November 1992, Page 20, 89
Security and Defense
Politics or No, Saudi Arabia Needs the F-15s
By Michael Collins Dunn
President George Bush's decision to sell F-15s to Saudi Arabia, and F-16s to Taiwan, has been depicted in the U.S. media as election-year politics: selling arms to win votes at home. As this column has pointed out in the past, however, U.S. defense industry jobs would be lost if the Saudi sale were not made this year, and the Saudis could readily buy aircraft elsewhere, as they did in 1985. There are other sound reasons besides jobs in Missouri for making the sale to the Saudis. Saving part of America's dwindling fighter production capability is just one of them.
Saudi security in itself is a vital U.S. interest. Helping Saudi Arabia build an effective deterrent can prevent future regional aggressions like that of Iraq against Kuwait. There also is a real and growing threat to Saudi Arabia itself from the hostile and militant regime in neighboring Iran.
For those with short memories, less than two years ago the U.S., Western Europe and several Arab and Asian countries deployed more than half a million men and women to the Gulf region and fought a war to free Kuwait, which happens to possess 10 percent of the world's proven oil resources. One may moralize about "blood for oil" all one wishes, but the fact of the matter is that, for the foreseeable future, petroleum is the indispensable lifeblood of the economies of the U.S., Western Europe and Japan, not to mention fragile Third World economies.
No amount of conservation can alter the fact that two-thirds of the world's oil reserves are in the Gulf. As U.S. and European reserves run out in the coming years, by the turn of the century that number might stand at 80 percent. Most of the world's excess production capacity is also there.
Oil will be essential until the world finds a way to make solar and nuclear energy economically attractive alternatives to it, and also finds substitutes for petrochemical products like plastics. Nearly a third of the world's proven reserves are in one country-Saudi Arabia.
Should the United States, then, fight to defend Saudi oil? If it comes to that, the answer has to be yes. Obviously, however, it is better if it does not come to that.
Kuwait was invaded because it had no credible deterrent, and because Iraq's Saddam Hussain believed it had no guarantor abroad willing and able to step in to defend it. A tiny state like Kuwait can hardly aspire ever to achieve the military capability to deter its neighbors from aggression, but larger states like Saudi Arabia can. If the Saudis have the military capability to deter aggression, it is far less likely that the U.S. will ever again have to send half a million young Americans to the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia can never match the large ground forces of Iran and Iraq.
But what is that credible deterrent? Saudi Arabia is a large country bordering, or facing across waterways, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Sudan and Egypt. It has two major seacoasts, on the Gulf and the Red Sea. Yet it has a relatively small population, perhaps even below the officially cited figures. Yemen has more people than the Saudi kingdom.
Saudi Arabia could-and in this writer's opinion, should-build a bigger army than it currently has. However, it can never match the large ground forces of either of its more populous neighbors, Iran and Iraq. It simply lacks the manpower. If either of those countries ever sends ground forces against Saudi Arabia, another Western intervention may be inevitable. But there are other ways to deter ground force attacks.
What Saudi Arabia needs is a force multiplier. That is the ability to use other weapons, technologies or skills to overcome the enemy's numerical advantage, or at least to leave the outcome in sufficient doubt as to deter the aggression to begin with. In the Cold War, the U.S. and NATO used their technology as a force multiplier against Warsaw Pact numerical superiority, and in the Gulf war their technology neutralized Iraq's numerical strength, enabling them to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait at little cost to themselves.
For Saudi Arabia, with extensive borders to defend and few men with which to do it, a strong Air Force and a strong Navy are effective force multipliers.
Ah, but Iraq has been neutralized, one may say. What threat does Saudi Arabia face? As this is written, Iran is confronting Saudi Arabia's ally, the United Arab Emirates, over Abu Musa and the Tunb Islands. That is unlikely to lead to military conflict, but it is a reminder that Iran remains a powerful player. Iran is using its own petroleum revenues to buy new Russian and other ex-Soviet military equipment, and is rebuilding its air force.
Strategic Vulnerability
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia's geography makes it strategically vulnerable. Its most precious resources, the oil fields, lie in the northeast party of the Kingdom, near the Gulf. They are only a few minutes' flying time from Iran, and vulnerable to a tank assault from southern Iraq. After eight years of war between Iran and Iraq, and then Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the old argument that oil states will not attack each other because they would risk too much has proved to be invalid. There is a real threat.
Yes, the United States would intervene to defend Saudi Arabia, as it did in 1990-91. But the U.S. was lucky, and so were the Saudis, in that instance. Saddam Hussain took Kuwait, and then his tanks stopped at the Saudi border. Had they kept on going, to seize the Saudi oil fields as well, initially there would have been little to stop them.
The U.S. and its allies then would have had to recover both the Saudi and Kuwaiti fields without the benefit of the bases in eastern Saudi Arabia from which the liberation of Kuwait was in fact launched. Very likely Saddam would have burned the Saudi as well as the Kuwaiti fields before retreating. It is much better if the Saudis are able to deter aggression next time.
There are those who argue that while Saudi Arabia may feel threatened, selling it arms upsets the balance of power and might encourage Saudi adventurism. The F-15XP export version being sold the Saudis will have a greater ground attack capability than earlier Saudi F-15 purchases, which had almost none. Ground attack capability is seen by some people as inherently "aggressive," though of course it was essential to getting the Iraqis out of Kuwait after they had gone in. Will this capability make Saudi Arabia a danger to its neigbors?
The first answer is that the Saudis will get the arms from the British or French anyway, but that is the jobs argument we said Americans already know. There are other reasons why Saudi arms will not threaten non-aggressor neighbors, including the small size of the Saudi population. Though it may have disputes with its smaller neighbors, such as the Sept. 30 border incident with Qatar, it is basically friendly to the other Gulf Cooperation Council states. Its relations with Yemen are delicate, but Yemen has a larger population than the Kingdom.
The notion that Saudi Arabia might be a threat to Israel is, on the surface, ludicrous, but since it is so frequently raised it deserves an answer. Yitzhak Rabin himself, when defense minister, once remarked that U.S. refusal to sell the Saudis F-15s in 1985 probably hurt Israel more than it helped it. Those F-15s were configured to defend Saudi oil fields, not to threaten Israel, while the British Tornados the Saudis bought instead were not. Software on the F-15XPs proposed for this year's sale has been programmed to fight wars in the Gulf region, not against Israel far to the west.
Whatever the motives of the Bush administration in proposing the F-15 sale in an election year, the Saudis have a real need for the F-15s as a deterrent, and the U.S. has a real interest in selling them. It is an interest which includes, but is by no means limited to, American jobs.
Michael Collins Dunn, Ph.D., is senior analyst of the International Estimate, Inc., a Washington-based consultancy, and editor of its bi-weekly newsletter, The Estimate.
