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Since the rise of the petroleum economy in the world, the Arabian Peninsula has been an extraordinarily complex and dangerous place. Four main characteristics have contributed to the region’s current problems:

1. The peninsula has become extraordinarily wealthy, something that remains true despite current economic difficulties.
2. It has become wealthy because it contains vast amounts of oil, the distribution and price of which -- more than any other single factor -- define the tempo of the global economy.
3. The powers native to the Arabian Peninsula are collectively too militarily weak to protect their wealth on their own, should anyone wish to intrude.
4. Given the importance of the area’s oil and enormous wealth, everyone in the world has an interest in intruding. Being rich, vital and weak historically has been an invitation for disaster.

These interrelated issues define the Saudi perspective on the world. If there were no issue of Islam, no issue of modernization, no strictly geopolitical issues, then the Arabian Peninsula still inevitably would become an area of extraordinary tension and security.

The nature of the region dictates ongoing security issues. Oil, wealth and weakness have inevitable consequences.

For Saudi Arabia, the universe is extremely fragile. The fragility intrinsic to the region is compounded by religious, social and geopolitical issues, of which the most pressing is the Islamic and tribal nature of the Saudi regime. This in itself is not new; what is new is the nature of the threats to the House of Saud, and the dramatic changes that it has faced since the twin events of the fall of the Soviet Union and Desert Storm.

During the Cold War, the primary threat to Saudi Arabia came from the emergence of a revolutionary movement -- first in Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, and then close to home in Syria and Iraq following coups in the late 1950s. This movement had three characteristics. First, it was secular. The focus of Nasserism was not Islam, but Arabism: the idea of creating a single, modern Arab state.

Second, it was socialist. It saw the state as the primary engine of modernization, and while not abolishing private property, it did attempt to create a mechanism for central planning and control of major industries. Finally, it was militarist. Nasser saw the military as the primary instrument of modernization because it was the most modern institution within the Egyptian state.

There was both a strategic and ideological affinity between Nasserite Egypt -- and the revolutionary Arab states it inspired -- and the Soviet Union. Strategically, Israel was an obvious challenge, but beyond this, U.S. support for Saudi Arabia was a direct challenge to Egyptian interests. Cairo was the center of gravity of the Arab world in terms of population and, at that time, intellectual dynamism.

Saudi Arabia was the financial center of gravity of the Arab world. So long as Saudi financial resources lay beyond the reach of Arab secular socialism, all of Nasser’s dreams were built on a base of sand. Therefore, for Nasser, toppling the House of Saud and exporting his revolution to the Saudi peninsula was a logical and necessary step in the evolution of the Arab world. From the Soviet point of view, the fall of the House of Saud would destabilize the economic foundations of global capitalism as well as pose profound strategic challenges to the United States.

From Riyadh’s viewpoint, Nasser was the antithesis of the nation’s values. The Saudis were religious, he was secular. They were Islamic first, he was an Arab first. They had traditional Islamic economic values, he was a modern state socialist. They built their society on traditional tribal relationships, he built his on the military and mobilization of the masses. Nasser, Syria and Iraq threatened everything the Saudi royal family believed in.

A Nasserite revolution in Saudi Arabia was unthinkable. Riyadh is ideologically a million miles from Cairo. The threat of military adventure, combined with the ability of the Egypt, Syria and Iraq to create mischief in the kingdom, was sufficient to transfix Riyadh. The rise of revolutionary movements like the Palestine Liberation Organization also represented a fundamental threat to Saudi interests, even though directed against Israel. The more powerful these movements became, the more vulnerable Saudi Arabia grew.

From the American point of view, the more powerful these movements became, the more powerful the Soviet Union became as well, since the U.S. government viewed Nasserites primarily as proxies for the Soviets. Washington and Riyadh were committed to blocking the rise of this movement. The two entities forged a powerful strategic bond, quite apart from oil. Nevertheless, it appeared that Nasserism was the ascendant force in the region, and with it the Soviet Union.

The alignment between the United States and Saudi Arabia intensified following the Islamic revolution and the rise of Khomeini in Iran. Neither government could tolerate the expansion of Iranian power, and both collaborated to contain it. Both Riyadh and Washington welcomed Iraq’s attack on Iran in 1980. It tied down two countries that were a basic threat to their interests. Washington and Riyadh collaborated closely there and in Afghanistan, where both wanted to contain the Soviet invasion.

The fall of the Soviet Union was the first transforming event. It meant that Arab radicalism, already in decline since Anwar Sadat’s strategic reversal, had lost its international patron, in turn bolstering Saudi security. For Riyadh, one of the reasons for its relationship with the United States was to protect the regime from radicalism, both socialist and Shiite. With Iran contained and socialism in decline, Saudi dependence on the United States also declined.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait created a temporary condition in which Saudi interests coincided with those of the United States. But however locally threatening Saddam Hussein might be, he did not represent the same kind of broad, persistent threat as the Soviet Union or the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was a nasty nuisance, but, in the long run, not an unmanageable danger.

Therefore, the presence of U.S. troops in the kingdom posed more problems than it solved as a long-term solution for the Saudi government. Memories of Ottoman occupation run deep in Saudi Arabia -- and the Ottomans were Muslims. The presence of non-Muslims in the land of the Muslim holy cities was intolerable for many Saudi citizens, particularly when the perceived threat was seen domestically as manageable. The Saudi government was prepared to tolerate the U.S. presence, since it did see the threat somewhat more intensely than broad swathes of the Saudi public. Al Qaeda grew partly from this soil.

The aftermath of Desert Storm posed a problem for Riyadh. Historically, Saudi Arabia depended on the United States for its security. The threat of Iranian, Shiite radicalism persisted but was contained by Iraq. The threat of Wahhabi Islam, even deeper than that practiced by the state, was growing.

Today, an attack on Iraq using Saudi soil would intensify the kingdom’s problems. First, the destruction of the Iraqi state, unless handled with meticulous care, would create possibilities for Iranian expansionism. It certainly would create a situation in which there no longer would be any regional counterbalance to Iran and that potentially could eliminate the buffer between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Nothing in U.S. military planning reassured the Saudis that the United States had thought this problem through.

Second, if Riyadh permitted the United States to use its soil for an attack on Iraq, it would generate a powerful backlash within Saudi Arabia itself from those who object to the presence of U.S. forces and also to the use of Saudi territory for attacks on another Arab country. The Saudi government has managed the social fabric of the kingdom carefully, but financial problems are a challenge that limit the regime’s ability to maintain good relations with some domestic elements. Riyadh does not need U.S. forces on its soil at this time.

From the Saudi point of view, there has been a historical necessity for the relationship with the United States. The Saudi government wants to maintain that relationship, since the future is uncertain and the United States might prove useful again. But the American obsession with Iraq poses challenges that have forced Saudi officials to rethink their alliance. What is the value of a relationship with the United States if the net result threatens the survival of the House of Saud?

U.S. policy, from the Saudi point of view, will completely disrupt the longstanding balance of power between Iraq and Iran that has been one of the foundations of Saudi security. Indeed, this once was a foundation of U.S. interests in the region as well. Apart from internal considerations, the U.S. commitment to destroy Iraq undermines this joint principle -- a principle that guided U.S. and Saudi policy during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s and which also dictated the end of Desert Storm in 1991. All involved understood that the destruction of Iraq would mean the ascendancy of Iran, and they understood that this ascendancy was intolerable.

Therefore, Saudi leaders do not understand why Washington has changed its policy in this regard. They argue that all an attack will do is strengthen al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, rather than weaken it, and create an untenable strategic situation in the region. Moreover, since the threats -- posed by the Soviet Union and Arab radicalism -- which had forged the relationship between Washington and Riyadh are gone, the need to maintain this relationship is unclear.

Therefore, Riyadh has opted out of U.S. plans. But the Saudi problem is this: If the United States does carry out its attack on Iraq, and if it results in a dominant Iran, Riyadh in fact will need the United States badly to protect it from a situation that Washington created in the first place. Therefore, the Saudis cannot simply break with the United States. They even might have to cooperate to some extent, or be left out of the post-war redefinition of the Persian Gulf.

Saudi leaders perceive the United States as having broken the relationship -- not the other way around --and to some extent this is true. The United States, under attack by al Qaeda, in fact is redefining the rules under which the relationship operates. And the U.S. government is quite confident that the war’s outcome will leave the Saudis even more dependent on Washington than before due to a strengthened post-war Iran.

In the end, Saudi Arabia is too rich, too strategic and too weak for its own good. It also has internal stresses it cannot completely manage. The royal family is too skilled at managing its affairs to be simply overthrown. But a radical change in orientation is not out of the question, and very well might be the inevitable outcome. Oil is no longer the great weapon it was when Riyadh single-handedly could manage prices; the Saudis now need their oil revenue too badly to play that hand.

Therefore, the Saudi government is trapped in the classic position of a player whose longstanding ally now has different interests. It cannot break its relationship with the ally, nor can it cooperate with it. It fears the world that the ally is trying to create, but it will need the ally if that world is created. Saudi Arabia is trapped in an impossible dilemma, and the worst part is that, in the final analysis, the United States is profoundly indifferent. Washington has its own problems, and that is the Saudi problem in its simplest form.

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SAUDI REPORT MEANT TO PRESSURE QATAR

Date Added: Tuesday, November 5th, 2002
Contributed by: RCN Administrator