ABSTRACT
By the end of the twentieth century, the United States had become a Persian Gulf power in its own right. On May 18, 1993, two months after President Bill Clinton took office, Martin Indyk of the National Security Council staff spelled out the broad outlines of what he called America's "dual containment" policy in the Persian Gulf. Traditionally, the United States had pursued a policy of balancing Iran and Iraq against each other as a means of maintaining a degree of regional stability and to protect the smaller oil-rich Arab states on the southern side of the Gulf. That was the purpose of the Twin Pillar policy, and it was implicit in subsequent tilts toward Iraq and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Although the Jimmy Carter Doctrine addressed the prospective threat from the Soviet Union, its first major implementation involved a regional state, anticipating the massive international coalition that repelled Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in January 1991.
