Saudis Jockeying for Post-US Withdrawal Era: The BackStories Part Three

A Slate article by Christopher Hitchens puts the quandary in which the US finds itself in the Middle East by polemically putting Saudi Arabia and Iran as the Sunni/Shi'ite bad cops waiting in the wings. This plague-on-both-their-houses typifies the polemic approach many Americans have towards the Arab/Persian world in general and the contestants in Iraq more specifically. But let's back up again and look at the Saudi side of the ledger.

Remember the Dynasty TV metaphor, and how the vast Saudi Royal Family is sort of that Carrington/Ewing Texas family bulked a thousand times as large and the Saudi fortune the Carrington/Ewing's fortune times a million [counting the Saudi proven crude oil reserves in the ground amortized at at least 25 trillion dollars, maybe $50 trillion in present-day terms.] The Saudi Royal Family is acutely aware that the value of its oil wealth will vastly diminish if the US, EU and its other major customers suffer large and sustained economic recession/depression as Japan did after its real estate crash in the late '80s. If the dollar collapses, the resulting instabilities that ensue might be worse than OPEC and the Saudis shifting into alternative currencies and stock/bond holdings would warrant. So just as the Carter Doctrine and Reagan Corollary were US pledges to uphold Saudi political security/stability under its present leadership, the Saudis conversely should consider keeping the US as its primary protector, unsatisfactory as it may appear given some US policies in the Middle East. That protection has been the template until now, but King Abdullah is sending signals that the US should alter its set-in-stone policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians---even though the Hamas semi-insurgency has put that process on hiatus.

Much more important to the Saudis and their Peninsular family brethren [remember that all the ruling families save Oman's is from the same Mesalikh branch of the Unaiza tribal confederation] is the ascendancy of Iran. The Arabian Peninsula has significant Shi'ite minorities [and in Bahrain a majority] who have in the past demonstrated their unhappiness. They have been mollified, but Iran has always from the days of the Shah and nowadays even more, attempted to meddle in peninsula affairs. Recall that the Shah sent troops to Oman to suppress the Dhofar insurgency in the '70s and that the present Iranian leadership allows its citizens to use Dubai as a vast shopping mall for luxuries unavailable in Tehran.

Looking to the north, as the Turks see their hopes of joining the EU put in stasis, or even receding, they will predictably perceive their eastern "Mountain Turks," i.e. Kurds, as their most significant internal/external security problem. The Turks and Kurds are Sunni, so at bottom, they are unlikely to succumb to Iranian subversion or blandishments. But the Saudis would do well to regard Turkey as a new player/ally in the region whose assistance might help the KSA and its peninsular allies achieve equilibrium in an era of diminished US presence in the region.

The Saudis look at the world as an onion-ring House of Peace surrounded by a House of War with many gradations of hostility or friendship between themselves and various countries, but the House of War [Dar al-Harb] appears dangerously near to being turned into a Sunni-Shi'ite struggle rather than a Muslim-Kafiir problem. And despite the US's current difficulties, including a new Congress some of whose members believe that Okinawa is a good offshore base for the Central Command and are ignorant of Al-Qaeda being a Sunni-based terrorist outfit, America's role will remain, even if diminished. And even thought the Democratic Party has a large number of members who feel the Saudis may be too close to the Bush family dynasty, the previous Democratic administrations have all regarded the Saudi Arabia as a central player in the Middle East and a reliable ally throughout Central Asia and Africa.
Although both the US left and the US right both harbor elements with an intense distrust of Saudi Arabia, the NYT and its MSM pilot fish do accord the Saudis a measure of respect as a dependable ally.

But that respect and support may be waning as the consequences of the post-Gulf War decision to base US troops in Saudi military cities still reverberate today. In hindsight, that policy appears to have been a colossal blunder that stirred up more religious opposition to infidel troops based in the Kingdom than the benefits of proximity to the Middle East heartland and Saudi security conferred. King Abdullah should bear this new American outlook in mind in selecting his new foreign minister, as the Saudi-American relationship should not be lightly tampered with even though some aspects have not worn well with time.

Although I have followed events in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia closely for over thirty years, I can't begin to fathom some of the intricate familial, tribal social, religious, and economic relationships that are the underlying dynamics of political processes in the Kingdom, let alone the region as a whole. I suspect that very few, if any, observers do.

As I said in my previous pondering about this Foreign Minister succession, Saud al-Faisal may be asked or ordered by the King to remain in the position if there is no consensus on a successor at the top of the Royal Family. But if King Abdullah gives the job to Saud's brother Turki, the King could anger Bandar's father, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz. Saud was in the job for over thirty years and Turki may become a permanent fixture as well. As Crown Prince, Sultan might think that appointing a Foreign Minister other than his son Bandar would impinge on his own forthcoming kingship, as Abdullah is over eighty and has a heart condition. So leaving Saud in as a figurehead, although he might still wield a lot of power, would be the compromise solution.

Okay, I know some readers, if they even get this far, will say it's how many angels on the head of a pin and what is the difference in who is selected except in some marginal fringe benefits not central to the underlying relationship between the two countries.

But for what it's worth and it's an extremely close call, I would make the final judgment that the US-Saudi relationship might be better off if Bandar bin Sultan succeeds Saud al-Faisal as Foreign Minister, talented as Turki Faisal is and well-disposed toward the American "umbrella" of protection as he and other senior Saudis have been. More later on this.

And it bears repeating that the US umbrella appears even more necessary as a nearly-nuclear Iran starts to swagger and throw its weight around in the region.