Cadillacs or camels
Irrespective of the general strategic merits or demerits of Britain's new Middle Eastern policy — and we accept that far more than the matter of Arab oil supplies influenced the Foreign Secretary in his formulation of it — there is much to suggest that the Government has given insufficient, and insufficiently critical, attention to the developing Arab oil embargo. As a country judged friendly by the ramshackle and defeated Arab coalition, Britain is assured of a continued supply of oil: but, as was made clear at the recent meeting of Arab ministers in Kuwait, she will nonetheless have to accept some reduction in her supplies; and she must undertake not to pool anything of what she receives with fully embargoed countries — in this specific case with Holland. There is as yet no indication that either Britain or any of Holland's other European partners will do other than obey Arab instructions, unless means can be found clandestinely to circumvent them.
The method of enforcing the embargo is simple. A non-Arab tanker captain loading at an Arab port must, on his manifest, state the destination of the cargo. Up to now, the manifests have merely stated "Lands End and orders." This means that the ship intends to proceed to Land's End and await further instructions, since in the oil business there is a great deal of re-routing while at sea. Now, it appears, the Arabs will want more details, and will not load any ship bound for Rotterdam. At the same time they are likely to ask incoming tankers for evidence of their last unloading port of call, and if that is an embargoed port they will also be denied cargoes. A special difficulty here is that much unprocessed oil is received at Rotterdam for transmission inwards, to Germany and other places: it is not clear if the Arabs will try to stop such movements.
It is intolerable and unacceptable that the oil deploying system of Western Europe should be disrupted in this way. And it is intolerable and unacceptable that the Arab sheikhs and dictators, bloated with excessive revenue, should be allowed in a fit of pique to vent their spleen on a small Western turopean country like Holland. It is clear, moreover, that Holland has been selected for victimisation, less because of any special friendship for Israel on her part, than because she looks a convenient guinea pig. It is clear that, if the embargo on Holland works, and if that country's neighbours are too pusillanimous to come to her assistance, then the Arab couptries will embark on further measures of selecti harassment in the manner of the hijackers whom, they pamper and protect. It must be made perfectly clear to the Arab states, not merely that Western Europe will be as resistant to their bullying as is Israel, but that counter-measures will quickly be prepared. There are huge Arab investments in the West and it is the possession of these investments and the incomes from them which alone enables the spendthrift Arabs to contemplate their present course of political terrorism. The quickest way to bring the Arabs to heel is to make it clear that, in the event of crisis, their investments will first be frozen and then sequestered. As Lord Boyd-Carpenter observed last week, it was thanks to the discovery of oil, and the exploitation of oil resources by the use of Western skills, that Arab rulers grew fat, and were able to exchange their camels for Cadillacs. Let them understand that if they pursue their present course they will shortly find themselves on camels again.
