Brian M Downing
Tensions in the Gulf are once again high. Last week the president was hanging fire and pondering talks with Iran. Saturday’s attacks on Saudi oil facilities have him locked and loaded. The attacks he unexpectedly halted last month might take place this week.
Repeated tensions and troop deployments should bring reappraisal of our position in the Gulf. Is Saudi Arabia a useful ally or an embarrassing albatross? Given the implosion of governments the region in the last ten years, we might ask if the House of Saud will even exist in the next ten years?
Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally
Riyadh spends immense amounts of money on security. It has two armies – a national army comprising volunteers and conscripts from the whole kingdom and a national guard made up of tribal militias.
Money does not ensure effectiveness. Saudi troops march and salute smartly and put on impressive displays for the royal family, members of which are ensconced in the officer corps, but they are not good soldiers. In Gulf War One (1991) US generals deemed the Saudi contingent unfit for combat. In Yemen, Saudi troops diligently avoid the front.
Saudi weapons purchases are not intended to build an effective army. The deals are made in countries that have excellent armies. The expectation is that those countries will defend the kingdom, lest they lose billions of dollars of arms contracts.
The Saudi calculations are cynical, craven, and correct. Over the years the US, Britain, and France have expelled Iraq from Kuwait and the Saudi border, established a holding position in eastern Syria, and helped the flagging Sunni war in Yemen. Conflict with Iran looms.
A neo-empire?
Siding with Saudi Arabia is consolidating its dominance in the Arab world. Its power will be all the greater if Iran is further weakened and if the crown prince’s ambitious modernization program pans out and makes the kingdom an industrial power.
Riyadh has already used its petrodollars to win a great deal of influence in Egypt, Pakistan, and most of the Sunni Gulf states. The Sudan is moving toward Riyadh, Libya may follow, Yemen is being fought over. Saudi diplomacy is seeking to get Syria and Iraq to move away from Iran. It’s noteworthy that Egypt and Pakistan have large, competent armies.
The prospect of a Saudi axis stretching from the Maghreb to Pakistan should cause concern in Washington – and Jerusalem too. Yet their policies are helping to bring it about.
A house of cards?
However successful the House of Saud may be in building its neo-empire and becoming an industrial power, it’s longer-term viability isn’t assured. The kingdom comprises a slew of tribes with varying dispositions toward Riyadh and the ruling clique.
Many Saudis support the government’s official Wahhabi creed and see the royal family as decadent hypocrites. Younger subjects find the rule of sybaritic dilettantes to be embarrassing and insulting. Riyadh’s complicity in crushing the Arab Spring in Egypt and Bahrain is clear. Some in the large youth cohort look to liberal reforms, others to militancy.
Within the royal family are hundreds or thousands of men and women who resent the monopoly of power that the crowd prince has arrogated to himself and his retinue.
No one saw the Arab Spring coming. Everyone saw it ruthlessly crushed in many countries. It’s only a matter of time until another such upheaval hits the region – and the kingdom. The Saudis will then of course expect American troops to help repress it.
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American interests will be better served by holding back from war with Iran, despite the urging of Saudi princes. Longer term, the US would do well to limit Saudi power in the region by working with Qatar and the Emirates. Balancing power already exists in Syria and Iran.
© 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.