Hemorragia Digestiva Alta

The major change taking place internationally two years after the termination of the Iraq-Iran war was the collapse of the Soviet Union.. For the Saudis, the post-Cold War period brought relief in that the burden of the cold war (war in Yemen, Nasserite threat, instability in Oman, rise of revolutionary regimes, Soviets in Afghanistan, and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict) has receded. The 1990s saw Saudi Arabia achieving progress in most of its external dilemmas: to cope and balance against revisionist states, seek a settlement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to maintain close relations with the US. While Syria (and Lebanon) and the Palestinians have strategically agreed for a settlement with Israel, Iraq was in chaos and under UN sanctions but still acted as a buffer against an Iran.

However, just as the new structure of international politics brought relief to the Saudis, it brought with it new challenges. It was about time for countries exhausted of the Cold War, such as Russia, or because of their own war such, as Iraq and Iran, to rise in quest for influence in the Middle East. Two instances require emphasis here. The first involves Iraq’s early resurgence after its war with Iran leading to the second Gulf war. The second involved the collapse of the Iraqi regime under the invasion of the US. On one hand the end of the Cold War diminished to a large extent the external neutralisation that Saudi Arabia, as we saw above, tried to activate. US hegemony in the region placed limits on this external neutralisation and weakened the Saudi ability for resistance. On the other hand, the post-Cold war period did not totally eliminate the Kingdom’s regional threats, which made the Kingdom more dependent on its international patron, somewhat reversing the ‘interdependence’ relationship discussed earlier. Iraq in the late 1980s and early 1990s represented such a threat, while Iran after the collapse of Iraq became a threat pushing Saudi Arabia to become more dependent on the US.

27_{In the Arab-Israeli political arena, Saudi Arabia as a junior partner of the US in the region, sought to}

advance peace initiatives, especially after Egypt signed its own treaty with Israel. One example was the Fahd Peace Plan in 1981 and later the Crown Prince Faisal Plan in 2000. For history of these plans and the reasoning behind them, (Kostiner 2005, 352-371).

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, which directly threatened the kingdom’s oil fields “once again threw the United States and Saudi Arabia into each others’ arms” (Bronson 2005, 385) when the Saudi government decided to allow more than half a million US troops to be deployed on its territory. Most of the attacks on Iraq through the 1990s were carried out from Saudi territory, while the kingdom contributed $30 billion out of the $54 billion war cost. Although the US withdrew its troops from Saudi Arabia after the war keeping 5000 military personnel, the US “was now intimately involved in political and strategic developments in the Gulf region, using Saudi territory and resources to pursue there” (Niblock 2006, 151-2).

In 1994, Saddam Hussein threatened Kuwait again dispatching a division of the Republican Guard, leading the US (36000 ground troops), France, and Britain to send their forces to the support of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In this round, however, “American force levels inside and around Saudi Arabia rose steadily” (Bronson2005, 387). Iraq, nevertheless, continued to be an obstacle in US strategy in the region. UN sanctions and later the imposing of a no-fly on Iraq’s northern and southern zones weakened the Iraqi regime. These changes in Iraq, the new world order, and the September 11 attacks, facilitated US invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Just as the Nasserite revolution in Egypt, the 1958 coup in Iraq, and the Islamic revolution in Iran, the collapse of the Iraqi regime had several security implications for the Saudi regime.

Perceptions of the Iraqi threat not only divided the American administration but also created tension with its Saudi ally. For Saudi Arabia, the status quo in Iraq, and between it and Iran, neutralised threats emanating from the Gulf region. On the other hand, the US was beginning to move beyond the dual containment policy in consideration of its energy needs and its place in the post-Cold war international system (Aarts 2005, 416-9). Saudi Arabia, as opposed to its behaviour in the second Gulf war, was reluctant to support US plans to invade Iraq (BBC Online 2008). Several scholars have attributed this to the deteriorating relations between the two countries after the attacks of September 11, given that 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.28 This fact has been exacerbated by calls within the US to change course with Saudi Arabia or toppling the regime there (Aarts 2005).

28

Bronson, Understanding US-Saudi Relations, pp.389-91; In addition to these factors, Niblock argues that relations soured because of Saudi Arabia strategic perception of US military presence in the region and its aim to avoid being “seen as the springboard from which the United States attacked other Muslim countries making the country a target for intensified Islamist anger.” Saudi Arabia, p.167

However, although most of these factors might explain Saudi reluctance, as the analysis here has unfolded, I am more inclined to argue that the position of Saudi Arabia emanates from its fear that US presence in Iraq might diminish its role, as it would end the external neutralisation that maintains its regime and state. The kingdom, as we saw above, has traded its role (including oil) for maintaining its security. The Saudis might have calculated that US presence (if stable) would decrease their relative power in the region, if not threaten their state directly. American presence in Iraq and the Gulf would diminish Saudi power. Already in 2003, disagreement about Iraq led to US shifting its Combat Air Operations Centre to Qatar (Niblock 2006, 167).29 On the other hand, should American invasion fail, Iraq might succumb into civil war or the majority Shiite would (with Iranian support) rule the country. In both cases, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have been keen on a US invasion of Iraq. Although this might sound hypothetical especially since we lack at the moment any evidence of such perception, the course of Saudi behaviour after the invasion and the collapse of the Iraqi regime is telling.

US failure in Iraq, mainly in stabilising a post-Saddam (democratic) regime and projecting power outside Iraq into Iran and Syria, have once again brought different challenges to Saudi security. The coming of Iraqi Shiites to power, after the failure of more secular and US friendly politicians such as Iyad Allawi, saw theDawaa party on top of the Iraqi government and the country in chaos. US failure meant increased Iranian influence in Iraq, which led Saudi Arabia to face a dilemma: supporting Sunnis there to counterbalance the Shiites (and Iran) meant disabling US strategy in Iraq, while remaining passive as the US is failing meant a handing of Iraq to Iran.30As F. Gregory Gause III observes “any Saudi effort to establish direct patron-client relations with Arab Sunni groups or factions in Iraq might place them in the very uncomfortable position to supporting people who are killing American” (Gause 2007).

Saudi primary threat came from Iran and accordingly the Saudis, just as US allies in Iraq, fear American withdrawal from Iraq. A quick look at the map would see Iran linking what scholars have considered two ‘arenas’ of Saudi security concerns in the Middle East. Iran with its strong presence in the Gulf, influence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its alliance with Syria and Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the occupied

29_{Qatar’s relations have been sour with Kingdom for over a decade. Al-Jazzeera, the Qatar-based Arab}

satellite channel, has been very critical of the Saudi regime leading the Saudis to establish Al Arabia news channel, which has large audience and sympathises with Saudi policy.

30_{Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal announced that because of US strategy “we [Saudi Arabia and US] are}

territories left this country with strong power, not only to disable US strategy in the region but also to weaken Saudi Arabia.

Balancing against this threat became Saudi policy in the Middle East. Although some scholars believe that the “artificial honeymoon is over” (Aarts 2005, 403) between Saudi Arabia and the US, the failure of the latter to isolate Iran, Syria, and their allies have brought the US and Saudi Arabia back to their traditional alliance. Just as the Saudis tried to revitalise their relations with the US in 1957 and to create an Islamic alliance, supported and encouraged by the US, as we saw above, in 2007 the US attempted to create an Arab coalition against the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah axis (McElroy 2007). Two cultural elements provided options for the Saudis to activate: Sunnism and Arabism. This time round the Saudis first ventured with the Sunni element, and later, due to the sensitivity of the former, emphasised Arabism.

As we saw above, the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006 saw Saudi Arabia activating the sectarian divide to de-legitimise the Shiite military resistance of Hizbullah. This was followed by remarks from another two states allied to the US: King Abdullah of Jordan who spoke of an emerging ‘Shiite Crescent’ and President Mubarak of Egypt who asked Shiites ‘to be loyal’ to their states. However, the sectarian divide threatened Saudis own Shiite population and other Shiite communities leading them to turn to the safer cultural element of Arabism. Accordingly, US, Saudi Arabia and their allies in the whole region began to speak of a ‘Persian threat’ penetrating the Arab ‘regional system’. Syria along with Hizbullah and Hamas are (at the time of writing) accused of facilitating this penetration. Civil war in the occupied territories and the ongoing conflict in Lebanon are reflections of the current Syrian-Saudi standoff.

Many have considered the current Saudi-Syrian deterioration of relations to be caused by the conflict in Lebanon; however, it would be more appropriate to consider the sour relations a part of the regional struggle between the US and Saudi Arabia and its allies on one hand, and Syria and Iran on the other. At the time of writing, like in the previous century, Saudi Arabia is trying with an international patron (the US) to counterbalance a regional threat (Iran) as it seeks to maintain its security, and hence survival.

Conclusion: Theoretical Implications of the Saudi Case

What does the Saudi case tell us about state survival during late formation? We realise from the analysis above that the two theoretical conditions that explain state survival during late formation—domestic power monopoly and division in regional structure of

power—have been present in causing Saudi state survival. When one (or both) of these conditions was absent, as in the case of the first two Saudi states, we observe Saudi state collapse.

How and why is domestic power monopoly established? We observe in the above case that there is a high level of cultural homogeneity in Saudi Arabia, which has given the agents of monopolisation a strong cultural—religious and tribal—to establish authority. Regime nature in Saudi Arabia reflected the cultural context from which it was born. The regime had tribal ingredients to it that were buttressed by the universal idea of Islam, with its Wahhabi interpretation. Regime formation, in other words, did not go against existing socio-cultural structures but through them. Regime nature and formation have, on the other hand, defined possible opposition to the regime, which emanated from tribal forces, Islamic groups, or a mixture of the two. The regime’s dealing with these oppositions emanated from its nature—tribal and Islamic—and from its monopoly over means of violence. Timing of regime formation—the monopolisation of violence after World War II—has been crucial in the Saudi case which converged with the emergence of the state system in the Middle East.

The third variable which Saudi Arabia scores high on is the economic resources of a regime. The influx of oil income to Saudi Arabia it was argued throughout this chapter has reinforced Saudi power monopoly over religion and coercion. The oil factor has a strong effect given, as opposed to the Iraq case discussed below, the cultural homogeneity of Saudi Arabia, which does not provide strong basis for opposition political mobilisation. These three factors—cultural homogeneity, regime nature, and economic resources—have contributed to establishing a political structure in a kingdom maintained and monopolised by the Sauds.

What about the second condition of regional division of power? The first variable under this condition is the geographical position of a state. We realise that Saudi Arabia’s geographical location and the role it could play in maintaining or revising a status quo has been crucial to understanding not only its state formation but also its survival. The analysis showed the role taken initially by Ibn Saud to weaken the Ottoman Empire and then by Saudi Arabia to maintain the post-Ottoman regional order. Due to its geographical location, Saudi Arabia’s socialisation in the state system started early and, as shown above, contributed to its state formation, and later, its survival. As domestic power monopolisation started before the emergence of the state system in the Middle East and as this mechanism was completed with the carving of the region’s

borders, the Saudi regime was able to project its power externally to upset any revisions of the regional order.

The third variable—the structure of regional order—contributed to keeping the Saudi state intact. In the theoretical framework presented earlier, I argued that the more a regional structure is divided the more opportunities a late forming has in its quest for survival. In the case of Saudi Arabia, domestic power monopolisation coupled with divisions in regional state system not only contributed to the survival of the Saudi state but also gave it the ability to shape the regional order. As we saw above, in allying itself withstatus quopowers, Saudi Arabia contributed to sustaining the regional system and, as a consequence, its own state. Where the division in regional order contracted, as with the attempt for US hegemony in the 1990s and during the second Iraq war, we saw Saudi Arabia resistant.

The Saudi case, accordingly, satisfies the two conditions proposed as requirements for state survival during late formation. What does this analysis finally tell us about the prospects of Saudi regime and state survival? Economic integration and the fluidity of state ideology with a lack of cultural or material elements with the potential to politicise continue to sustain the Saudi regime at the centre of an increasingly interdependent social field. Business reliance on the state and imported labour shows low prospects from these classes to endanger the regime. Islamic opposition has been influential but the regime was able on several occasions to dilute its power through either incorporation, repression or both. One major threat to the regime’s survivability may come from splits from within the monarchy, which in turn can be exploited within Saudi Arabia or by external actors. This prospect might be less likely if a clear succession of power is maintained. The emergence of five circles of power within the monarchy might complicate or disrupt a smooth succession beyond Ibn Saud’s sons, who are ageing.

At a regional level, the rise of Iran and with Egypt now attempting to regain its regional position31, this would continue to provide opportunities for Saudi Arabia to maintain and activate the external neutralisation. Internationally, the increasing shift towards a multi-polar world with Chinese expansion , Russian resurgence and a European Union (especially France) ready to increase its role in the Middle East would provide the kingdom with increased opportunities to limit its dependence on the United

31_{Egypt has been trying to increase its influence in ‘arenas’ that are infiltrated by Iran such as Iraq, the}

Palestinian territories and Lebanon (Al-Akhbar2008). Especially as the US is loosening its grip in these areas.

States.32 These prospects in regional and international orders may prove crucial for domestic power monopoly in Saudi Arabia and, consequently, state survival there.

What does the above theoretical and historical analysis of state formation in Saudi Arabi tell us about political change in the kingdom? If we account for lateness in state formation and the role of oil in that process, Saudi state formation and future trajectories resemble Elias’ description of European state formation. In that trajectory, we would expect to see on the long term increasing political and economic interdependence tied together by the monarchy with power gradually diffusing to other Saudi social forces. Elias describes the process as the following:

The more people are made dependent by the monopoly mechanism, the greater becomes the power of the dependent, not only individually but also collectively, in relation to the one or more monopolists. …Whether it is a question of land, soldiers or money in any form, the more that is accumulated by an individual, the less easily can it be supervised by this individual, and the more surely he becomes by his very monopoly dependent on increasing numbers of others, the more he becomes dependent on his dependents. …The privately owned monopoly in the hands of a single individual or family comes under the control of broader social strata, and transforms itself as the central organ of a state into a public monopoly.

(2000, 270-1; emphasis added)

To manage the increased flow of oil revenue, to provide jobs for Saudis, to maintain its security, the Saudi regime will have to rely on more and more of its people. In doing so, power relations would shift. The shift in Saudi Arabia is most likely to be slow, and not radical, largely orchestrated by the Saudi regime leading to intended and unintended outcomes.

32

The year 2008 has seen increased economic cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia (see al- Zayani 2008). In the same year Saudi Arabia attempted to increase its ties with Russia, first to influence the latter’s relations with Iran and Syria and second to widen its relations with a growing competitor to the US.

Chapter Six

Iraq: State Formation and Deformation

behind the mask of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents our seeing