I’m still struggling to come to grips with Nawaf Obaid’s editorial today, where he suggests that Saudi Arabia will take the fight to the Shi’a in Iraq if we pull out. Obaid makes three suggestions. The Saudis might send in their own militias to fight on behalf of the Sunnis. They might fund former Ba’athists. And they might ramp up oil production and cut the price in half in an effort to destroy Iran’s economy. He doesn’t suggest that Saudi Arabia’s armed forces might engage Iran directly, but that is clearly a possibility once the two nations become locked in a proxy war in Iraq. And that is a very interesting prospect. Now, before I get started on this, I want to point to Steve Clemons’s take on this:
What Obaid has articulated here is not offered as a threat if the US leaves Iraq, which the US must do in my view. This is the first robust declaration that the Saudis are willing to fill the vacuum left by the United State in the region and knock back some of the unchecked expansion of Iranian influence in the region.
It’s not good to have rising powers with pretensions of future greatness clashing like this — but there is NO CHOICE.
And frankly, it’s much better to have the Saudis engaged than not engaged in Iraq. Iran must be balanced — and while this may seem like an escalation, it actually is an important potential cap on a worsening of this increasingly ulcerous mess in Iraq.
But what the Saudis are doing and what they need to be do is not new — it has been predicted for quite a while. And this is the consequence of the Bush administration’s failure to think strategically. We have now drawn Saudi Arabia into a potential collision that could destabilize that nation and seriously harm our access to vital oil and natural gas supplies.
Clemons also made this remark in the thread:
Iraq’s civil war will become a regional conflagration if the REGION itself doesn’t stop it….and to do that, nations need to put themselves on the line so that the leaders and commanders can stare into the abyss and see the horror of what could be unleashed — triggered as it were by the horrible missteps of our country.
But this is not a casual deal — and I think that even though things could get worse, they might not if the other big stakeholders in the region move in….they must.
I am not sure why Clemons think this is not a threat, or why he thinks it is a positive development. We’ll see what he posts later today. But I want to make something very clear. The Saudi Arabian armed services are a wholly owned subsidiary of our own armed services. You can see a list of recent arms transfers here. You can read about the U.S./Saudi military relationship (and some of the resulting problems) here.
The Saudis cannot use their armed forces for very long without the consent of the United States. A case in point:
On September 6, 2000 Congress was notified that Saudi Arabia was spending $690 million for:
A continuation of contractor maintenance and training technical services, spare and repair parts, support equipment, modification facilities, and labor to accomplish programmed depot maintenance on their F-15 aircraft.
Our arms industry would not be pleased with the cancellation of such contracts, but their continuation is a prerequisite for any sustained use of the Saudi military. There are, of course, ways to get around a ban or cancellation of military assistance. Iran was able to buy American equipment and replacement parts all throughout the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Usually they relied on Israeli cut-outs or Chinese knock-offs. But that is not really the issue here. The issue is that any disruption of U.S./Saudi military relationship would signify a collapse of our relationship overall. There is no telling how far-reaching the consequences might be.
If the U.S. and Saudi Arabia begin pursuing divergent military strategies in Iraq then our sixty year relationship might be irrevocably punctured (exactly the outcome sought by the 9/11 hijackers).
Maybe Clemons can explain to me how we can simultaneously support the Maliki government and supply the Saudi military that is fighting them?
This is a catastrophe, and Clemons seems to be welcoming it.
Saudi-American-Iraqi turmoil potential. Maybe the Bush administration does not think strategically, but who says the Saudis don’t?? Why the hell did the Saudis let us depose Saddam period, and let this theocratic genie out of his bottle??? Why? What relation did the Saudis have with Saddam??
It’s all so convoluted that it is hard to answer such a question.
On the surface of things Saddam was an ally of Saudi Arabia and received a lot of financing from them in his war against Khomeini. But, after he invaded Kuwait we convinced the Saudis that they were next.
What happened next ruined world peace for the foreseeable future. The Saudis invited us to come in and kick Saddam out of Kuwait, but forbade us from deposing him. This left us with a stalemate that led to the rise of al-Qaeda. There was no easy way out of that stalemate. But things are much worse now than they were under the failing sanctions regime.
After 9/11 it was our number one priority to relocate our troops outside of Saudi Arabia. Our air force went to Qatar, our Navy to the UAE. Iraq was supposed to provide infantry bases and additional air force strips. It’s not working out as planned.
I have no idea what we promised the Saudis or why they would support the neo-conservative agenda. Even if it worked it would have been destabilizing to the Sauds. A flourishing democracy in Iraq would raise expectations for democracy in Saudi Arabia.
So, I don’t know. Greed seems to have clouded the judgment of countless ‘leaders’.
The Saudis objected and openly. In all the debate, pre -Iraq invasion, there’s this BBC TV interview with FM Saudi Prince Sultan? He advised “Don’t Do It, you’re about to open Pandora’s box.”
No one could stop Bush-Cheney. It was Bush’s divine mission and Cheney’s Haliburton profits. They cherry picked and lied us all the way to Baghdad, destroying the counter-balance. Now, Saddam is no angel but we also gave him a helping hand to be the bad boy.
I posted under your entry ” Events in Iraq “
Basically, Saudis are alarmed at the rise of SHia Crescent – Sunday’s elections in Bahrain, reportedly bought by Iran. U.S. is Saudi royals’ protector.
Steve Clemons is well placed. But as always it’s astoundling how many overlook the power of poor marginalized people. When unleashed, that power will defeat any well-equipped army with simple hand hewned weapons.
In our quest to secure oil, with match lit in hand, we opened Pandora’s box. Saudis will tell us when to leave unless the Sunni palaces across the Gulf are not stormed before we bleed to death.
Btw, Did you catch the WH spin on the Al-Maliki-Bush meeting being postponed?
`It Was Going To Be More Of A Social Meeting Anyway’
(h/t: Thinkprogress)
We’re doomed.
OMG, now it’s nothing more than a canceled lunch date? What about last week’s hype of the big meeting? Do they think we’re that dumb?
I don’t know that Clemons is “welcoming” the catastrophe. He’s just recognizing it. He doesn’t offer a very clear conclusion, but I think he sees the US as so compromised, so despised, that it has no further role to play in Iraq. Our continued presence there can do no good, so the remaining chance to mitigate further disaster is for the Saudis and others to be forced into realistic power jockeying in the vacuum the US will leave. They couldn’t do worse than we are doing, for Iraq or the region.
My own take: all that is left for the US to do is admit its tragic wrongdoing and make such reparations as money can approximate. Other than that, just fuck off already and fix our own system so we never have to pay for the insanity of fools in power like this again. Maybe then, after many years, we can hope to be seen by some as a great power once again.