TIME TO TALK TURKEY

John Keegan draws lessons from the

Gulf crisis and proposes a new Middle East policeman

MORE than 50 days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the first — yes, the first — American reinforcement division com- pleted its deployment to Saudi Arabia this week. It makes the tale of how the United States army saved Europe in the cold war look increasingly like a fable, and a very dangerous one.

For many years even the best-informed defence analysts comforted themselves that, should the Russians launch an attack from East Germany, the Nato ground forces would hold the line until American seaborne reinforcements arrived. If the line meanwhile looked like breaking, the Supreme Allied Commander would threaten the use of local nuclear weapons. The threat of local nuclear war involving American troops would raise the spectre of the United States unleashing its intercon- tinental missiles against the Soviet Union. The Russian marshals would take fright. Everyone would go back to barracks.

Admittedly, the Gulf lies three times further in sea miles from American East Coast ports than Europe, and one Amer- ican division always kept its heavy equip- ment in Europe, to which only the man- power had to be airlifted. Nevertheless, on the data we now have, it is clear that, 50 days after a Russian attack, the United States would have had at most four rein- forcement divisions on the ground. A battle, however, would have been raging in which whole divisions were consumed in 48 hours, making the piecemeal commitment of a mere four — always supposing the convoys bringing them could have been fought through the Soviet wolfpacks — neither here nor there.

If I were an old-guard Russian marshal, contemplating the withdrawal of the once proud and mighty Group of Soviet Forces Germany to a doubtful welcome in the, Soviet Union, I should be afflicted by a profound and bitter sense of lost chances. As a leading article put it recently in the Tablet, there was always a mutual insincer- ity within Nato about local nuclear weapons basing. The Europeans wanted it because they thought it guaranteed that a European war would become a global nuclear war. The Americans wanted it because they thought it guaranteed pre- cisely the opposite. Neither side would admit as much to the other. A really tough-minded and risk-taking Soviet lead- er might have been able to exploit the ambiguity.

Indeed, looking back, we can see that

Gorbachev cast himself in that role at the outset of his leadership. His expedition to Reykjavik was a breathtakingly daring diplomatic adventure, which failed by a whisker. Had it come off, had Reagan bought the denuclearisation of Europe as he so nearly did, Gorbachev might today be turning to the reconstruction of a still unified Soviet state with a neutralised Germany and a respectful Eastern Europe in his rear and the solid support of party, army and people beneath him. As things went, economic catastrophe caught up with him before the second prize of the INF treaty brought its rewards. It has been a close-run thing.

The West therefore owes its victory in the cold war to the impenetrabilities of nuclear deterrence theory and to little else. That America was unlikely to have made a European nuclear war the casus belli for a general nuclear war is beside the point. As long as Russia was uncertain one way or the other, the Europeans were safe, a truth against which Bruce Kent can rail as long as he likes. Of course, none of this is to say that the cold war was fated to persist for eternity. On the contrary, its termination was long foreseen, and for reasons which, to get back to the Gulf, derive from regional power struggles.

The argument ran as follows. The cold war, like the era of European imperialism which preceded it, was an artificial sup- pressant of quarrels between non-white peoples. In the age of empire, traditional top dogs — Rajputs, Khmers, Hausas — were held in check because their home- lands had become colonies. DecoIonisation gave them back the potential to dominate weaker neighbours, but the cold war forced them to choose sides and, in con- sequence, to accept outside control once more. It was a looser control, however, because it was exercised not by force but by bribery, largely the bribery of arms and technology transfers.

Top dogs actually prospered through cold war policies. Indeed, some — India, Pakistan and, we now know, Iraq — arrived at the point of becoming nuclear powers in their own right. Once that point was reached, the argument went, the su- perpowers would perceive a stronger in- terest in controlling their clients than in persisting in confrontation. A rule-of- thumb division of the globe would have ensued, akin to that effectively prevailing in Europe after 1945, and each superpower would have tacitly consented to the other running an imperial system in its own half of the world, with nuclear adventurers being punished out of hand.

It was, of course, too neat to be true. But reality has turned out too neat to be true also. No one, literally no one, not even the most extreme right-wing ideo- logue, foresaw the United States winning the cold war hands down. As a result, no one was ready for the consequences, the first of which has proved to be a would-be regional top dog seeing his opportunity, chancing his arm and so far getting away with it.

Saddam, all columnists agree, is pro- ceeding on sleepwalking principles. His speeches, full of Arab rhetoric, Islamic theology and nationalist claptrap, prove it. Exactly the opposite may be the case. Saddam is simply the first local warlord to grasp — with alarming quickness of perception — that the extinction of his 'Eddie! I thought you were extinct!' status as client to a collapsed superpower has not weakened but enormously streng- thened him. Because the Russians cannot any longer control him, the Americans must. Because, however, his country occu- pies a position at an effective geographical extreme from either coast of the United States. American 'power projection' works against him at its weakest. It has taken nearly two months to put down the first tranche of military force which begins to call his bluff. It will take until the New Year to get a real counter-attack force into place.

What, while we wait to see if that will mean war, are we to think? Two things, one general, one particular. First, that the real effort in arms control must now be made on the conventional rather than nuclear front. There have, in fact, always been strong arguments for that view to be taken, as it has been by an unfashionable minority. Nuclear weapons, since August 1945, have killed nobody. Junk weapons — AK47s, M-16s — have killed millions. Most of these weapons have been put into the hands of their users not by merchants of death but by governments, working for short-term commercial or political advan- tage, or a mixture of the two. Saddam Hussein is one of the principal bene- ficiaries of both sets of motives — Soviet power-seeking. French profit-taking. The Soviets must now watch the United States staking out a place d'armes in the Middle East larger than any they could ever have won for themselves. The French are already losing in inflated oil prices every sou they ever made from Exocets. It is not enough, however, that individual suppliers should learn the shortsightedness of their ways. There will be more Saddams as long as there is an unrestricted market in cheap tanks and fancy missiles. How that sort of market is to be brought under control defeats easy analysis but, after a year in which hitherto inconceivable advances in arms control have been made, it is not utopian to believe that a start is worth making.

The particular point concerns America's unenviable role as world policeman. It is certainly an unsustainable one and what she needs are local deputies. A good man is hard to find, as every sheriff knows. In the Middle East, however, which threatens to be for as long as one can foresee the most unstable area in the world, one waits ready to hand. Turkey lost an empire and has not found a role — but, alone apart from Japan, emerged from feudal imperial- ism into modern statehood. Her leaders desperately but vainly aspire to consum- mate that statehood by gaining acceptance by the European Community. The Greeks will not stand for that nor, when they have time to think about the cultural implica- tions, will their EEC partners. The con- sequences threaten to add to Middle East- ern instabilities, if Turkey is left to fester in the rancour of rejection. A bold State Department would take the risk of a different solution. Secularism is still the official creed of the Turks who count. They are neither Islamic nor anti- Zionist. They have established an admir- able record of rationality in their conduct of foreign policy. The practices of great- power politics are not dead in their collec- tive memory. They are unarguably one of the most formidable and military peoples in the world. What they crave and need are encouragement and investment. A Turkey which enjoyed American sponsorship on the scale accorded Japan — much less deservingly — after 1945 would rapidly become a sturdy pillar of stability in the Middle East.

That is an idea which ordinary Amer- icans, like most West Europeans, might find hard to grasp. Every Arab, on the other hand, would get the point instantly. It is not necessary to raise the spectre of a revived Ottoman empire. It would be enough to restore Turkey to its natural place as the Middle East's top dog — a wise old dog which would growl when irritated and nip when provoked. It is a fair bet that Saddam would have thought twice last month if he had had to reckon with Turkish displeasure.

John Keegan is Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph.