bulk, however, is shipped out in supertankers that must run the gauntlet of the gulf and the narrow Strait of Hormuz.

The West's dependence on the region for vital energy is unlikely to diminish since the gulf contains more than half the world's proven oil reserves. The Paris-based International Energy Agency warns that by the year 2000, the major industrialized countries of the West could be importing 60% of their oil, with gulf producers supplying a growing percentage of that.

Oil, though, is not the whole story. For the past 15 years, petrodollar- rich gulf states have provided a lucrative market for a vast array of Western products. Europe's export-dependent defense industries in particular have enjoyed a multibillion-dollar bonanza in the region. Although declining oil revenues in recent years have slowed the spending spree, the gulf remains an important market for West European and Japanese exporters. Last year British sales to the region were worth more than $8 billion, while French exports, excluding arms, brought in around $3 billion. The Japanese sold $6.8 billion in the region.

The West Europeans and Japanese recognize their vulnerability in the gulf but are unable to match the U.S. or Soviet military presence in that far-flung region. Japan's constitution prohibits deployment by warships beyond 1,000 nautical miles from the home islands except on training cruises. That forces Japanese tankers to either restrict their operations in the gulf or sail unprotected under the dubious cover of night. Britain keeps only two frigates in gulf waters on a rotating basis, and France, which has four destroyers stationed in the western Indian Ocean, shows the flag from time to time by sending these warships into the gulf to provide a display of "dissuasive presence."

Western Europe's navies, explains Robert O'Neill, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, cannot spare military forces for the gulf without making "serious inroads" in their well- established European defense commitments. Still, British and French warships in the region, though operating independently, maintain close contact with American naval forces stationed there. Says a senior British defense official: "If there were any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the passage of Western oil tankers through the gulf, I have no doubt that the three navies would act together to keep the route open."

Despite their lack of military muscle in the region, West European countries have played a significant role in continuing the Iran-Iraq conflict as major suppliers of military hardware. France in particular has helped to keep Iraq equipped with the latest weaponry, selling Baghdad some $12 billion worth of materiel during the past decade. Without those sophisticated arms, Iraq would soon be defeated and cease to serve as a buffer between revolutionary Iran and the rest of the Middle East, a development that could have dire consequences for the West. Nonetheless, last week's tragedy was compounded by the fact that French-built missiles, fired from a French-built Iraqi fighter, disabled an American warship that had been sent to the gulf to defend Western interests.