Not Friend or Foe
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
May 14, 2002
THE Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - friend or foe of America? Having
been asked exactly this question on such shows as CNN's
"Crossfire" and ABC's "Nightline," I've come to the conclusion
that the answer is "neither." Rather, Saudi Arabia is a rival.
Saudi Arabia has been friendly to the extent that, since a dying
Franklin D. Roosevelt met an aging King Ibn Saud in 1945, its
leaders have kept their part of a crucial bargain: They provide oil
and gas and in return Washington provides security.
This deal has sometimes held, as when the Saudis opened their oil
spigot, to the annoyance of their fellow energy exporters; or when
a half million U.S. troops were rushed over to Saudi Arabia in
1990-91 as Iraq threatened the kingdom.
In other ways, however, the relationship has been hostile, as in
1973-74, when a Saudi oil embargo helped spur the deepest
economic crisis in the United States since the Great Depression.
Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has stated, "Much of the
money for al Qaeda has come from Saudi Arabia," tying the
Saudis directly to 9/11.
And since September, they repeatedly have failed Americans.
They neither endorsed the U.S. attack on the Taliban, cracked
down on their own bin Laden sympathizers, forthrightly
acknowledged the role of Saudis on 9/11 nor made a priority of
closing down the continuing financial flows to al Qaeda.
More, as a leading Saudi figure warned just last month, the
kingdom might join America's enemies to survive: "If that means
we move to the right of [Osama] bin Laden, so be it; to the left of
[Libya's ruler Moammar] Khadafy, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and
embrace Saddam [Hussein] like a brother, so be it."
This cannot be dismissed as an empty threat. Symbolic of these
tensions, the Pentagon recently excluded the kingdom from a
listing of U.S. allies in the war on terrorism.
Such differences mean that Saudi Arabia cannot be thought of as
an ally. Instead, it should be seen as a rival, along the lines of like
France, Russia or China.
Granted, compared to those three, Saudi Arabia looks pretty
unimpressive, with a population officially estimated at 22 million,
a political system dominated by thousands of princes and an
economy deeply dependent on oil revenues. Its culture is
notoriously backward (women banned from driving), closed-
minded (total censorship) and barbaric (executions as public
spectacles).
Despite these disadvantages, the kingdom's rulers see themselves
as leaders of the billion or so Muslims worldwide and the
vanguard of a movement that eventually will vanquish and replace
Western civilization, which they dismiss as corrupt and doomed.
This outsized ambition derives in part from the Saudi state being
"protector of the two holy places," the cities of Mecca and
Medina. In part, it emerges from Wahhabism, the extremist vision
of Islam that predominates in Saudi Arabia.
Worse, as The New York Times recently noted, an ever-more
radical version of Wahhabism is gaining strength in the kingdom:
an "extremist, anti-Western world view has gradually pervaded
the Saudi education system with its heavy doses of mandatory
religious instruction [and then it] seeped outside the classroom
through mosque sermons, television shows and the Internet,
coming to dominate the public discussions on religion."
Anti-Western views have stuck; in particular, Saudis have shown
themselves wildly sympathetic to bin Laden. One American
hospital worker in Saudi Arabia reported "Saudi doctors and
nurses around him celebrating on 9/11." A confidential survey
found some 95 percent of young educated Saudis sympathetic to
his declaration of war against the United States.
A century ago, most Muslims viewed Wahhabism as little more
than an Arabian curiosity. Today, thanks to vast oil revenues well
spent, a vast Wahhabi institutional structure exists to spread these
ideas, so that it has become a powerful force wherever Muslims
live, from Afghanistan (where the Taliban embodied this
ideology) to most mosques in the United States. There are times
and places when cooperation with the government of Saudi
Arabia makes sense.
There are also times and places when confronting it is necessary.
The larger point is this: However much the United States
predominates today, there are any number of would-be successors
and Saudi Arabia is no less ambitious than the others. It must be
watched with great caution.
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