Help with Gulf Security or Return of Colonialism?

By Charlie

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - France will set up a permanent military base of up to 500 troops in the United Arab Emirates, the French government announced Tuesday during a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The military base deal will make France one of the first Western countries other than the United States to have a base in the Persian Gulf region. The presence would give Paris the ability to project its forces into a crucial oil-producing region where many countries are wary of Iran 's rising influence.

The prevailing theory is that as the world’s lone superpower, maintaining world oil supply at market prices is a top national priority for economic, cultural, and political reasons. We have fought multiple wars and smaller conflicts in this region to maintain a reasonable level of stability, and have endured partnerships with shady individuals and countries to keep the oil flowing. There are economic upsides, and lots of other downsides to this. A downside is that precipitous withdrawal from the Persian Gulf would present a security vacuum, which could cause other powers (such as Iran ) to step in and act, gaining a piece of the local security and a cut of the profits. This would be against America ’s best economic and political interests, so we stay. Another downside is that many countries benefit from our security spending in the region, basically getting a free lunch. Take China , which gets a large percentage of its oil from Saudi Arabia , and is having its trade routes protected by the DOD, not the PLA, at American taxpayer expense. China has contributed scant resources to overall security efforts in the Middle East , yet reaps the benefit of stability in its trade.

Now comes France , with plans for a more substantive partnership with the UAE, to include a military base. This allows France to project power into the Middle East , but it could signal some troubling future issues. What if this is just the beginning, and soon China , Germany , India , and other of today’s “great powers” begin to scale up their presence in the Middle East , replete with military force? Could this become a situation akin to the European colonial powers dividing up Africa in the 1700- 1800’s? The image of US and Chinese warships uneasily passing each other in the Straits of Hormuz is difficult to conjure up, but it can’t be a positive future.

On the other hand, perhaps France ’s foray into the UAE is a sign of a positive international development, where Western Nations begin to partner in ensuring regional stability in areas of common interest. After all, Sarkozy did say the deal is "a sign to all that France is participating in the stability of this region of the world,"

The US and the Brits are already heavily deployed in the Persian Gulf :

Outside of Iraq , the United States has about 40,000 U.S. troops on bases across the Gulf — including the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain . The British military also has a small presence in the Gulf. The Royal Air Force operates out of Al Udeid, a U.S. air force base in Qatar , and the military is part of the coalition naval task force based in Bahrain .

As we move toward a future that is depending on resources becoming more scarce, and a third world that is becoming more violent and unstable, great power struggle –or cooperation- over the dark areas of the map may be making a comeback, for better or for worse…

January 15, 2008 05:35 PM Strategery