The Navy has also been moving in the Persian Gulf area. O November 25, 1974, the American aircraft carrier Constellation sailed into the Persian Gulf on what was officially described as a "familiarization" mission. This journey marked a definite break with the Navy's 26-year-old convention of keeping warships out of the Gulf-proper. The Christian Science Monitor noted that the voyage was designed, to show that Washington "will not accept any threat to, or interruption of the supply of oil from Persian Gulf States." Two weeks later, 2,000 Marines form the US Sixth Fleet landed in Sardinia in a mock invasion of Arab oil lands. Vice-Admiral Turner told reporters: "We don't want to invade (the Middle East) but we are prepared."

On January 19, 1975, the Sunday Times of London reported that the Pentagon had asked Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman--a trusted friend and ally of the British and the Shah of Iran--for full rights at the British air base on the Omani island of Masirah, a request subsequently granted. For hundred miles south-east of the Straits of Hormuz, the entrance to the Gulf, Masirah sits right on the main sea lanes joining the Persian Gulf to the industrialized world--a perfect take off and refueling point only. Despite Congressional strictures against it the US has continued to construct a base on the strategically located Indian Ocean British island of Diego Garcia.

III. Administration Endorsement of Intervention

IN A DIFFERENT front and even more ominously, the intervention arguments have been invested with legitimacy by statements of the highest officials in the government: President Gerald Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissenger, and former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.

Ford began the process by noting in a speech in September, 1974 that "throughout history nations have gone to war over natural resources"--a hint quickly perceived by the Arab states as a thinly-veiled threat to intervene in case of another boycott of substantial price increase. The same day, Kissinger sounded the same theme in tones later described to newsmen as "Doomsday language."

In early January 1975, Kissinger stated in an interview in Business Week that the US "would consider using military force in the Middle East under circumstances of grave emergency--if say, the industrialized world became threatened with economic strangulation." US News and World Report later noted that "to make clear that this (Kissinger) statement was neither accidental nor casual but rather a deliberate declaration of American policy, the State Department distributed the interview in advance under its own imprimatur. And the white House subsequently announced that Mr. Kissinger was reflecting the views of Mr. Ford."

In May 1975, Schlesinger this time took the lead, warning that "America would be 'less tolerant' of a new oil embargo and is reserving military force as one possible response," according to The Daily Telegraph of May 20, 1975. The Arab states once again protested and the by-now usual disclaimers were issued--this time by Ford and Kissinger, the proponents of intervention in the first place.

But by this time, the world-bending denials were largely ignored, and the pros and cons of intervention were being openly discussed, by large portions of the American press and public, as technical problems of a legitimate and rational option of US foreign policy.

IV. Intervention and the Logic of U.S. Foreign Policy.

THERE ARE thus compelling reasons to believe that an American intervention in the Middle East is possible and is treated by Washington as a serious option. In fact, there are deep compulsions within the basic structure of US foreign policy would could lead to a Persian Gulf intervention, especially since US policy-makers view the main threats to their hegemony as converging in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean regions. They perceive Russian influence as expanding in the region from Mozambique and Angola to Somalia and Iraq. Similarly, the growth of independent economic ties between western Europe and the region which holds the World's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources is regarded with apprehension in Washington. Finally, here more than South Asia, West Africa or Latin America, the national liberation movements are seen as making progress and winning victories--from Angola and Eritea to Oman and Palestine.

If the US contained the expanding Russian influence in that region then the USSR would remain second to the US in a basically bipolar balance of power. If Washington could ensure its paramountcy in the region, control the access to its raw materials and be the watchman of its waterways, then it would have maintained a powerful leverage over western Europe and Japan. The "stability" of the international order depends on the containment of the liberation movements and the preservation of pro-US regimes in this strategic area more than in any other. Finally, a successful Persian Gulf intervention appears as the master-stroke that can reconstitute the Vietnam-torn fabric of the bipartisan domestic consensus on foreign policy.

Thus a development which is officially perceived as being decisively unfavorable of US interests may produce a military intervention; and the prospects of such a development occurring are fair.

THE APPARENT failure of the Kissinger diplomatic offensive in the Middle East will certainly renew and probably enhance Russia's eclipsed role in the region. The leftist forces may also emerge stronger from the debacle, especially if the radical Arab groups can discredit Sadat's and Saudi Arabia's policy while avoiding the appearance of being responsible for its failure. When confronted with such developments. US officials may be attracted to the intervention option as a way of recouping militarily diplomatic and political losses.

Since the Middle East belongs in the an-tagonistic half of detente, a successful intervention would present the Soviets with a fait accompli difficult to undo or even challenge without bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Politically, Russian credibility would take a severe beating. Not only would Russian allies, Syria and Iraq, be sandwiched by the Israelis on one side and the Americans on the other, but the value of a Russian connection would be thrown into doubt throughout the region. According to this view, a decisive show of force in the Gulf would go a long way towards undercutting Soviet prestige, and thus keep the Soviet prestige, and thus keep the Soviet penetration into the Middle East tentative and unsure.

An intervention would also give the US the power to regulate the pricing and marketing of oil to its restive allies. And while this crude threat is not to be overestimated--after all, it is not very likely that the US will threaten to turn off the taps to Japan, or even France--the point would be underlined that American leadership of the capitalist world cannot be questioned without serious hardship for the questioner. Implicit though it may remain, the message would be impossible to misread.