In order to understand the nuances of Saudi foreign policy formulation and implementation, one must look at the social and political cultures in which it is made. Two themes predominate: ancient traditional basic social and religious values and norms that have remained remarkably stable over time, and the unprecedented pace of contemporary modernization that has brought radical changes in cultural customs and procedures. As a result, the present-day Saudi foreign policy decision-making process is an uneven, ever-evolving mixture of tradition and modernization.
Traditional Arabian social and religious values are as old as recorded history. In Najd, the political heartland of the Saudi regime located in central Arabia, the traditional political culture centered around a symbiotic relationship between nomadic Bedouin tribes and sedentary inhabitants of towns and villages. Tribal warfare was endemic, and the tribes provided protection for towns and villages which in turn provided them with agricultural produce and dry goods.
With the introduction of Islam fourteen hundred years ago, Islamic norms and values became superimposed over ancient Najdi cultural norms. What emerged was a relatively isolated desert culture that remained virtually unchanged until the twentieth century. For example, in 1902, when Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman Al Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, gathered loyal tribal warriors to take back his family’s patrimony, desert tribal warfare was still a way of life.
In 1926, after annexing the Hijaz and the Islamic holy places of Makkah and al-Madinah, King Abd al-Aziz demobilized his tribal warriors, whom he called the Ikhwan (the Bretheren), and settled them in agricultural communities. But many of the warriors did not adapt to civilian life and rose in rebellion against him. In 1929, they were defeated by tribal warriors loyal to the king at Sibila, the last pitched Bedouin battle in history, and the era of tribal warfare under the Al Saud came to an end.
Basic social values do not change rapidly over time, however, and many of the traditional values have survived until the present day. The main impact of tradition on Saudi foreign policy can be condensed into the four basic behaviors: conviction, cooperation, coexistence where armed conflict could be avoided, and armed conflict where it could not.
Conviction here refers to traditional Saudi political values that are deeply rooted in Islam. Despite the collision of traditional values and modernization, basic Islamic values have remained virtually unchanged. Islam is a cosmic religion in which God is omnipotent; there is no separation between what is secular and what is sacred.
From the perspective of foreign policy, Saudis feel a special responsibility for the welfare and protection of the entire Muslim world stemming from its Islamic heritage. The Hijaz, now a part of Saudi Arabia, is the cradle of Islam and the location of its two holiest places, Makkah and al-Madinah; the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, was written in the Arabic language; Prophet Muhammad, who brought Islam to the people, was from Makkah, and Islam’s first converts were Arabians. Each year, Saudis host millions of pilgrims to the annual Hajj, or Makkah Pilgrimage.
Islam has also imbued Saudis with a classical bipolar world view, divided into the Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the Abode of War). The former signifies the abode of peace, i.e. Muslims and recognized followers of the other major monotheist religions: Christians, Jews and Parsees (Zoroastrians). The latter refers to those who live outside God’s law and are hostile toward it. In this bipolar world view, Islam condones the doctrine of Jihad, the responsibility of all believers to defend the faith, by force if necessary. But Jihad is far greater than simply holy war as perceived by many non-Muslims. Its broader meaning is the personal and communal struggle within all believers’ souls to resist evil and support virtue.
Traditional Saudi political culture, while it recognizes Jihad to defend the faith, focuses more on the core Islamic doctrine of Tawhid (monotheism), the belief stressed in the puritan, fundamentalist Islamic reform movement founded by an eighteenth century Najdi Islamic scholar, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (c.1703- c.1792). The movement was labeled Wahhabism by its detractors after the name of the founder. But its followers called themselves Muwahhidin (Unitarians), stressing omnipotence of the one true God. Nevertheless, the label Wahhabism has stuck throughout the rest of the world.
Wahhabism, although basically a religious movement, quickly caught on as a political ideology as well. Political leaders in Najd were drawn to it as a means to unite the Arabian tribes under the banner of Islam and curb endemic tribal warfare. The tribal warriors, however, for whom tribal warfare had been a way of life, were drawn to it as a justification to keep on fighting, but for a higher religious cause.
The catalyst for adopting Wahhabism as a political ideology was an early adherent of the movement, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Saud, the ruler of a small Najdi principality and founder of the present Saudi royal family. Under him, Wahhabism became the political philosophy legitimizing Saudi rule and its strict adherence to Islamic law. Thus Saudi Islamic foreign policies are also deeply rooted in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings.
Another major impact of traditional Islamic cultural norms on foreign policy is the use of an ancient, informal process sanctioned by Islam to formulate and legitimize policy making: consultation (shura) and consensus (ijma‘). Essentially, persons recognized as important decision-makers consult among themselves and with the leader with the goal of reaching a consensus on how best to respond to a given issue. In this context, those consulted are not just giving their opinion but are actively participating in the entire policy making process. The aim is to reach a consensus which then legitimizes collective policy decisions chosen by the leadership.
In the absence of a strong consensus, a ruler may have leeway simply to dictate a given policy, but to dictate a policy in the face of a strong counter-consensus would be done only with great political risk. A cultural advantage of this process is that the consensus can be achieved with no winners and losers, unlike the voting process in a representative democracy, and no one loses face. The disadvantage is that if no definitive consensus can be reached, a policy decision might be put off indefinitely or no action taken at all.
There are two other strong traditional behavioral traits influencing Saudi Arabian foreign policy formulation that are a holdover from pre-Islamic times and can be found in non-Islamic cultures as well. They are a high level of personalization of interactive relationships and a contextual approach to addressing policy issues. Personalized interaction with others has traditionally always been highly important in Saudi culture, and it is still not uncommon that personal relationships involving mutual trust can take years to achieve. At the same time, it is possible for Saudis to hold different and even incompatible positions on an issue depending on the context in which it is viewed. As a result, they might express five different positions on the same issue to five different people depending on their interpersonal relationships, or might also express five different positions on an issue to the same person depending on the context in which it was broached. Thus when I was an American diplomat tasked with discussing an issue with a Saudi counterpart, I would always try to frame the conversation in the most favorable way possible. For example, if the subject of technology threatened to lead to a discussion of the threat to the kingdom of modern, secular western customs that Saudi young students were learning abroad, I might try to refocus on how the younger generation of our two countries were losing the respect they should show to their elders. There was generally always agreement on that point.
To outsiders for whom behavioral inconsistency is considered “irrational,” understanding how Saudis can hold incompatible positions on the same foreign policy issue at the same time can be difficult. It is very important therefore when discussing Saudi foreign policy issues to be aware that the there can be multiple positions on a given issue depending on the context in which it is viewed and the person(s) with whom it is being discussed.
Traditionally, foreign political and military policies were virtually synonymous. In the harsh environment of Arabia, the main objective in foreign affairs was to defend against foreign tribal attacks and/or to launch attacks against enemy tribes. To achieve either of these goals, three strategies were generally used: cooperation, coexistence, and armed conflict.
Cooperation generally meant alliance building. Traditional rulers commonly sought a cooperative relationship with a more powerful ally against a more powerful enemy. The length and duration of the alliance was based mainly on the two parties’ mutually perceived mutual interests, and in earlier times they often shifted. This practice has continued up to modern times. In the early twentieth century, the Saudis reached a cooperative relationship with the British, then the most powerful military presence in the Gulf. As the United States became a world power, the Saudis established a cooperative alliance with it. Throughout the oil age, the range of cooperation with the United States has expanded far beyond security issues to economic and political interests as well.
Coexistence was and continues to be an option generally sought to avoid a confrontation with a stronger potential adversary. The traditional strategy was to convince the adversary that the party seeking coexistence was no threat to its interests, and that armed conflict was not necessary. Coexistence was thus basically a strategy chosen if and when more was gained through peace than through war.
By the twentieth century, modern weapons technology had changed the nature of warfare and tribal warfare in Saudi Arabia ultimately came to and end. But the traditional policy strategies for dealing with war and peace, and beyond that in seeking allies with broader mutual political and economic interests, have remained in Saudi foreign policy decision-making.
Rapid as Saudi modernization has been, it did not take place all at once. The elements of modernization began at different times and progressed at different rates of development. The impact of modernization on Saudi foreign political, economic and defense policies, therefore, has been an evolutionary and uneven process.
The end of tribal warfare is a good example of the overlay of modernization on traditional armed conflict. While the battle of Sibila in 1929 marked the end of traditional Bedouin tribal warfare within the kingdom, but it also marked the first use by the kingdom of fleets of trucks to transport men and equipment, and military aircraft flown by British pilots engaged to strafe the enemy.
Modernization also came to at different times to different parts of the country. Because the Hijaz hosted the annual Hajj, it developed social, political and economic infrastructure far more advanced than that in Najd. The Eastern Province was likewise transformed into a modern industrial center beginning in the 1930s when the American oil men began searching for oil, bringing with them modern western technology, business administration and business ethics years ahead of when they were introduced in the rest of the country. By contrast, the Saudi capital at Riyadh, located in highly conservative Najd, was not opened to the resident diplomatic community or to large numbers of expatriate businessmen and technocrats until the 1970s.
King Abd al-Aziz, who was a person of extraordinary vision, did not consider modernization to be counter to Islam. Even when he did not completely comprehend its full ramifications, he realized the need for it. One area he sought to modernize was public administration. Prior to then, no formal governmental institutions existed and policy formulation and implementation through consultation and consensus was almost entirely personalized. Without the creation of modern government agencies, ministries and professional bureaucracies, it would have been impossible for Saudi Arabia to create and administer the contemporary foreign and domestic policies required to cope with the oil age.
Having never experienced colonial rule, the king had no master plan or blueprint for modernizing Saudi government institutions. The process can be said to have begun when he annexed the Hijaz in 1926 and preserved the existing Hijazi ministries, using them through the rest of the country. From that beginning, national ministries and agencies and procedures were simply created as the perceived need arose.
Due to the king’s focus on foreign policy, the first national Saudi ministry was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, created in 1930. As Abd al-Aziz expanded his rule beyond Najd, he witnessed the horizons of national interests expand. Because Britain was then the most powerful power in the region, he sent his son, Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz, who was then only 14 years of age, on a diplomatic mission to London in 1918 to further the a mutual cooperative defense, political, and economic relationship.
Except for two years in the 1950s when he retired to private life, Faisal remained Foreign Minister even after he became king until his death in 1975. If King Abd al-Aziz can be considered the father of modern Saudi Arabia, Faisal can be considered the father of Saudi foreign policy. He was a devout and learned Muslim and his mother was a descendent of Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism. His antipathy to communism was due more to its inherent atheism which he saw as a threat to the Muslim world than to its strategic threat to the non-communist world.
The second national ministry and one that also became heavily involved in foreign affairs was the Ministry of Finance, which was founded in 1932, the same year the country was renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was created to manage domestic economic affairs, and it is said that the first minister kept the ministry’s financial ledgers under his bed for security. With the advent of the oil age, however, domestic fiscal and economic policies and foreign economic policies were to become closely entwined, and the early creation of the ministry was a fortuitous beginning to the evolution of modern fiscal and economic policies.
This is not to say that traditional Saudi fiscal and commercial practices are no longer found. Historically, business ethics in Arabia were based on the principle of caveat emptor (buyer beware), in which a tajir (merchant) or money lender charged whatever the market would bear for goods and services. It was the responsibility of the buyer or borrower to know what the going market price was before negotiating a price. Nevertheless, while outright theft is forbidden in Islamic law, there is still a general consensus that a fee can be charged or a service rendered even if the service involves activities that border on corruption or conflict of interest. These activities are more prevalent in the private sector than the public sector, but “ wasta” (third parties influencing the outcome) is still wide-spread in granting government contracts.
The third national ministry, also to become heavily involved in foreign affairs, was the Ministry of Defense (later Defense and Aviation), established in 1944. Saudi Arabia had no modern armed forces and the initial task was to build a modern defense force from the bottom up. Beginning with a US Lend Lease agreement in 1943 to provide financial assistance to the Kingdom, both the Saudis looked increasingly to create a cooperative relationship with the United States, the most powerful country in the Free World and Saudi Arabia’s main defense partner, particularly after the outbreak of the Cold War. In 1953, the US Military Training Mission to Saudi Arabia was established to assist it in creating defense forces. Later the US replaced Britain with a training mission for the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an internal security force which was a descendent of the old tribal Ikhwan. The modern Saudi armed forces can be said to have come of age during their participation in Desert Storm in 1991 when they acquitted themselves very well.
Despite periodic bilateral differences over the years, close US-Saudi ties have continued to the present day. For example, it was announced last August that the US Military Training Mission to the kingdom would assist the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces in establishing a war college to provide advanced military education programs.
Another modernization program that has been invaluable in creating a professional bureaucracy in foreign relations has been providing modern advanced education for Saudi young people. Education has always been highly regarded in Arabia, but traditional education was basically religious, taught in Islamic schools. As late as the 1960s, there were only a handful of western university-educated Saudis. Since then, Saudi Arabia has created a modern university system at home and sent thousands of students abroad.
In sum, over a period of less than 80 years, the evolution of modern government institutions and the establishment of a professional civil service and military service has invaluable in the conduct of foreign political, economic and defense policies. One must be careful, however, not to assume that the process is a mirror image of policy formulation and decision-making processes in the industrialized world. Just as Islamic norms and values were superimposed over a preexisting traditional political culture, the modern Saudi foreign policy procedures have been superimposed over a preexisting traditional Islamic-Arabian political culture. The result is a highly uneven and still evolving but real mixture of the two.
Over the past century, Saudi foreign policy horizons have evolved from those of a small desert principality to a leading oil state with global foreign political, petroleum, economic and financial, national and regional security and Islamic affairs interests. Whether local, regional or global in scope, however, those interests are neither jointly exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. For example, Saudi interests in Islamic affairs cover the whole spectrum of Saudi foreign and domestic policies. All Saudi foreign policy interests overlap and are interwoven with other related interests.
Hand in hand with the rapid pace of modernization that has driven this evolutionary process is the resiliency of traditional responses to foreign policy issues. Saudi national security policy in particular is still based on the traditional strategy of seeking mutual security cooperation relationships, not only with neighboring and regional states, but also with major outside military powers against common military threats. But it also seeks coexistence relationships with powerful potential adversaries by persuading them that the kingdom does not represent a threat to their interests.
-- Saudi - US Relations: Saudi relations with the United States have evolved and remain the most the kingdom’s most important bilateral relationship, based almost entirely on mutually perceived mutual interests. That can be said to have begun in the early 1930s when the first American oil men came ashore in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia to search for oil; oil has remained a primary mutual interest from that day to this.
In the 1930s, Britain was the kingdom’s major ally and British oil companies were located throughout the Gulf. Nevertheless, King Abd al-Aziz was wary of too close a relationship with European powers for fear that colonialism might follow. It was in large part because the United States was not considered an imperial power that the king gave American oil companies the oil concession in the Eastern Province in 1933.
The growth of oil revenues also spurred Saudi-US economic, financial and commercial relations. As the kingdom gained in both sophistication and global interests, these interests have expanded worldwide. Nevertheless, even in the current recession, the United States retains the largest global investment and financial market that has continued to make mutual Saudi-US economic interests a major element in bilateral relations.
Formal diplomatic relations with the United States were established in 1933, the same year American oil companies got the oil concession that became Aramco and now the wholly owned Saudi Aramco, but diplomatic representation did not occur until 1943. However, King Abd al-Aziz became convinced by World War II and the Cold War that Saudi national security was threatened, and in traditional Saudi fashion, sought a strong military ally. Prior to World War II he had looked to the United Kingdom for that role, but as the United States emerged as the major super power confronting the Soviet Union, he turned to it as a major ally.
From that time on, mutual security and oil interests have changed markedly, but they have remained at the core of the bilateral relationship. Early security threats consisted mainly of conventional military warfare, but in recent years, asymmetrical warfare, terrorism and insurgencies have become a major threat. Another major change has been the US shift from being a major oil exporter to a major oil importer. It is now the worldfs largest aggregate and per capita consumer of oil. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has risen to become the the world’s largest oil exporter and has the world’s largest proved oil reserves.
Despite strong, historic mutual interests, the bilateral relationship has not always been smooth. In large part due to the wide cultural gap between the two counties, there has always been a great deal of ambivalence balancing strong mutual interests with periodic tensions arising from mutual antagonisms. For example, the Saudis took personal affront when President Truman partitioned Palestine to create Israel in 1948 without consulting with King Abd al-Aziz despite his predecessor, President Roosevelt’s promise to do so. Breaking a promise to consult (shura) was considered a major breech of honor; the Arab-Israeli problem has been a major source of contention ever since.
The Arab oil embargo, engineered by Saudi Arabia in 1973, was another source of contention. King Faisal felt that President Nixon had broken his promise made in a secret message to the king that the US would be “even-handed” in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war; two days later he announced a $2.2 billion military aid grant to Israel.
From a broader perspective, the uncritical American political, economic and military support of Israel since the partition of Palestine in 1948 has and continues to be the major source of Saudi ambivalence toward the United States as a great power partner in mutual security cooperation.
The rise of international Jihadist terrorism since the end of the Cold War, and particularly in the Middle East, has been another source of ambivalence. From the Saudi perspective, the United States has on the one hand provided needed training, intelligence and operational support against terrorism; on the other hand the combination of US support of Israel and its use of hard-line policies to combat terrorist threats in the region has generated more anti-American antipathy throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds that has enabled the terrorists to succeed in what is essentially a fight for the hearts and minds of politically disaffected people.
The most recent strains arose in response to the terrorist attacks on the New York Trade Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Many Americans were severely traumatized watching the attacks live on television and learning that fifteen of the nineteen terrorists were Saudis. The attacks generated widespread public hostility against Arabs and Muslims in general and Saudis in particular, and was later exploited by the government to gain support for the military occupation of Iraq, which from the Saudi point of view merely added to regional instability.
Yet despite the mutual periodic stresses and irritations over specific issues, and the skepticism of both sides toward motivations and intentions of the other side, mutually perceived interests mutual self-interests have over time outweighed mutual ambivalences, creating remarkably cordial and stable relations throughout the history of the relationship. This does not mean, however, that major strains will disappear.
-- Other Bilateral Relationships: Beginning with the foreign consulates that were already located in Jiddah to serve Makkah pilgrims when the king annexed the Hijaz in 1926, Saudi Arabia has expanded formal bilateral diplomatic representation all over the world. By and large, however, most of the relationships focus on mutual security issues or economic and commercial interests or both, many of which existed prior to establishing formal relations.
For example, private sector commercial relations had existed with Asia through the dhow trade since ancient times, and Britain and Netherlands began offering trade and banking services to Makkah pilgrims under their colonial rule in the nineteen century. Formal mutual security relations were established with Britain and other European powers in the early twentieth century, and now purchase arms throughout Western Europe, Russia and China. In addition, Saudi commercial policies have focused increasingly on East Asian, including Japan, not merely to sell oil but to seek for investment opportunities and trade.
-- Multilateral Relations: In addition to international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, Saudi Arabia also maintains membership in other multinational organizations. They include the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation (GCC) and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
While the kingdom is represented at all these organizations, they are most active in OPEC in which they play a major role as the leading oil exporting country. The main goal of OPEC is to regulate members’ production rates in order to maintain stable and what is agreed are the fairest market prices for producers and consumers alike. Decisions are made by consensus but, as Saudi Arabia learned in the 1980s when it attempted to be the “swing producer” in regulating prices, members cannot always be counted on to maintain their production quotas. Nevertheless, on balance OPEC has played positive role in the global oil market.
The organization with probably the least operational coordination of foreign policies of its members is the GCC, whose members include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Although the GCC countries share many of the same policy interests, including security threats, and although they discuss common interests with each other, there is little or no attempt to reach consensus; each country formulates policy independently of the others. And because Saudi Arabia is by far the largest member, the others are chary of appearing to be under its influence.
It has been noted that Islamic affairs are a special Saudi policy interest, both domestically and globally, and are a major consideration in a wide variety of security, political, economic, and humanitarian foreign policies as well as Islamic affairs policies per se. The primary multi-national Islamic organization supported by Saudi Arabia is the OIC, founded in 1962 to promote Muslim solidarity in economic, social, and political affairs. Today there are 57 member states. The secretariat of the OIC is in Saudi Arabia which was instrumental in the OIC’s creation..
From the Saudi perspective, the most pressing current foreign policy issues concern the nexus of regional political instability and regional and national security.
The longest-standing current regional security and political insecurity issue facing Saud is the Arab-Israeli conflict. Due to the role the kingdom plays as the world’s key oil producer, Israel does not pose a direct security threat to the kingdom. A major military attack or even asymmetrical attack on Saudi Arabia could threaten Israel’s relationship with its chief patron and protector, the United States, which is the world’s largest oil consuming country.
From the Saudi perspective, the threat comes from the regional insecurity and instability generated by the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and Israel’s refusal to address key Palestinian issues including illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, boundaries based on UN Security Council 242, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugee problem dating from 1948. In addition, the Saudis point to the Israeli refusal to respond to Arab overtures, particularly those Saudi proposals included in the Fahd and Abdallah peace plans.
In the 1970s, the Saudis had hopes that US efforts to reach a negotiated peace might actually succeed. But the end result, the resulting Camp David Accords and The Egyptian-Israel Treaty of 1979, were seen as a total fiasco: Egypt not only broke with Arab consensus, but in the Saudi view it was misled into recognizing Israel by vague assurances of Palestinian autonomy as a first step. The Saudis viewed the collapse of the autonomy talks as justification of their refusal to associate with the accords.
As a result, the Saudis took an active role in the peace process for the first time. In 1981, the Saudi heir apparent, Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz, became the first Saudi leader to take an active role in the peace process. He introduced the Fahd Plan which tacitly agreed to recognize Israel by recognizing the right of all states in the region to live in peace, a position he succeeded in ultimately persuading other Arab states to accept. The overture was spurned by Israel, a position the United States also took.
In 2002, Saudi Arabia again attempted to take an active role in restarting the moribund peace process. Prince Abdallah ibn Abd al-Aziz, then heir apparent to King Fahd, proposed the first Abdallah Plan, based on a two state solution which had been publicly advocated the previous year by President Bush, the first American president to do so. The Abdallah Plan, approved by consensus by members of the Arab League, offered to Israel recognition, normalization of diplomatic and commercial relations and non-aggression. In 2007, the Arab League revived the plan, but nothing has come of it.
Upon becoming US president in 2009, Barack Obama sought to revive the peace process. He asked newly installed Israel Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to halt the (illegal) construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank to facilitate negotiations, but Netanyahu refused. In September, Obama, in order to keep his initiative from collapsing, reversed himself and backed down on a total freeze in construction, emphasizing instead the importance of getting Palestinians and Israelis at least to begin peace talks. Netanyahu, a hard-line politician who has no interest in freezing settlements or in a two state solution, saw that as a sign of weakness and proof that he could make Obama back down by refusing his request.
That is a view upon which the Saudis and Israelis probably agree. Saudi Arabia is also aware that the unquestioning US support of Israel is based domestic politics, not on its foreign policy interests. Jewish Americans in aggregate comprise the largest private source of US political election campaign contributions, and while they hold highly diverse views on most issues, they tend to respond as a bloc to any political criticism or act that that they perceive as being counter to Israeli policies and priorities.
Last July, Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud Al Faisal, while praising President Obama for seeking to restart the peace process, rejected a US proposal by the Obama Administration that Saudi Arabia make another interim gesture to Israel get it negotiations started. His rejection harks back to the Saudi skepticism about the lack of US pressure on Israel to negotiate and support of that without the United States use real pressure on Israel anything would come of the vague promises in the 1979 Camp David Accords.
In short, while the Saudis appreciate that President Obama has reversed the antagonistic policies against Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world in general, they have little expectation that he will be able to succeed where all his predecessors have failed.
Iran currently poses the greatest direct security threat to the kingdom. Mutual antagonisms, on the other hand, are centuries old: ethnic/national Arab-Persian animosities and religious Sunni-Shi‘a animosities. (The Saudi Sunni religious establishment considers Shi‘ism to be heretical.) Although these animosities were relatively latent during the Pahlavi period, they were reignited in 1980 by the current Iranian regime.
Saudi Arabia had previously been virtually alone among regional states in propounding conservative, albeit not militant, Sunni Islamic foreign policies. It now faces a radical, militant Shi‘a regime that sees Saudi Arabia as its greatest rival, both in seeking to become the leader of the Islamic world, and in seeking political hegemony throughout the Gulf. Iranian attempts to achieve the first goal by disturbing the Hajj rites in 1987 were counter-productive, generating a backlash against Iran throughout the Muslim world. And attempts to claim Gulf hegemony have reignited long-standing Arab-Persian political animosities.
Saudi Arabia has pursued coexistence with Iran but faces a major conundrum. On the one hand, it must rely on the United States for protection should Iran actually achieve launch an conventional attack or sponsor terrorist attacks; on the other, the kingdom’s long time mutual defense relationship with the United States could provoke a confrontation between it and Iran. Tehran’s close relations with Iraq’s Shi‘a dominated government add to Saudi anxieties, and reports of Iran undertaking a nuclear weapons program are especially threatening given Iran’s hostility toward the kingdom.
In reality, Iran is well aware of the potential risk if it does actually does create a nuclear capability. In addition, Saudi Arabia, with modern weapons systems and the support of the US armed forces could probably deter a conventional Iranian military attack. Iran’s armed forces are larger, but its equipment is mostly outdated. That raises the question of whether or not Iran might be tempted covertly to support dissident young Saudis to participate in terrorist attacks against the Saudi government. The primary factor mitigating in defeating such attacks is the relatively successful Saudi anti-terrorist program including rehabilitation of younger arrested terrorists. The Saudis’ greatest vulnerability is the long-standing alienation among a small portion of the Saudi Shifa minority who believe they have been ill-treated as second-class citizens.
Saudi Arabia also faces a conundrum in Iraq. The US overthrow of President Saddam rid the kingdom of a major adversary, but in so doing it reignited age old sectarian animosities among Arab Sunnis and Shi‘as and ethnic Kurds.
The United States has been able to maintain a modicum of fragile stability with its military occupation, but once it leaves, the chances of a collapse of civil order are high. The democratic system it established in Iraq virtually guarantees that the Shi‘a majority will be able to dominate the central government. Saudis see that as a threat not only to internal stability but to the Sunni Arab community in particular. President Saddam killed thousands of Shi‘as who rebelled against the regime in the wake of Desert Storm. Were an Iraqi Shi‘a government to seek reprisals, the Saudis would be hard pressed domestically not to intervene on the side of the Sunnis, many of whom share tribal ties with the kingdom.
Moreover, the collapse of Iraqi civil order could spread throughout the region. The Kurds have long wanted statehood and are virtually certain to demand a higher degree of autonomy once the Americans leave. Kurdish irredentism could create responses from Turkey and Iran, both of which have Kurdish minorities.
At present, there is relatively little action Saudi Arabia can take to address these potential threats. For them, Iraq is a potential catastrophe waiting to happen.
An academic specializing in Yemen recently commented that it was in danger of becoming a failed state as a victim of its own history. The same could be said about Lebanon. Both have historic divisions that from time to time become activated into political chaos. The threat to Saudi security in both cases is indirect, emanating mainly from breakdowns in political stability stemming from multiple destabilizing factors. As is the case in Iraq and indeed many cases of political instability throughout the region, they include sectarian, secular, demographic and territorial factors.
-- Yemen: There are both age-old and modern secular, sectarian, tribal, demographic and territorial animosities to be found in Yemen. It is basically a tribal society with a Shi‘a majority and Sunni minority. Political ideologies range from militant conservative Islamism to Marxism. For centuries, Yemen has been dominated by Zaydi Shi‘as located in the north (a smaller branch of Shi‘ism). An Islamic Zaydi Imam traditionally ruled the country until the monarchy was overthrown by revolutionary republican forces in the 1960s.
Yemenis in the south are predominantly Shafi‘i Sunni Muslims. The region was under British rule (the Aden Protectorate) until 1967 when it became the independent People’s Democratic Republic of South Yemen (PDRY) under a Marxist regime. In 1990, North and South Yemen reunited, but tribal and sectarian conflicts have periodically flared up as they have for thousands of years. The current President of Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salih, came to power in what was then North Yemen in 1978.
For years, Yemen had a border dispute with Saudi Arabia until the borders were demarcated in 2000. Today, the two major security threats are the use of the country as an outpost and safe haven by the terrorist group al-Qa’ida, and a more recent rebellion in the far north by a militant arch-conservative group known as Houthis after their leader, Abd al-al-Houthi. The government claims that the insurgents are demanding the return of a Zaydi Imamate and are supported by Iran. The rebels claim they are fighting for autonomy from a despotic and corrupt regime.
From the Saudi view point, danger of al-Qa’ida attacks launched from Yemen are obvious, but if the insurgency expands to a country-wide political instability and a breakdown of civil order, the terrorist threats could become even greater.
-- Lebanon: Lebanon has for centuries been ruled under a sectarian political system, going back to when it was a part of Syria under the Ottoman Empire. Although Syria was mostly Muslim, the area called Mount Lebanon, which had a large Christian majority, exercised a good deal of autonomy. When France assumed protective status over Syria after World War I, it detached Mount Lebanon. The largest Christian community in Mount Lebanon was Maronite Catholic, and the French believed that a separate protectorate with a majority of fellow Catholics would ease relations under French colonial administration. But to make the new protectorate economically viable, the French added Beirut and territories to the south that had large Muslim communities, reducing the Christian majority to just over half the population.
In 1926, the French drafted a Lebanese constitution reflecting the sectarian structure of the society, but with a Christian majority. The sectarian political system was reconfirmed in the 1943 “National Pact” when Lebanon got independence. The system worked fairly well as long as it matched the sectarian structure of the society. The president was always a Maronite Christian; the prime minister was always a Sunni Muslim; and the speaker of the legislature was always a Shi‘a Muslim. But over the succeeding years, the demography changed. As the Shi‘a Muslim community expanded, the Christian community was no longer the majority, upsetting the division of power.
Political polarization increased, and in 1975 a civil war broke out that continued for 15 years.
Since then, there have been several constitutional changes made to alleviate the communal animosities,
but the basic sectarian nature of the political system has remained intact.
The civil war ended in 1990 and there have been periods of relative calm, but the sectarian animosities and polarization remain. Moreover,
outside factors have also played a role. Syria, for example, has supported the Shi‘a community, including Hizballah (Party of God)
which is a major political party in the legislature but is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.
From the Saudi perspective, therefore, Lebanon has become so politically unstable that it would take very little for it to ignite into a major regional security crisis. The problem is that there is relatively little that the Saudis can do to alleviate the animosities among the sectarian groups beyond seeking cooperation among interested outside powers, including Syria and the United States, to prevent a recurrence of violence.
The evolution of Saudi foreign policy has been and continues to be an uneven and multi-paced evolution joining traditional Islamic cultural customs, values and norms with modern behavioral customs, values and norms. Foreign policy horizons have expanded from the largely local, tribal interests of a small Arabian principality to the global interests of a major oil producing and exporting state. Elements of both tradition and modernization can be seen in Saudi foreign policy interests, decision-making and responses to specific issues. Perhaps the best way to grasp the present-day Saudi foreign policy process is to apply the French dictum, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more things change in the process, the more they stay the same.
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