“Saudi foreign policy requires large-scale reform.
The policy’s premises and political instruments call for renewal as well.”
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| Dr. Khalid al-Dakheel |
In a two-part series published February 3 and February 10 in the
Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat,
authoritative Saudi analyst and professor of political sociology at King Saud
University Khalid
al-Dakheel penned a sober, in-depth analysis of the reasons for the
required overhaul.
Here is the
essence of his argument:
Changed times open the way to changed societies.
Nation-states have to adapt and react accordingly.
Likewise at the regional level, where a nation-state
is expected to respond and react to changed surroundings, revamping the
rationale of its regional and international policies and alliances correspondingly.
Aftereffects of the changes sweeping the Arab World –
all the way from the Arab Mashreq
to the Arab Maghreb – for
the past two years have been monumental. Because their socio-popular causes
targeted the ruling establishment and the nature of the State, the Arab World
we knew in the 20th Century is fading away before our eyes.
Problem is, no one knows when or how or where the
changes in the regional states’ political cultures, values, interests and
alliances would lead.
What is certain is that the Arab World won’t be the
same again.
The era of the two Assads’ rule in Syria, for
example, is clearly fizzling out.
But what kind of Syria will emerge from the ruins,
rivers of blood and social fabric distortions that the two Assads’ rule caused
over 40 years?
In Egypt, the First Republic has cracked. But the
Second Republic is yet to see the light because of a destructive struggle in
free fall. The struggle pits two major components of a shabby political class. The
Muslim Brotherhood leads one component while its detractors lead the other.
The same, or almost, can be said in the cases of
Yemen, Libya and Tunisia.
Then comes Iraq, where years of suffering culminated
in the U.S. invasion.
After the end of the U.S. occupation, came sectarian governance
in Iraq under Iran’s thumb.
And now, there is a new uprising in Iraq’s west,
seeking a redress.
Where would all this lead? What would happen to
political power checks and balances in Jordan and Morocco? How would the
situation in Bahrain end?
The questions are endless. But they are legitimate,
pressing and on everyone’s mind. They also need to be addressed audaciously,
transparently and realistically.
Saudi Arabia falls in the middle of these troubled
waters and sits in the eye of their storm.
She is a vast, rich and politically stable country.
But she is lashed by wild winds from all sides.
Paradoxically, Saudi Arabia’s influence on the stormy
events’ course is far from being commensurate with her breadth, her potentials,
her stability and her vast network of regional and international relations.
Her clout in Iraq, for instance, is now little. Saudi
Arabia invested massively in this neighboring Arab country since 1973,
essentially throughout the era of the late Saddam Hussein.
The investment ended with the disastrous invasion of
Kuwait and its aftermath.
Among the consequences was Saudi Arabia exiting, and
Iran entering, Iraq from the early days of the U.S. occupation.
Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said as much at a Council
on Foreign Relations meeting in New York in September 2005. He told a
questioner then that the United States was handing Iraq over to Iran on a
silver platter.
This was stated publicly. But did Washington hand
Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter by Saudi default? Why did the United
States overlook the interests of Saudi Arabia and her Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) partners as well as Jordan and Egypt when it was occupying Iraq and
running its internal affairs?
All the said states were Washington’s allies. So why
did the administration of George W. Bush hand over the reins of power in Iraq
to Iran’s Iraqi proxies?
How come the U.S. and Iran went fifty-fifty in Iraq since
2003?
What made Washington ignore the scope and depth of
social and longstanding relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and their
mutual interests, given that the two countries share a 900-kilometer-long
common border?
Where Washington was concerned, its alliance with
Riyadh in this case counted for little.
Why did this happen and how? Can the outcome be
blamed on the conservative nature of Saudi foreign policy and its tendency to
react instead of taking the initiative?
Turning to Syria, the payback was not any better.
Saudi Arabia invested much -- politically and
financially -- in the Assad regimes for decades. It is fair to say the
investment in Hafez paid off to a degree.
The investment secured a modicum of stability in
intra-Arab and Arab-Iranian relations, in forging a Saudi-Syrian-Egyptian axis
that played a key role in the October War and in
realigning Arab positions generally.
But the axis failed to lay the foundations for
equitable and solid Saudi-Syrian bilateral relations. Proof is that it failed
to prevent Syria falling gradually into Iran’s lap. Under Bashar, a solid
Damascus-Tehran alliance was cemented.
Saudi-Syrian relations started going downhill and
reached breaking point after Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s
assassination in 2005. All accusing fingers pointed at the Syrian regime
and Hezbollah.
Saudi Arabia tried to overcome this in the three
years leading to the May 2008 Doha
Agreement, which gave Hezbollah – Iran and the Syrian regime’s
cat’s paw in Lebanon – a one-third blocking majority in a planned government.
Hezbollah has since become the kingmaker in Lebanese
politics. Armed to the teeth by Iranian weapons it receives via Syria, the
party now decides the head, lineup and manifesto of every new Lebanese
government.
Awkwardly, the Saudi-sponsored 1989 Taef Agreement provided for
the disarmament of all national and non-national militias. All have disarmed
apart from Hezbollah.
In other words, as part of her investment in the
Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia provided Arab cover for the flow of Iranian arms to
Hezbollah via Syria.
This does not mean Saudi Arabia approved all that was
happening. But all this happened nevertheless.
Ultimately, Saudi-Syrian relations collapsed with the
outbreak of the Syrian Revolution in March 2011, after which Assad described
Saudi and Gulf Arab leaders as heads of Bedouin states that have “no tradition,
no history.”
Doesn’t this warrant root changes in Saudi foreign
policy and its cornerstones?
Over and above the foreign policy debacles of the
highest order in Iraq and Syria, you can hardly point at any Saudi foreign
policy success or breakthrough elsewhere since 1990 – one that would match the
investment put in it.
Of late, however, Saudi foreign policy succeeded
partially in two instances.
Before the Arab Spring, it did well in cooperating
with the Sana’a government to keep the political situation in Yemen under
control.
After the Arab Spring, it succeeded through the “Gulf Initiative”
in having Ali Abdullah Saleh transfer power to Vice-President Abed Rabbo
Mansour Hadi to lead the transition and spare Yemen a slide into civil war.
But the success is still unfulfilled. Southern separatism
has reignited, the country remains in political transition under UN supervision,
and Saleh is still lying in wait.
So why is Saudi foreign policy’s track record a blend
of unfulfilled successes and utter disappointments?
To be fair, Saudi Arabia is not to blame for the
Yemen initiative staying unfulfilled. The blame falls on the complexities of
Yemeni politics and the meddling by Iran, which is bent on smuggling arms into
the country to destabilize it and gain a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula’s
south.
In March 2011, Saudi Arabia and her GCC partners
decided to deploy Peninsula
Shield forces in Bahrain to protect vital installations after the
escalation of clashes there between security forces and protesters.
It was the right decision to make in terms of objective
and timing, except that the decision lacked a political initiative to heal
sectarian and political divisions that gripped Bahrain in the wake of the Arab
Spring.
Again, Iran has been exploiting the Bahrain crisis to
gain a foothold at Saudi Arabia’s doorstep.
In other words, Saudi Arabia and her GCC partners
succeeded in helping Bahrain cope with the situation, but failed to bring it to
a close.
It seems the anchors of Saudi foreign policy no
longer suit this period.
The anchors were based on making the most of the
balances of powers and interests in the region without direct involvement.
The geographic, economic, demographic and Islamic
credentials of Saudi Arabia allowed her to carve herself a strategic position
in a strategic part of the world. Until recently, she was one of the four legs
of the Arab regional order table.
The irony is that Saudi Arabia had no military muscle
to match either her geographic and economic weight or her political and
regional role.
Today, she can no more be the region’s powerbroker,
especially in the Arab Gulf.
Iraq and Iran were at one point the Gulf’s
powerbrokers. Since the occupation of Iraq, Iran shares the role with the
United States while seeking to become the region’s hegemon.
With foreign policies requiring teeth and power
sources, Saudi Arabia is still relying on (1) diplomacy and financial giveaways
and (2) regional and international power balances. She has control over the
first two elements and controls nothing of the rest. The result is what we saw
and are seeing in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
Clearly, the policy of relying on the balances of
power game without military muscle requires revision.
