MIDDLE EAST : Gulf Dilemma Is Born Again: Who Is Watching the Store?

As the prospect of new Middle Eastern hostilities looms again, with allied warplanes patrolling southern Iraq, an old problem comes once more creeping to the table: Who is guarding the Gulf?

The desert emirates that house the world’s richest oil deposits still have negligible armies, despite solemn vows to lavish them with arms and new troops after the Gulf War. And an Arab world split by the conflict seems no closer than before to agreeing on the Arab security force pledged during the pan-Arab euphoria that followed the liberation of Kuwait.

Though the Middle East has ordered about $35 billion in new arms since Iraq invaded Kuwait, according to recent estimates by Britain’s Saferworld Foundation the arrival of U.S., British and French planes to police southern Iraq shows that the Persian Gulf is no closer to self-sufficiency than it ever was.

Military cooperation agreements with the West have replaced Arab deterrent forces for countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar; this has governments in Egypt and Syria, which had hoped to have a piece of the Gulf defense pie, grumbling.

“Will they ever learn?” demanded an editorial last week in Cairo’s Egyptian Gazette, discussing the Gulf region in the wake of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait. “Have the Gulf countries managed to forge self-dependence in the area of defense two years after Saddam’s vicious incursion into Kuwait? A big no is the clear answer!

“It is abundantly clear,” the editorial said, “that the Gulf countries have fallen into the trap of the fears given rise to and exaggerated by the West. . . . Many countries have stocked up on the most sophisticated weaponry. But rarely are these weapons wielded by the natives, for it seems that the common belief is that the West can do the defense job for them.”

On Wednesday, officials of the six Persian Gulf countries will meet in Qatar with the foreign ministers of Egypt and Syria to decide once and for all how--if at all--to implement the “Damascus declaration” signed after the Gulf War. That agreement envisioned Egyptian and Syrian troops stationed as part of a large defense force in the Gulf, along with related agreements for huge Gulf aid packages to poorer Arab neighbors.

The almost universal expectation that little will come of Wednesday’s meeting reflects how much views on how to defend the Persian Gulf have changed in the two years since Iraq was ejected from Kuwait with the aid of a multinational alliance which included several Arab armies.

It also signals the extent to which the Gulf countries--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates--have become so fractured by political infighting that little common ground on joint defense can hope to be achieved.

Both Egypt and Syria are expected to present proposals for expanded political and economic, if not military, cooperation with the Gulf.

Egypt, which fought four Arab wars against Israel and maintains the Arab world’s most powerful army, says it continues to be ready to send troops to the Gulf if invited. Syria presumably would as well.

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s initial dreams of an expanded, 100,000-strong Gulf security force seem largely washed up on the shores of Arab infighting: None of the Gulf countries trust any of the others enough to have a strong fighting force in a region outside an individual country’s control.

Bahrain and Qatar are squabbling over an old border dispute; Qatar is blaming the Saudis and Kuwaitis for taking Bahrain’s side. Most of the other five Gulf countries are at odds with Oman over many issues, most importantly the role of Iran in any security arrangements.

Recent talk of integrating Iran on an informal basis into a Gulf security pact, in the view of Egyptian political analyst Gehad Auda, is a strategy of appeasement. “They hope to cool Iran off, to make Iran feel more in and part of the Gulf, to make it less nasty,” he said. “But in their view they have only one ally, and that’s the U.S.A.”