![]() In no respect is that more evident than in the case of oil.” While Carter called for selective draft registration as a symbol of patriotic resolve, Brown presented a $159 billion budget which concentrates “special attention and resources on the improvement of capabilities to get personnel and equipment quickly to potential trouble areas like the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea areas.” ![]() Any interruption of goods and services could have the most serious near-term effects on the US economy. Ĭarter focused his State of the Union speech against purported Soviet designs on the Gulf, but Secretary of Defense Harold Brown acknowledged a few days later that “international economic disorder could almost equal in severity the military threat from the Soviet Union.” In the Defense Department’s FY 1981 annual report, Brown noted “the particular manner in which our economy has expanded” so that “we have come to depend to no small degree on imports, exports and the earnings from investments for our material wellbeing…. ![]() US armed forces’ procurement of weapons like the F-16 warplane and the M-60 main battle tank are currently subject to deployment priorities in Israel and Egypt. The Middle East share of worldwide US military grants and credits in 1979 was 89.3 percent. As a percentage of total US arms sales, the region jumped from 19.7 percent in the 1955-69 period to nearly 52 percent in 1970-74 and 69.4 percent in 1975-1979. Arms sales nearly tripled again from 1975 to 1979, to an average $8.9 billion per year. In the first half of the 1970s, US arms sales in the Middle East averaged $3.2 billion per year - more than the total sales ($2.3 billion) over the previous 15 years. One manifestation of the preeminence of the region is the US military relationship with regimes there. The Doctrine underscores the stake of US capital in the Middle East. ![]() Though aimed at the Soviet Union, it could be triggered by political developments in any of the countries of the Gulf. Carter’s Doctrine - that “any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States” and “will be repelled by the use of any means necessary including military force” - has all the markings of an expensive, elaborate and very dangerous bluff. The high visibility of these and other recent exercises suggests that an important function is to impress the US public in an election year that the Carter administration is “doing something” in the face of recent setbacks to US interests in the region. Robert Huyser (whose mission to Iran in the last days of the Shah included planning with the Iranian military for a US-backed coup) bragged that the Elgin jump showed US capacity for “projecting power into any area on a no-notice basis.” In California’s Mojave Desert, the Seventh Marine Amphibious Brigade was declared combat ready, and at Elgin Air base in Florida 2,400 paratroopers from the 18th Airborne Corps stationed at Fort Bragg jumped, in what may have been the largest airborne maneuver since World War II. Īt the other end of the region seven cargo vessels leased by the Pentagon were steaming toward the US base at Diego Garcia, crammed with M-60 tanks, 155-millimeter howitzers, amphibious tractors, and 30-days ammunition and supplies (including fresh water) for a marine amphibious brigade of 12,000. Lew Allen, when he announced the exercise in June, mentioned that future Egypt fly-ins might involve more sophisticated F-15s and F-16s, and even B-52 heavy bombers. “There’s nothing like it in the US, with its dryness and fine dust.” Gen. “Our pilots will learn how to operate in a Middle Eastern desert,” said Col. The squadron immediately began three months of intensive air combat exercises, code-named Proud Phantom, with the Egyptian Air Force’s new fleet of 35 Phantoms, to establish a “sister squadron relationship.” Proud Phantom’s unspoken mission is to test the suitability of Egyptian facilities for the future “projection” of US air power into the Middle East. A week earlier five C-141s and 28 C-5s airlifted some 4 million pounds of equipment and supplies and more than 500 US Air Force personnel from Dover Air Base in Delaware to Cairo West this was the first Middle East dry run of the Air Force’s “bare base” capability. On Thursday, July 10, a squadron of 12 brown and green camouflaged F-4E Phantom fighter-bombers landed at Cairo West Air Base after a non-stop 13-hour flight from Moody Air Base in Georgia.
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