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Administration officials would love to have U.S. bases within tactical aircraft range of the oilfields. But as Vice Admiral Thor Hansen, staff director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledges, "The leaders of the area have made it clear they don't want U.S. bases on their territory."
Even the U.S.'s best friend in the Arab world, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, has said he does not want U.S. forces stationed on his soil. Saudi Arabia, too, is opposed to bases. The reason, as asserted by the kingdom's suave Princeton-educated Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al Faisal: "The introduction of bases by one side will only bring about more military activity by the other side."
Even the one hospitable Arab government, Oman, has reservations. Explains Abdul Aziz al Rowass, an adviser to Sultan Qaboos of Oman: "The U.S. must have access to our facilities, but only on request. It is up to us to say yes or no." Rowass, who wears the traditional Omani curved dagger, the khanjar, in the embroidered belt around his flowing white robe, points to one of the many maps on his office wall in Muscat and adds, "We will never allow the facilities to be used against neighboring and friendly countries."
The U.S. has repeatedly disclaimed any such intention. "We're not going to get involved in internal conflicts or conflicts between states of the region," insists Kelley. But the suspicion lingers in the gulf that the strategists in Washington have a supersecret fifth contingency use for Kelley's RDJTF: American seizure of the oilfields in a local crisis, or in the event of another Arab oil boycott or a massive price hike by OPEC.
Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are especially worried about the "oil-grab scenario." Officials there attach ominous significance to the emergence as a Reagan foreign policy adviser of Johns Hopkins University Professor Robert W. Tucker, the author of a controversial 1975 article in Commentary laying out the rationale for a possible U.S. seizure of the fields.
There is also concern in the gulf that the present searchlight of American attention will provoke, rather than deter, more intrusive Soviet policies. Kuwait especially fears that U.S. rhetoric about protecting the region against the Soviets has the ring of self-fulfilling prophecy. "I hate these people talking about how they're going to defend and save our oil," says Sheik Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah, Kuwait's Foreign Minister, gesturing angrily toward a pile of Western newspapers on his desk. "Defend us against whom? Who's occupying us? We haven't asked anybody to defend us. Yet we find all these ships around us asking for facilities. It's all a bit like a film with two directors—Russia and the U.S. How will the film end? Perhaps with both big powers agreeing, 'O.K., these oilfields belong to us, and those to you. We'll divide up the region from here to there.' Is that how it will end?"
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein calls for "the rejection of the presence of foreign armies and military forces or any foreign forces and military bases or any facilities in any form or under any pretext or cover or for any reason whatsoever in the Arab homeland." If anyone is going to police the gulf, in Saddam's view, it will be Iraq.