America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

The spectacle of Saddam Hussein conducting politics by other means concentrates the mind wonderfully. His Arab brethren have more reason than ever to mistrust his claim to be their benevolent leader. The radicals of the region have a new incentive for moderation. Virtually every nation in the world that relies on oil from the gulf now realizes with fresh urgency the importance of restoring a balance of power there. Iran has served as a counterweight to Iraq before, and it could do so again. If Iran were to bring about the release of the hostages in Lebanon, it would be rewarded by a stampede of Western diplomats, bankers, foreign-aid officials and arms merchants beating a path to Tehran.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait could also have a welcome effect on American policy, shaking the U.S. once and for all out of its obsession with East-West conflict. In 1955 John Foster Dulles helped create the Baghdad Pact, with headquarters in Iraq. Its mission was to keep the Soviets out of the Middle East. Yet trouble came from within the region and even within the alliance. In 1956 Britain, a member of the pact, joined France and Israel in attacking Egypt. In 1958 a nationalist revolution overthrew the pro-Western monarchy of Iraq. The new regime immediately pulled out of the pact.

For the next three decades, the U.S. persisted in regarding the gulf as a giant gas station in a rough part of town threatened by pro-Moscow gangs and ^ by the Soviets themselves. The Nixon Doctrine of 1969 deputized friendly regional strongmen, notably the Shah of Iran, to protect the neighborhood against Soviet aggression. Ten years later, the fall of the Shah and the Kremlin's invasion of Afghanistan prompted the Carter Doctrine: Soviet encroachments would be considered an attack on vital American interests.

Just as Dulles had done in the '50s, the U.S. was again drawing a line in the dust and warning the bad guys not to cross it. It is questionable that even in their most expansionist phase, the Soviets ever seriously considered a grab for the oil and warm-water ports of the gulf. But if they did, it is certain they took very seriously indeed the risk that they would end up in a war with the U.S. In short, they were deterred.

The current emergency in the gulf came about because there is now a vacuum of deterrence. Israel's unacknowledged but undisputed nuclear arsenal makes it the only Middle Eastern country within range of Iraq's ballistic missiles that has felt relatively safe. But Jerusalem is not about to offer -- and no Arab state would ever accept -- an Israeli nuclear umbrella over anyone else's head. As for Iran, even if it emerges from its medieval isolation, it will take a long time to regain enough strength to make Saddam think twice before he sends forth his tanks and bombers again.

It is up to the U.S. and the Soviet Union to fill the vacuum, and to do so together. Each superpower has formidable firepower within striking distance of Iraq and, in Saudi Arabia and Syria, a well-armed client state on Iraq's border. Even before the latest crisis, Moscow and Washington had begun to cooperate on other trouble spots: in Central America, southern Africa and Southeast Asia. Last week they joined diplomatic forces again, first at the United Nations, then at the meeting between Secretary of State James Baker and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. That was the bright spot in last week's scary news. Therein lies the makings of something that Saddam never intended and Dulles would never have foreseen: an anti-Baghdad pact forged in Washington and Moscow -- an unprecedented and highly promising U.S.-Soviet joint venture in regional security.