In the 1980s, the Pentagon Was Desperate to Avoid Nuking the Middle East

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By Edward Chang,War Is Boring

In a secluded section of MacDill Air Force Base, four miles south of Tampa, Florida, is a building once used as a command center for strategic bombers based at the facility during the early decades of the Cold War. It is also where, on March 1, 1980, that Marine Corps lieutenant general Paul X. Kelley stood up the headquarters for the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force.

Fewer than two months before, Pres. Jimmy Carter had committed the United States to one of its most consequential foreign policies in history. During the State of the Union address on Jan. 23, the president announced to the world what became known as the “Carter doctrine.”

“Let our position be absolutely clear,” Carter said. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

The speech came amid concurrent crises. On Nov. 4 the previous year, Iranian revolutionaries raided the U.S. embassy in Tehran and were holding hostages. Then on Christmas, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to shore up its fledgling communist government.

Going farther back in time, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the embargo-induced energy crisis that followed made it abundantly clear the oil the world so depended on was not secure and that the United States had to pay greater attention to the Middle East/Persian Gulf region.