American Interests in the Persian Gulf

Walter Russell Mead's got a great piece on U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf over at OpinionJournal. Check it out:

Few subjects matter as much as oil, the Persian Gulf and American foreign policy. But few subjects are less well understood. Even relatively sophisticated observers will attribute American interest in the Persian Gulf to Uncle Sam's insatiable thirst for crude, combined with an effort to gain lucrative contracts for American oil firms. The U.S. on this view is something like a global Count Dracula, roaming the earth in search of fresh bodies, hoping to suck them dry.

True, the security of America's oil supply has been an element in national strategic thinking at least since Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz in the waning days of World War II. And true, the U.S. government has never been indifferent to the concerns of the major oil concerns. But the security of our domestic energy supplies plays a relatively small role in America's Persian Gulf policy, and the purely commercial interests of American companies do not drive American grand strategy.

Mead provides statistics on the declining share of Persian Gulf oil supplies to overall U.S. petroleum imports and production. But check out Mead's broader discussion of U.S strategic interests in the region:

For the past few centuries, a global economic and political system has been slowly taking shape under first British and then American leadership. As a vital element of that system, the leading global power--with help from allies and other parties--maintains the security of world trade over the seas and air while also ensuring that international economic transactions take place in an orderly way....

For this system to work, the Americans must prevent any power from dominating the Persian Gulf while retaining the ability to protect the safe passage of ships through its waters. The Soviets had to be kept out during the Cold War, and the security and independence of the oil sheikdoms had to be protected from ambitious Arab leaders like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. During the Cold War Americans forged alliances with Turkey, Israel and (until 1979) Iran, three non-Arab states that had their own reasons for opposing both the Soviets and any pan-Arab state.

When the fall of the shah of Iran turned a key regional ally into an implacable foe, the U.S. responded by tightening its relations with both Israel and Turkey--while developing a deeper relationship with Egypt, which had given up on Nasser's goal of unifying all the Arabs under its flag.

Today the U.S. is building a coalition against Iran's drive for power in the Gulf. Israel, a country which has its own reasons for opposing Iran, remains an important component in the American strategy, but the U.S. must also manage the political costs of this relationship as it works with the Sunni Arab states. American opposition to Iran's nuclear program not only reflects concerns about Israeli security and the possibility that Iran might supply terrorist groups with nuclear materials. It also reflects the U.S. interest in protecting its ability to project conventional forces into the Gulf.

As Mead concludes, American interests extend beyond the immediate Iranian problem, to the security of vital sea lines of communication from the Arabian Gulf and the coast of East Africa, to the Indian Ocean and Southeast, and beyond.

The vital importance of sea power and American national security goes back at least to Alfred Thayer Mahan in the late -19th century - a point protesters shouting "no blood for oil" often overlook (see here and here, for bit on that controversy).