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The Persian Gulf: In the Wake of the War
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19771 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1991 |
3,844 Words |
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Adam M. Garfinkle
Adam M. Garfinkle is adjunct professor of political science at
the University of Pennsylvania and research associate at the
Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. He is also
a contributing editor of Orbis. |
The Kuwait crisis is not only the first crisis of the post-Cold War period, it is also the most portentous episode in U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War and the most traumatic Mideastern shock since the Suez crisis of 1956. It is therefore none too soon--loose ends and missing information notwithstanding--to ask about likely consequences.
Going to war in the Gulf, whatever else it may mean, will tell us something about the willingness of American society to endure the burdens of being a great power after the Cold War. The United States went to war for a variety of reasons: Economic interest in Middle Eastern oil was a necessary but not a sufficient reason. Concern for precedent and the shape of the post-Cold War order was real and an unclothed abhorrence of evil on the march inevitably colored the decision, as well.
But clearly, while the American people were united with respect to ends, they were divided with respect to means. That it was possible to take a divided country to war for reasons other than to promote democracy and sustain a war policy long enough to achieve the essential mission bodes well for the future. Had the Bush administration failed in this, the future willingness of the American people to support an internationalist foreign policy would have been severely undermined.
In addition, it is worth noting that with the fleeting and very peculiar exception of the U.S. Marine deployment to Lebanon in 1983-84, the United States had never fought with or against any Arab country until January 16, 1991. After that date, it did both: It fought against Iraq and sided with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco. Previous American wars shaped popular and official attitudes toward other societies in important ways. Accordingly, we must ask how the experience of the current Gulf war will affect American attitudes toward the Arab world.
The answer must start with an appreciation of how Americans viewed Arabs before the war. The great majority of Americans had a decidedly negative image of Arabs, an image abetted through the casual stereotypes of popular entertainment. Arabs were greedy oilmen, venomous hater of Jews, Muslim religious fanatics, or primitive nomads. American views of Arabs have been more than monolithic in a sense, because few Americans have understood the difference between Arabs and Muslims, and therefore, by extension, between Arabs and Persians, Turks, Kurds, and others. At the very least, those who took the trouble to follow the crisis after August 2, 1990, must have a more
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