In Riyadh last week, where I was speaking
to a small private workshop, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi
intelligence and ambassador to the United States, introduced me by reading several
excerpts from my recent FP column: “Bahrain crushed its opposition with
impunity,” he read. And then: “Obama chose to rely on the Gulf monarchies
against Iran, which made it exceptionally difficult for him to meaningfully
pressure them to reform or to block their counterrevolutionary intervention in
Bahrain.” His polite but pointed comment: “These words are not accepted in the
Gulf.”
That was putting it mildly. For much of
the week, I heard sharp disagreements from Saudis on Bahrain, which they for
the most part saw not as a peaceful uprising but as an Iranian-backed campaign
of violent subversion that had to be put down to restore order. Perhaps a few
agreed, at least privately, on the unjustifiable nature of the campaign of
repression that followed — even if the protesters had sympathies with Iran,
could that justify their torture and indefinite detention? — and the dim
prospects for stability without a serious new political initiative. But that
rarely extended to an acceptance of the authenticity or legitimacy of the
Bahraini protest movement.
The yawning gap in our views of Bahrain
reflected a more general disconnect between Washington and Riyadh on regional
order. Saudi Arabia’s hostility toward the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and
its coordinated efforts to block change in the Gulf and in allied monarchies
across the region, works directly against the stated American goal of promoting
reform. Its support for the crushing of the Bahraini protest movement and
rehabilitation of an unrepentant regime left a gaping hole in American
credibility. Saudi domestic policies, from women’s rights to the treatment of
its Shiite minority to the absence of democracy and repression of the public
sphere, are manifestly incompatible with any liberal vision. And should the
Obama administration attempt serious
negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program, it will find a
skeptical partner indeed in Riyadh.
The tension cuts to the heart of my
vision for U.S. Middle East strategy of a “right-sized” military and
political presence combined with stronger commitment to political reform and
public engagement. Indeed, America’s alliance with Saudi Arabia remains the
greatest contradiction inherent in its attempt to align itself with popular
aspirations for change in the region. A Saudi exception certainly makes things
such as coordinating the containment of Iran easier for diplomats on a daily
basis. But it sustains and perpetuates a regional order which over the long
term is costly to sustain and clearly at odds with American normative
preferences.
Some American analysts, notably Toby Jones, have
therefore called repeatedly
for a wholesale rethinking of the U.S.-Saudi alliance. He argues
persuasively that “Washington’s clear preference for
the status quo in the Gulf has come at considerable cost to activists in the
region. The U.S. has enabled the Gulf regimes to behave badly; the regimes, for
their part, have exploited geopolitical rivalries to consolidate power at home.”
What would such a rethinking actually look like, though? We should recognize
and attempt to break that vicious cycle. I don’t think that the United States
can or should abandon its strategic posture in the Gulf — certainly not
overnight. But it should be much more forthright in pushing for reforms and
supporting universal human rights in all of its allies. This is the time for
Washington to be actively thinking about how to use its very real strategic
imperative of reducing its military commitments to the region as leverage over
those allies to reform. Putting those together, along with sustained dialogue
with Saudis from the royal family down through all sectors of the public, could
help to create a greater coherence in America’s regional strategy.
I don’t believe that Saudi Arabia
is poised for a revolution (though a lot of people in Riyadh wanted
to know whether Bruce Riedel’s views were widely shared in Washington). Even
the most determined reformers with whom I spoke told me that they expected
meaningful change in a longer time frame (some said three to five years, others
five to 10 — an eternity in American strategic practice). But “revolution”
sets the bar too high. The changes that have already taken place — from the
furious protests in the Eastern Province to the renewed push for women’s rights
to a legal campaign for human rights to the dramatic opening of online public
debate — strike me as profoundly important. It simply does not seem plausible
that a country with such a young and intensely wired population can maintain
indefinitely a system which denies transparency, accountability, or equal
citizenship.
Saudi Arabia has clearly been deeply
affected by the Arab Spring, even if demands for political change have thus far
been blocked through a mix of repression and co-optation. Recurrent economic
and institutional problems, along with widely perceived corruption, generate
significant distress among Saudis. Almost everyone I met, from Shiite activists
in the Eastern Province to youth activists, women’s rights campaigners, and
human rights lawyers in Riyadh, identified Tunisia, Egypt, and the Arab Spring
as the spark for a new form of domestic mobilization. The connection between
Saudi Arabia’s domestic crackdown and its regional policy seems clear. Riyadh’s
crackdown on its own reformists and massive domestic spending boom mirrored the
support it offered for beleaguered monarchies in the Gulf, Jordan and Morocco.
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