Google

www ISR
For ISR updates, send us your Email Address


Back to home page

ISR Issue 53, May–June 2007


The Saudi factor


Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman, eds.
SAUDI ARABIA IN THE BALANCE: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs
New York University Press, 2006
460 pages $50


Review by HADAS THIER

AFTER THE September 11 attacks, the U.S.-Saudi “special relationship” was in the spotlight. Why was the White House waging a “war on terror” while allied with one of the most repressive regimes in the world—one that preaches its own hard-line sect of Islam and produced fifteen of the nineteen hijackers? Some of the more rabid neoconservatives declared Saudi Arabia to be a “kernel of evil” and discussed seizing their oil fields. Many policy specialists regarded the Saudis as unreliable allies, and wanted to lessen their influence as they redrew the lines of the Middle East geopolitical map.

Saudi Arabia in the Balance addresses this elite debate. Pitched to “scholars and policymakers,” the essays in this expensive book offer an analysis of the country’s politics, religion, and economy; its relationship to the United States and the West; and the pressures for change in these arenas. The authors accept imperialism and neoliberalism as basic premises—assuming, for instance, that liberalizing the economy will be a positive development and that the U.S. is leading a process of Middle East “democratization.” Although the discussions are narrowed by this outlook, critical readers can unearth a good deal of history to better understand the current tensions within the House of Saud and the pressures on it.

The book begins with a snapshot history of the Saudi state, forged through an alliance between the al Sa’ud royal family and the Wahhabi ulama [community of learned men]. The most established ulamas compromised with the state, as opposed to the more radical “activist” Wahhabi elements. This background helps to explain the current tension within Saudi society, as the religious establishment’s compliance with Saudi (and by extension, U.S.) policy has fueled long-held resentments.

The meat of the book addresses the current transitions facing Saudi Arabia. The biggest oil producer in the world, Saudi Arabia has maintained stability through brutal repression on the one hand and massive oil profits on the other. But volatility in the world market in the 1980s and 1990s coincided with a population explosion, high unemployment, and deteriorating social conditions. These changes, warn several authors, will likely “intensify political unrest and social disruption.”

Monica Malik and Tim Niblock describe the shifts in the Saudi economy as it works to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Laws passed since 2000 allow many companies to be 100 percent foreign-owned, corporate taxes for foreign investors have been slashed from 45 to 20 percent, and a long list of public utilities is targeted for privatization. Transportation, water, flour mills, hospitals, and the post office are all up for sale. Significantly, the gas sector is opening up, through contracts with Royal Dutch/Shell, Total, Aramco consortium, Russia’s Lukol,and China’s Sinopec. These projects “constitute the largest offering of new exploration of territories the world has seen since the original Saudi concession was signed in May 1933.”

The authors refer to the need for a new social contract, one that relies on democratic changes alongside economic liberalization—including reforms to make Saudi labor “more productive and less expensive.” While admitting that the short-term effects of these policies would make most people’s lives worse, not better, they argue that a “significant level of trust is needed, built on governmental transparency and a stronger commitment to socio-economic equity.”

Though a number of essays refer to the likely growth of unrest from below, its dynamic is not seriously assessed. Political opposition has, thus far, largely been limited to elite circles, ranging from radical Salafist movements opposed to Riyadh’s relationship with the West to liberal critiques and “Islamo-liberal” movements for democratic reform. The reformers’ limited petition movements have ended in arrests. The editors’ optimism about the Saud’s process of “democratization” is belied by their most promising example, the municipal council elections of 2005. Half of the councilors were appointed, they were authorized to deal with local services rather than “political issues,” and women were not allowed to vote.

The most interesting part of the book pertains to U.S.-Saudi relations. From the birth of the Saudi state in the 1930s, the U.S. has offered security to the state in return for energy. According to his secretary of state James Byrne, Franklin Roosevelt determined that “in view of the strategic location of Saudi Arabia, the important oil resources of that country and the prestige of King Ibn Sa’ud throughout the Arab world, the defense of Saudi Arabia was vital to the defense of the United States.” After the Second World War, the U.S. used its newly built Dhahran airfield as a potential base to contain the Soviet Union, its emerging competitor. “Economically, politically and militarily” explains contributor Rachel Bronson, “the United States was eclipsing Britain’s traditionally powerful role in the Gulf and deepening its relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

The junior Saudi partner impressed its patron with the virulence with which it pursued the anticommunist mission. In 1951, King Abd al-Aziz assured the U.S. commander at Dhahran, “if you could find a Communist in Saudi Arabia, I will hand you his head.” Secular nationalism was also a target. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, hoped that King Sa’ud would “lead a religiously motivated bloc against [Egyptian president Gamal] Nasser’s nationalism.”

These shared goals led Washington to support and encourage Saudi funding to “international causes” in the form of Islamic organizations and anti-Soviet operations. As a 1977 Washington Post article put it:

The Saudis are spending billions of dollars in an arc of influence that extends from Morocco eastward across Africa and the Middle East and deep into Asia. It is an arc that, by design or by accident, could easily have been traced by an American administration eager to help [overcome] new difficulties persuading Congress to appropriate money for such causes.

In fact, in the 1980s, the kingdom provided up to $32 million to the Contras in Nicaragua at the White House’s behest. And to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia each provided more than $3 billion to Islamist fighters. Bronson, who chronicles this Cold War collaboration, argues that unity of the two states has frayed a bit since they lost anti-communism as an ideological and strategic glue. Tension has risen within Saudi Arabia as the hard-line Islamic forces once promoted by the U.S. have begun to rebel against the continued—and growing—U.S. presence in the Gulf.

But despite the shifting post–Cold War dynamics, Paul Aarts argues that the relationship between Washington and Riyadh will not radically alter. Considering Saudi Arabia’s vast resources and strategic location, the U.S. is unlikely to jettison the overall thrust of this decades’-long relationship—trading Saudi security for energy. Saudi Arabia spends more on defense per capita than any other country, purchasing almost $100 billion worth of arms from the U.S. over the past half-century. And it remains the world’s largest oil exporter.

In the period from 2001–25, Middle East oil output is likely to double, growing three times faster than output in the rest of the world. Over the same period, U.S. projected import reliance is set to grow from 54.9 to 67.9 percent of its consumption. More important, argues Aarts, is a growing international demand and the need for the U.S. to “limit the autonomy of potential rivals like China, and at the same time ‘servicing’ partners like Europe and Japan (and asking favors in return).” Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil, argued Dick Cheney to the Armed Services Committee, has a “stranglehold” not only on the U.S. economy but also “on that of most of the other nations of the world as well.” China is a particular concern. As Aarts explains:

China’s imports of oil in 2004 were set to expand by some 40 per cent, giving Saudi Arabia the position of China’s principal oil supplier. The country is already importing 60 per cent of its oil from the Gulf and this is likely to increase to 80 or 90 percent in the coming two decades.… If China maintains its growth dynamic without major political and/or social disruptions, it will indisputably become a dominant player in the international economic and financial system.

There are certainly strategic debates within the American ruling class about how to adjust its relationship with the Saudis. In 2003 it looked like many preferred an occupied Iraq as their primary ally, rather than an unstable Saudi Arabia. But those plans soon backfired as the occupation of Iraq spiraled out of control—and strengthened Iran. Policymakers have gone back to the Saudis in an effort to pull together a Sunni bloc against the emergence of the so-called Shia crescent of Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias, and the (non-Shia) Palestinian Hamas.

Ultimately, concludes Aarts, recent strategic “shifts will not have changed fundamentally the underlying realities of an interdependent relationship. In that sense, it does not really matter whether there is a Democrat or a Republican living in the White House.”

This candid remark illustrates the book’s perspective—the outlook of those who want to stabilize, not change, the status quo. For this reason, Saudi Arabia in the Balance serves best as a source of information and some insight into the tactical questions facing the Saudi and U.S. ruling classes.

Back to top