ABSTRACT
Half the world's proven oil reserves are located in the eight nations: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Saudi Arabia has joined the West in its support of the Afghan freedom fighters, in efforts to stabilize world oil supplies and prices, and in efforts to check the expansion of radical and Soviet influence in the Near East and Southwest Asia. The pressures of US domestic politics threaten to divide Saudi Arabia from the West and to block any effective relationship between the Gulf states and the one Western state with the power projection forces to provide significant "over–the–horizon" reinforcements. Saudi Arabia can at best build a limited regional military deterrent, and enough defensive capability to deal with low and medium level threats. Geography and politics make Saudi Arabia pivotal to the defense of the Gulf, the Red Sea, the other moderate Gulf oil exporters, and most of the free world's oil supplies.
