ABSTRACT
Introduction In his 23 January 1980 State of the Union address, US President Jimmy Carter declared the willingness of the United States to answer ‘any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region’ by ‘any means necessary, including military force’. The promulgation of what came to be referred to as the ‘Carter Doctrine’ fundamentally changed US security policy towards the Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean.1 In formulating a military commitment to defend the Gulf from external aggression, the Carter administration replaced previous US strategies to safeguard Western interests, which initially had been based on bestowing the task of ensuring stability upon Great Britain and, subsequently, upon the ‘Twin Pillars’ of Iran and Saudi Arabia. From then on, the US would no longer sub-contract security in the Middle East by relying on European or regional surrogates, but would itself create a credible military posture and gradually become a Middle Eastern power. This chapter will analyse the shift in the position of the US from that of an offshore balancing power to that of an extra-regional hegemon in the context of the Western debate on how to secure the Gulf. The first part will discuss US policies in the Middle East between 1945 and the early 1970s, concentrating on Anglo-American relations and US reliance on the British posture in the Middle East before Britain’s withdrawal. The second part will assess the Carter Doctrine. It will examine to what extent it signified a fundamental change in US strategic posture in Southwest Asia and how it was perceived by the European allies. The main argument is that, although it unquestionably constituted a turning point in US policies towards the Middle East, the strategy pursued by Carter fitted into a pattern which by then had been well-established by previous US administrations. The objectives of US policy – to contain the Soviet threat and to ensure the free flow of oil from the Gulf – remained the same, while the means employed to achieve those aims changed considerably.
