Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 01:36:26 +0100
No “Arab Spring” in the Saudi Kingdom: Riyadh’s Foreign Policy and “The
Saudi-Led Counterrevolution”
By <http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/nicola-nasser> Nicola Nasser
Global Research, March 25, 2014
arabia
Writing in The Washington Post on February 27, 2011, Rachel Bronson asked:
“Could the next Mideast uprising happen in Saudi Arabia ?” Her answer was:
“The notion of a revolution in the Saudi kingdom seems unthinkable.”
However, On September 30 the next year, the senior foreign policy fellow at
the Saban Center for Middle East Policy Bruce Riedel concluded that the
“revolution in Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable.”
To preempt such a possibility, the kingdom in March 2011, in a “military”
move to curb the tide of the Arab popular uprisings which raged across the
Arab world from sweeping to its doorsteps, the kingdom sent troops to
Bahrain to quell similar popular protests.
That rapid reactive Saudi military move into Bahrain heralded a series of
reactions that analysts describe as an ongoing Saudi-led counterrevolution.
Amid a continuing succession process in Saudi Arabia, while major
socioeconomic and political challenges loom large regionally, the kingdom is
looking for security as far away as China, but blinded to the shortest way
to its stability in its immediate proximity, where regional understanding
with its geopolitical Arab and Muslim neighborhood would secure the kingdom
and save it a wealth of assets squandered on unguaranteed guarantees.
In his quest to contain any fallout from the “Arab Spring,” Saudi King
Abdullah Ben Abdel-Aziz selectively proposed inviting the kingdoms of Jordan
and Morocco to join the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf,
known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), leading The Economist on May
19, 2011 to joke that the organization should be renamed the “Gulf
Counter-Revolutionary Club.” For sure including Iraq and Yemen would be a
much better addition if better security was the goal.
Ahead of US President Barak Obama’s official visit to the kingdom by the end
of this March, Saudi Arabia was looking “forward to China as an
international magnate with a great political and economic weight to play a
prominent role in achieving peace and security in the region,” according to
Defense Minister and Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud who was in
Beijing from March 13 to 16 “to enhance cooperation with China to protect
peace, security and stability in the region.” He was quoted by a
<http://www.spa.gov.sa/English/details.php?id=1209132> statement from the
Saudi Press Agency.
Prince Salman was in Japan from 18-21 last February, hopefully to deepen
bilateral cooperation “in various fields.” On February 26, India and Saudi
Arabia signed an agreement to strengthen co-operation in military training,
logistics supplies and exchange of defense-related information. On last
January 23, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia
<http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/01/24/saudi-arabia-ri-ink-defense-c
ooperation-agreement.html> signed a defense cooperation agreement, the
first of its kind.
While a strong Saudi-Pakistan defense partnership has existed for long, it
has been upgraded recently. Princes Salman and Foreign Minister Saud
al-Faisal arrived in Pakistan on February 15. Pakistani army chief General
Raheel Sharif was in Saudi Arabia earlier. Director of South Asia Studies
Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC, Tufail
Ahmad, wrote on this March 11 that “the upswing in the relationship marks a
qualitative change,” hinting that the kingdom could be seeking Pakistan’s
nuclear capabilities to “counter a nuclear-capable Iran” despite Islamabad’s
denial, which “is not reliable.” The kingdom is moving “to transform itself
as a regional military power,” Sharif wrote.
On this March 14, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia has given
$1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) to Pakistan . In February a senior Pakistani
intelligence official told the Financial Times that Saudi Arabia was seeking
“a large number of [Pakistani] troops to support its campaign along the
Yemeni border and for internal security.” The official confirmed that
Pakistan ’s agreement, during Prince Salman’s visit, to support the
establishment of a “transitional governing body” in Syria was an important
aspect of the deal.
On this March 5, the kingdom led two other members of the six-member GCC,
namely the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain , to withdraw their ambassadors
from Qatar , risking the survival of the GCC.
Hunting two French and Lebanese birds with one shot, the kingdom early last
January pledged a $3 billion royal grant, estimated to be two-time the
entire military budget of Lebanon , to buy French weapons for the Lebanese
Army.
The Saudi multi-billion dollar support to the change of guards in Egypt
early last July and the kingdom’s subscription to Egypt’s make or break
campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) inside and outside the country
following the ouster of the MB’s former president Mohammed Morsi reveal a
much more important Saudi strategic and security unsigned accord with
Egypt’s new rulers.
On the outset of the so-called “Arab Spring,” the kingdom also bailed out
Bahrain and the Sultanate of Omen with more multi-billion petrodollars to
buy the loyalty of their population.
More multi-billion petrodollars were squandered inside the country to bribe
the population against joining the sweeping popular Arab protests.
Yet still more billions were squandered on twenty percent of all arms
transfers to the region between 2009-2013 to make the kingdom the world’s
fifth largest importer of arms while more Saudi orders for arms are
outstanding, according to a new study released on this March 17 by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
While the United States will continue to “guarantee Israel ’s qualitative
military edge” over all the twenty two Arab nations plus Iran , Iran is
developing its own defense industries to defend itself against both the US
and Israel , rendering the Saudi arms procurement efforts obsolete.
Had all of those squandered billions of petrodollars spent more wisely they
could have created a revolution of development in the region.
Not Assured by US Assurances
Ahead of Obama’s visit, the Saudi message is self-evident. They are looking,
on their own, for alternative security guarantees, or at least additional
ones. They don’t trust their decades – long American security umbrella
anymore. The US sellout of close allies like the former presidents of
Tunisia , Egypt and Yemen shed doubt on any “assurances’ Washington would be
trying to convey during Obama’s upcoming visit.
President Obama is scheduled to be in Riyadh by the end of this March to
assure Saudi Arabia of what his Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns on last
February 19 told the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the
United States takes Saudi security concerns “seriously,” “US-Saudi
partnership is as important today as it ever was” and that the “Security
cooperation is at the heart of our agenda” with the GCC, reminding his
audience that his country still keeps about 35,000 members of the US
military at 12 bases in and around the Arabian Gulf.
However, “the Saudi voices I hear do not think that what they see as the
current lack of American resolve is merely a short-term feature of the Obama
Presidency: They spot a deeper trend of Western disengagement from their
region,” Sir Tom Phillips – British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia 2010-12 and
an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa
Programme – wrote on last February 12.
Obviously, the Saudis are not assured, neither internally, regionally or at
the international level because as Burns said on the same occasion: “We
don’t always see eye to eye” and it is natural that Gulf states would
“question our reliability as partners” given US efforts to achieve energy
independence and US warnings that traditional power structures, such as the
gulf monarchies, are “unsustainable.”
Obama’s upcoming visit to the kingdom has been described as a
“fence-mending” one. Saudi Foreign Minister
<http://susris.com/2013/11/04/special-report-secstate-kerry-formin-prince-sa
ud-al-faisal-press-conference/> Prince Saud Al Faisal, at a joint press
conference alongside visiting <http://susris.com/officials/john-f-kerry/>
US Secretary of State John Kerry last November, hinted that fences might not
be mended because “a true relationship between friends is based on
sincerity, candor, and frankness rather than mere courtesy.”
What Prince Al Faisal described as “frankness” is still missing: His
brother, prince Turki al-Faisal, in an interview with The Wall Street
Journal last December, blasted the Obama administration for keeping his
country in the dark on its secret talks with Iran : “How can you build trust
when you keep secrets from what are supposed to be your closest allies?”
“The Saudis have good reason to feel besieged and fearful,” Immanuel
Wallerstein, director emeritus of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton
University and senior researcher at Yale University and Maison des Sciences
de l’Homme in Paris , was quoted as saying by AlJazeera America on this
March 1.
Senior associate of Carnegie’s Middle East program Frederic Wehry on this
March 10 wrote that, “There is a growing sense in Gulf capitals … led by
Saudi Arabia ” that “the United States is a power in retreat that is
ignoring the interests of its steadfast partners, if not blithely betraying
them.”
What Burns described as “tactical differences” with Saudi Arabia and its GCC
co-members, the Saudis are acting on the premise that those differences are
much more strategic than “tactical” and accordingly are overstretching their
search for alternative security guarantees worldwide because they seem to
disagree with Burns that “our Gulf partners know that no country or
collection of countries can do for the Gulf states what the United States
has done and continues to do.”
Pressured between Two ‘Crescents’
Three threatening developments have led to Saudi distrust in US security
assurances. The first was the selling out of a US ally like the former
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the second was the Qatari, Turkish and US
coordination with the Muslim Brotherhood regionally and the third was the
assumption to power of the MB in Egypt . The first development set the
precedent of selling out of a long regional US ally against the fervent
public advice of the kingdom. Mubarak’s ouster set the red lights on in
Riyadh of a possible similar scenario in Saudi Arabia .
The second development put the kingdom on alert against the emerging MB,
Turkey, Qatar and the US axis that would have encircled Saudi Arabia had the
kingdom allowed this axis to hand the power over to the Brotherhood in Syria
in the north and in Egypt in the west. The MB is influential in Jordan, the
kingdom’s northern neighbor, and in Yemen , its southern neighbor. The
Hamas’ affiliation to the MB in the Palestinian Gaza Strip would complete
what a Saudi analyst called the “Brotherhood crescent” in the north, west
and south, to squeeze the kingdom between the rock of this “Brotherhood
crescent” and the hard place of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the east.
The third development surrendered the western strategic backyard of the
kingdom to the MB, which has become untrustworthy politically in view of its
membership in the emerging US-led ““Brotherhood crescent” after decades of
sponsoring the MB leaders who found in the kingdom a safe haven from their
suppression in Syria and Egypt and using them against the pan-Arab regimes
in both countries and against the pan-Arab and communist political
movements.
Unmercifully pressured between the “Brotherhood crescent” and what King
Abdullah II of Jordan once described as the “Shiite crescent” extending from
Iran through Iraq and Syria to Hezbullah in Lebanon, let alone the al-Qaeda
offshoots, which have deep roots inside the kingdom and in its immediate
surroundings and have emerged as a major threat to regional as well as to
internal stability, in addition to what the Saudis perceive as the
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/no-arab-spring-in-the-saudi-kingdom-riyadhs-fo
reign-policy-and-the-saudi-led-counterrevolution/5374583>
withdrawalhttp://cdncache1-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png or at
least the rebalancing of the US power out of the region, the kingdom seems
poised to find an answer to the question which Bruce Riedel asked on
September 30, 2012 about whether or not the “revolution in Saudi Arabia is
no longer unthinkable.”
The Saudi answer so far has been reactive more than proactive. “It is
difficult to avoid the impression that Saudi policy is more re-active than
pro-active,” Sir Tom Phillips – British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia 2010-12
and an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa
Programme – wrote on last February 12.
Proactive Shorter Path Overdue
Following the lead of the United States and Europe who have come to deal
with the fait accompli that Iran as a pivotal regional power is there to
stay for the foreseeable future, a more Saudi proactive regional policy that
would engage Iran and Syria would be a much shorter and cheaper route to
internal security as well as to regional stability, instead of reacting to
their alliance by engaging in a lost and costly battle for a “regime change”
in both countries.
Or much better, the kingdom could follow the lead of the Sultanate of Oman,
which risked to break away from the GCC should they go along with the Saudi
proposal late in 2011 for transforming their “council” into an anti-Iran
military “union.” Regardless of what regime rules in Tehran and since the
time of the Shah, Oman has been dealing with Iran as a strategic partner and
promoting an Iranian-GCC regional partnership. Qatar takes a middle ground
between the Saudi and Omani positions vis-à-vis Iran . On this March 17, the
Qatar-Iran joint political committee convened in Tehran .
Feeling isolated, besieged and threatened by being left in the cold as a
result of what it perceives as a withdrawing US security umbrella, the
kingdom’s new experience of trying to cope on its own is indulging the
country in counterproductive external policies in the turmoil of the
aftermath of the shock waves of the Arab popular uprisings, which have
raged across the Arab world since 2011, but its tide has stopped at the
Damascus gate of the Iranian – Syrian alliance, which is backed
internationally by the emerging Russian and Chinese world powers.
At the end of the day, the kingdom’s recent historical experience indicates
that the Saudi dynasty lived its most safe and secure era during the
Saudi-Egyptian-Syrian trilateral understanding, which was developed as a
regional axis of stability, as the backbone of the Arab League regional
system and was reinforced by the trilateral coordination in the 1973 Arab –
Israeli war.
The revival of the Saudi coordination with Egypt in the post-Morsi
presidency was a crucial first step that would lead nowhere unless it is
completed by an overdue Saudi political U-turn on Syria that would revive
the old trilateral axis to defend Arabs against Israel . A partnership with
Iran would be a surplus; otherwise the revival of the trilateral
coordination would at least serve as a better Saudi defense against Iran as
well.
However such a Saudi U-turn would require of course a strategic decision
that would renege on the kingdom’s US-inspired and ill-advised policy of
dealing with Syria and Iran as “the enemy,” while dealing with Israel, which
still occupies Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories, as a possible
“peace partner” and a co-member of an anti-Iran and Syria “front of
moderates,” which the successive US administrations have been promoting.
It would first require as well a change of foreign policy decision-makers in
Riyadh , but such a change will continue to be wishful thinking until a man
of an historic stature holds the wheel at the driving seat at the helm of
the Saudi hierarchy. Until that happens, it might be too late. Meanwhile, it
is increasingly becoming a possibility that the “revolution in Saudi Arabia
is no longer unthinkable.”
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of
the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola_at_ymail.com
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