Brian M Downing
Strategic alignments are usually based on compelling economic and military interests. But as argued previously, the US and Saudi Arabia are moving in different directions economically and militarily. The US is no longer buying crude from the Gulf and may not be able to afford to keep the ten or more sizable military bases in the Gulf.
Alignments are also based on shared beliefs. The US and Saudi Arabia have never been close in this regard, whereas the US and key allies in East Asia and Europe have much on common. All the more reason for the US to pull back from the Middle East and concentrate elsewhere.
Withdrawal from the Gulf would be a momentous shift – one that would be unsettling in security bureaus in Washington. However, it could well bring benefits to the US – and burdens to Russia and China.
Democracy, expansionism, and terrorism
Key US allies in Asia and Europe share many US beliefs, if only out of painful recent histories. The US has far less in common with Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies.
South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have had periods of authoritarian rule and in the case of Japan, one of violent military expansion. Today, all three are stable and restrained democracies. South Korea is the most militarized of the three but civilian rule prevails.
Europe was once the most warlike and expansionist region the world has ever known – and is likely to ever know. Loyalties shifted and borders were violated. Armies conquered vast parts of Africa and Asia. The continent’s martial ardor has waned greatly. Two world wars costing tens of millions of lives saw to that.Today, miilitary budgets are tight and foreign deployments hotly contested.
Saudi Arabia and Gulf allies are ruled by family monarchies. Monarchs personally own their realms’ oil resources which gives them far more power over subjects than any Habsburg, Bourbon, or Hohenzollern monarch could claim. Louis XIV might have said “I am the state” – there’s no evidence he did – but his aristocracy and courts knew otherwise.
Mohammad bin Salman tortures and murders those who think otherwise. His means of repressions range from hi-tech surveillance to crude decapitation. Freedoms of the press and religion are abhorrent. Those of other faiths or branches of Islam are persecuted. Women are tied to husband and home. Mohammad bin Salman has only recently granted them the privilege of driving cars.
The Saudi armed forces, as noted previously, are unprofessional and inexperienced. The kingdom nonetheless expands its influence by subsidizing foreign states and their armies. Pakistan and Egypt are important cases in point. Libya, the Sudan, and Yemen are in the works. In so doing, Saudi Arabia is quashing democracy and consolidating an empire of sorts.
Saudi Arabia provides groundings for militant terrorist groups. Their state religion, Wahhabism, is an intolerant creed that intends to spread across the region and reconstitute a great caliphate. In many aspects, it parallels the apocalyptic visions of AQ and ISIL. Wahhabism is a solid education, jihad is graduate work.
The concentration of wealth in Saudi Arabia and its allies restricts opportunities for careers and political expression. Young men see no peaceable way out of this. Apocalyptic warfare is an attractive way of finding meaning and honor.
Sunni rulers, despite official positions of enmity, have directly supported terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, the al Nusrah Front, and ISIL. They have done so to channel those groups’ efforts away from royal fiefdoms and toward enemies such as Syria and Iran. If Arabic does not have words for “blowback” and “unforeseen consequences”, it might have to import them.
© 2019 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.