Saudi Arabia

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A nation of the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia (al-'Arabiya as-Sa'udiyah) takes its name from the clan of the ruling house. Despite its small population and total dependency on exports of fossil fuels, Saudi Arabia is immensely influential. It is the world's largest exporter of crude oil; it is the cheapest producer of oil, and hence, receives immense oil rents. It is closely allied with the other monarchies of the Arab world, such as the Gulf Emirates, and contributes heavily to Islamic causes, such as missionary work, the maintenance of the Hijaz, and humanitarian care for internationally displaced Muslims.


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History

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Abdul Aziz I

The ascendancy of the Saudis is closely tied to the emergence of the Salafist denomination of Islam. In the early 1700's, the extreme isolation and spiritual peculiarity of the Nejd meant that very odd ideas were creeping into the regional interpretations of Islam. In the northeast, there were communities of Shi'a, who prayed at shrines to the Shi'a saints. Others imitated this, hoping to win spiritual powers from sacred spaces or amulets. Muhammad ibn Adb al-Wahhab began to preach against this, calling for a rigorous revival of the pure Islam of the Salaf (the period when the Prophet ruled over the Islamic community). He insisted that reverence to sacred objects, holy men, elaborate headstones at the graves of holy men, or even the imams of the Shi'a, were a blasphemous relegation of God's divinity to other things.


In the 1730's, he was compelled to move through several towns because he was antagonizing the authorities. In ad-Diriyah he won the support of the local clan leader, one Muhammad ibn Saud. In 1744, the two men swore an oath to support each other in a campaign to cleanse the land of apostasy. That included Shi'a Islam as well as any of the various local sects. For the next 21 years, Muhammad ibn Saud led campaigns against rival rulers, possibly empowered by the claim he was waging a war on behalf of Islam against apostates. When he died in 1765, the Nejd was almost entirely under Saudi control.


While Muhammad ibn Saud was fairly effective, his son Abdul Aziz was regarded as even more gifted, and captured the Hijaz as well. At this point, the Ottoman Sultan Selim III was in a precarious position because of his attempts to modernize the military; he was deposed in 1807, without even attempting to intervene in the Hijaz.[1] His successor, Mahmud II, also undertook a reform of the Ottoman Administration, while tied up with insurgencies in the Balkans, Russian advances in the Caucasus, and internal uprisings. It would appear that neither the reformist sultans of the day, nor their opponents among the janissary caste, were open to the concept of retaking the sacred Hijaz for the Ottoman khilafat, and the job was delegated to the Egyptian khedive (governor-general), Muhammad Ali.


As was often the case in his long career, Muhammad Ali efficiently thrashed his opponents; the leader of the Saudis, now Abdullah, was captured and sent to Istanbul for a public beheading. The Ottomans thereafter backed several clans in the Nejd that were perennially at war with the Saudis, and the old Saudi capital was destroyed.

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Abdul Aziz II

For a century after the final 1818 defeat of the Saudis, the clan itself was utterly demoralized. It was similar to the other princely families, with changing loyalties. For example, when a clash broke out between Faisal and Khalid in the 1830's, the two sought Ottoman and Egyptian help (the Ottoman Empire was at war with its former dominion, Egypt) against each other. Later, when Amir Faisal died (1865), a three-way battle broke out among rival branches of the Saudis, and one of the losers was obligated to flee to Kuwait. His name was Abdul Rahman, and he brought a son named Abdul Aziz.


Abdul Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman grew up in exile, associating with discontented Bedouins and raiding the territory of the al-Rashidi branch of the Saudis. In 1902 he launched his biggest raid on the Riyadh garrison, and established himself there. He also managed to build up the Ikhwan (Brotherhood) as an extremely zealous Salafist movement, animating his supporters to conquer the entire Nejd (1905) and establish himself as the Salafist imam.

The United Kingdom prevented the Sa'ud from taking over much of the gulf coast where they had established protectorates with several ruling dynasties. Kuwait was to remain under UK protection until 1960; likewise, Oman (where the ruling house also included the imams of the Ibadhi Shurat; to 1951), South Arabia (to 1967), the Trucial States (to 1971), Qatar (to 1971) and Bahrain (to 1971). These associations all dated from before British contact with the Saudis, naturally; until 1905, it was absurd to discuss a stable polity in the Nejd, let alone the peninsula, with whom the UK could have had a client relationship.

After Abdul Aziz II moved to the creation of a modern state, he was obligated to liquidate the Ikhwan. It had been entirely opposed to technology that was unknown to the Prophet. Hence, no telephones or trucks, which were vital to law enforcement. They also insisted on raiding the British protectorates. By 1924, they were useless as a fighting force, and Abdul Aziz took the Hijaz with a modern army of regulars. In 1928 the Ikhwan revolted against him, and the regulars destroyed the movement.


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King Abdul Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman, known in the West as "Ibn Saud" (he would have been better known as "Abu Saud") was well established as King of the Nejd and the Hijaz when he was contacted by various oil interests about prospects for oil. The Ikhwan, having cleansed the cities of organized opposition to state-inflicted notions of Islamic orthodoxy, were themselves safely purged. The pilgrimage traffic was slowing as a result of the global depression and possibly because of repressive measures taken in the colonies.


Abdul Aziz died in 1953, and was succeeded by his son Saud. Unlike Abdul Aziz, whose spending habits were formed under conditions of dearth, Saud was unprepared to handle money. He increased bribes to the notables, so they would allow him to recruit a huge palace guard (clad in desert white, rather than convention khaki uniforms). He also got involved in Arab politics, demanding the rejection of the Jewish state and a pan-European alliance with Gamal Nasser. The relationship with Nasser and Saud was close at first; Saud terminated relations with Britain and France during the Suez Crisis, sent $10 million to Nasser, and exhorted Jordan not to join the Baghdad Pact (a Western-sponsored alliance linking Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan).


However, the relation soured after the Egyptian government became a Soviet satellite and merged with Syria as the United Arab Republic. It was revealed that Saud had plotted to assassinate Nasser. Five years later, the two countries would begin a proxy war in North Yemen. The money flowing into the coffers of the tribal leaders was speeding ahead of revenues, so that the elites had huge incomes and the state had a deficit. To make matters worse, there was a strike of Aramco workers in 1956. Saud appointed his brother Faisal as effective head of the state, but was dismissed as king in 1964.


Faisal was more technocratic than Saud, the rake. He was still vehement about Arab unity and defeating Israel, but he was also keen to develop Saudi ability to manage its great oil wealth. He developed the oil ministries and the university at Jiddah to enable this. He also introduced television broadcasting in 1965, causing a nephew to lead an attack of zealots against the station; the nephew was shot dead by police.


The oil funded the purchase of modern everything: military, buildings, and recognition by the Arab world. Faisal, in turn, dedicated revenues to growth of an all-Saudi workforce in its joint venture with Chevron, Aramco. It continued to expand output until 1973, when its grip on the world oil supply was made painfully obvious.


While the House of Saud was friendly to the West, it had a core of passionate commitment to the cause of Palestinian liberation. The creation of Israel, in the eyes of nearly all Arabs, had meant the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of their brethren; that this had occurred in the neighborhood of a Holy Place, was an additional cause of anger. In point of fact, Israel's Jewish population were refugees from the Holocaust, and their harsh new circumstances compelled them to seek colonial patrons in the region in order to receive training for their soldiers, material aid for their army, and intelligence for their officers. For this reason, the Arab world from the beginning saw the Jewish state as both a spiritual affront and as an urgent danger to their hard-won liberties.


In the period 1956-1969, this was not a major obstacle to close ties between the US government and the Saudi monarchy. US support for Israel was slight during this period, and Washington typically thwarted Israeli objectives (or rather, those of Israel's primary allies). Saudi Arabia's output of oil was rapidly approaching the 10 million bbl/day point, while OPEC was formed in Baghdad (1960) to enable member states to manage their output in the light of global market outlooks. Saudi Arabia, with the most cheaply recoverable oil, did tend to maximize royalties at the lowest prices of OPEC members, while countries with costlier oil recovery tended to be more truculent, more eager to see prices high, and less concerned about the impact of prices on the global economy.


Faisal and other members of OPEC combined to begin the colossal increase in oil prices early in 1973. The price swiftly soared to such levels that the developed nations, including the USA, suffered massive increases in inflation. In the UK, inflation hit 25% in 1975; in the USA, inflation peaked at 14% in mid-1980. In a desperate bid to restore control over the money supply, wage and price controls, then draconian increases in interest rates, were used by the central banks of the world to tame inflation. In Argentina, the hyperinflation led to the 1976 Process Junta, in which some 30,000 people were killed. In Latin America, this crisis touched off balance of payments crunches, then debt crises that triggered massive economic collapse from Mexico to Chile. The massive infusion of cash had to be rolled over, and the preferred destination was the financial markets of Western Europe and the USA. Hence, the massive outflow of cash as payments for oil imports (by developed nations) was offset by an even larger influx of cash for investment and lending.


For the 3rd world, the soaring prices of oil resulted in a lost decade. The only benefit, if it can be called one, was that the real exchange rates of many 3rd world countries fell so far that they were far more price-competitive with the 1st world than before; however, the local cost of energy for domestic consumption was doubly aggravated by the local currency's fall against the US dollar. The great landlords in countries such as Guatemala, Turkey, Bolivia, Pakistan, Egypt and elsewhere were suddenly faced with the opportunity to sell cash crops in the West at rising prices (denominated in local currency), leading to a boom in the mechanization of agriculture and massive displacement of rural proletariats from subsidence plots farmed for generations.[2] This, in turn, meant increased pressure on urban centers, a massive expansion of cities in the 3rd world, and increased demand for oil precisely because the price was rising!


This phenomenon is seldom reported, except as a series of unrelated events. First, the huge increase in oil prices did create an implosion of states in response to debt loads; in many cases, these governments had traditionally subsidized some of the costs of oil consumption in order to sustain their urban populations. This suddenly was impossible At the same time, the sudden increase in OECD purchasing power relative to the 3rd world meant new markets for industrial labor and cash crops; in theory, a fortunate match, except that countries required a massive infusion of capital and entrepreneurial skill that was unavailable. Maquilladoras (factories set up in Mexico across the border with the USA) were suddenly very lucrative for firms with special attributes, like Xerox; and they did retard the growth of wages in the USA thereafter. Finally, the massive exodus of campesinos from farms in Latin America and South Asia caused something of a panic for development agencies at the time, because cities were bursting under the strain of huge migrations.


The price of oil was driven down as an inevitable effect of the huge profits made by the producers. A boom in offshore development presently followed, accompanied by dramatic increases in non-OPEC output. At the same time, all of the industrial countries, especially Japan, focused on replacing oil with capital (such as more efficient machinery). Nigeria's output surged, and then Saddam Hussein launched an attach on Iran (22 September 1980), causing both belligerents and allies to boost output to pay their bills. The price plummeted, probably causing the USSR to implode economically; oil and PNG had been that country's main export. At the same time, the political composition of OECD nations had shifted to the right, with most anti-labor and anti-nationalist political regimes ascendant from Washington to Tokyo and Bonn.


OPEC had failed in its objective to dislodge Israel or produce a kinder, gentler West. Saudi Arabia and Gulf Emirates had, however, clearly benefited from the boom in asset accumulation. Revenue streams from assets abroad were, in some years, greater than the revenues from oil. And from the perspective of the conservative landlord class for whom the Saudis spoke, the triumph was unambiguous. The new leadership in Pakistan, for example, of Zia ul-Haq and Ghulam Ishaq Khan was resolutely opposed to social liberalism and economic nationalism. So was an even more important ally: Washington.

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Money, Faith, & Influence


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After 1953, the flow of oil rents into Saudi Arabia accelerated ahead of the costs of expanding port facilities and pipelines to carry the oil out of the country. This coincided with the accession of Saud. Saud actually spent so much on bribes and on his immense retinue of courtiers, that the Saudi state ran a deficit. In 1958, he appointed his brother, Prince Faisal, to manage the nation's finances; Faisal quickly brought the exchequer into the black, but naturally angered the chieftains and the court. In 1961, he resigned, while Saud thrashed about alienating social conservatives (outraged at his support for 3rd world nationalism and solidarity) and Muslim idealists (affronted by his personal extravagance and the boom in vice). In November 1964, Saud was ordered to abdicate, and went into exile in Europe. The country was now under the leadership of the shrewd, single-minded Faisal.


Faisal was an interesting character: tough, battle-hardened, extremely brave, clever, diligent, and ferociously judeophobic. His indispensability to the monarchy meant his resignation was a crisis for the entire civil service, of which the 'ulema were a part. Hence, even Saud knew his days as King were numbered.


The accession of King Faisal allowed a wave of innovations: universal education, including schools for women, and television. Television outraged many of the die-hard Ikhwan, including his nephew Khalid, who led an attack on the broadcasting station and was killed by security forces. Ten years later, the dead nephew's brother, Faisal ibn Musab, shot his uncle and king at point blank range, and was beheaded for it.


Faisal was obsessed with strengthening the nation's defenses, replacing the USA as a patron or ally, and destroying Israel. Because he was a seasoned warrior, he was never fatuous enough to participate in the for-glamor-only attacks on Israel[3], seeking instead to build up the Arab nations diplomatically and militarily. He probably understood that the juntas in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt were not serious about mounting a serious challenge to Israel, since they needed it to justify their own faux-radicalism. He therefore sought alliances with Pakistan and a settlement of the festering war in North Yemen (unlike Nasser, who waited until after defeat by Israel to take peace initiatives seriously).


Faisal was succeeded immediately upon his death by Khalid, perceived by Western journalists as a liberal reformer. Khalid sought renewed ties with Washington, chiefly by acquiring a fleet of US-made F-15 fighter jets and inviting the Usonians to regard him as a crucial, equal partner in the Cold War. Almost at once, Crown Prince Fahd took over the actual running of the Kingdom. He was mainly interested in building up the capital assets of the country in an era of rapidly increasing revenues from oil. His brother, king, and boss, Khalid, adopted startlingly modern management techniques, devolving power and opening up the decision making process to oversight.

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Global Reach

Main Article on Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan (1978-1988)



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Khalid and Fahd, thanks to modernized governance, established a new continuity in Saudi policies that greatly strengthened the country internationally. Hereafter, it would be appropriate to speak of an establishment running the country, rather than an eccentric like Saud or Faisal. The establishment was less likely to feel any urgent need to redress the wrongs of the Palestinians, even though popular sentiment in the region was, if anything, more hostile to Israel than ever. Acceptance by Washington as a partner in the struggle against Communism or populist nationalism was drifting from a means to an end; and the new, conservative regime of Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan allowed the Saudis a huge new scope of action. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, it was almost as big a windfall for the Kingdom as the first discovery of oil had been.


The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia collaborated with the Reagan Administration on arming of Nicaragua.[4] As covert activities go, this was a minor twist; in 1984, the US Congress would openly allocate $100 million for a terrorist movement, and of course the CIA not only funded the contras illegally, they collaborated with the South African BOSS to supply UNITA (as did King Fahd) and of course supplied Iraq with tens of billions to fight Iran.[5] It's difficult to imagine normal humans, from opposite sides of the world, agreeing the same atrocity is sufficiently to the good to answer judgment. A tiny committee of men raised in sleepy suburbs of the American Southwest, perhaps; another from the blazing sands of the Nejd; but one including both?


Support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War was not spectacularly unpopular in the USA; Iran's basiji had ensured that, when they seized the US embassy in Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard in Iran, as with most revolutionary movements, benefited handsomely from the war; members like Ahmadinejad evidently responded to the call to defend their country by guarding political prisoners.[6] The Kingdom had many of the same reasons Westerners did for dreading the Revolution, plus some others of its own. It would be highly misleading to imply that the Saudis subverted Usonian democracy with ready cash for the Iraqi War; the US State Department had many high officials eager to see the most powerful Soviet ally tied down in a war with an ostensibly Fanonist regime. Nonetheless, and this is extremely important, the machinery of the Republic is so contrived to resist adopting evil as a temporary expedient; this is why laws are made to conform to universal principles, and why the constitution stands apart from the sundry acts that congress may pass in a single session. And so it was that only the conditions of utter disregard for the law, stimulated in the ways I explain below, corrupted the Republic and made it a slave to transitory "expedients."


King Fahd was admired for making himself indispensable to the centers of power, investing shrewdly, bargaining sharply, and matching Reagan in Cold War adventurism. Many observed he was jeopardizing the nation, making the same enemies as the USA, without the means to fight back that the USA enjoys. In fact, he was a crucial part of the Trans-European Project (TEP) of professionalized imperial trusteeship. The flow of finance capital into the USA from European nations reflects satisfaction by investors in US policies, and the reluctance of EU member governments to interfere in this flow (in fact, their assistance through official Eurodollar reserve accumulation) demonstrates that even famously dissenting leaders don't dissent very much. I would argue the division of opinion between leaders of EU member states from those of the USA, are more a division of labor: there's no need for them to endorse unpopular policies German or French voters would reject anyway. Saudi Arabia offers the USA, for its part, the merchant banking services of imperialism: the ready cash that allows the president to urinate on the legislature.


When a principled stand becomes pointless, people are likely to abandon it. This occurred to me as an explanation for Ahmadinejad's victory in Iran's recent presidential elections: the reformists were tired of taking risks that got them only token victories, or only a stalemate. Going to the mat for someone like Rafsanjani was a joke. The other voters, the bazaris and the peasants and urban proletariats, would as soon have voted for Anatoly Chubais as Rafsanjani. Americans of the antiwar movement, American feminists, Americans of color, or Americans in labor movements, were tired of principled stands that only increased their taxes or made them feel guilty. Sure, the 55-year old veteran of marches to protect a woman's right to choose would prefer a candidate that was pro-choice; but she doesn't want to spend money sending someone else's children to failing schools. And if her neighbors, including younger women who are sexually active, don't care, why should she? The union member may resent the way the suits treat workers, but his position is secure, and he's tired of the coddling of thugs, drug addicts, and illegal immigrants. Once upon a time he agreed these were social problems that required a social solution; now he ridicules the idea it would ever happen. And when a legislator wakes up to discover a principled stand against violations of international law accomplishes nothing, and is costly, he learns to call people like Oliver North a hero.


That's what happened when the White House decided it was going to get those swarthy Latin Communists: terrorism and illegality. It made no difference if a firebrand who marched against the Vietnam War stood up to the sanctimonious killers; the POTUS could ignore him, and get the short-term funding from a foreign monarch. A little act, token, symbolic; Nicaragua has fewer people than Papua New Guinea, and it's about as rich. However, to the people who sink money into election campaigns, it was stunning: members of Congress who had resisted funding reactionary terrorism were suddenly faced with opponents with campaign warchests bankrolled by the Fuggers.


When resistance was useless, and congressmen had to deliver the bacon, then they turned their attention to avoiding issues in which they would run afoul of the White House. If the White House, in turn, wanted to a take a principled stand, there was no Prince Fahd to help out. Principled stands should be easy to get domestic funding, right?


This is not intended to demonize the Saudis, who are merely a uniquely rich (and now, uniquely well-positioned) monarchy. They have their own problems, and there are things they cannot accomplish, much as they would like to. For 30 years now, they have been pushing for a two-state solution in Palestine, which is the only conceivable resolution; Congress is now devoted to posturing, not attacking problems sincerely.


Saudi Arabia now suffers blowback in the USA.

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Notes

  1. ↑ Wikipedia:Ottoman Reform Efforts under Selim III and Mahmoud IIhttp://www.jamesrmaclean.com/archives/images/Wikipedia_favicon.gif
  2. ↑ Charles Clark, "Land tenure delegitimation and social mobility in Tropical Peten, Guatemala," Human Organization (Winter 2000); Turkey: a Country Study, "Structure of the Economy"
  3. ↑ In the period 1952-1956, the government of Egypt sponsored fedayin attacks against Israel; these attacks, of course, accomplished nothing aside from provoking Israeli reprisals against Gaza (then occupied by Egypt) and al-Arish. In 1956, Israel collaborated with the invasion of Egypt launched by France and the UK. Later, in the mid-1960's, attacks on Israel resumed; the USSR armed Egypt and Syria, whose governments began warning of their intent to liquidate Israel. This resulted, naturally, in the 1967 debacle. The Ramadan/Yom Kippur War was also doomed, despite initial successes; this partly explains why the one Arab leader in the region who had successfully commanded troops in warfare (rather than in coups) did not participate in them: he did not not wish to expose his forces to a doomed strategy.
  4. ↑ "Reagan - Visions of the Damned - Part 2," Media Lens Media Alert (15th June 2004); "President, Saudis Met Twice," Washington Post (12 May 1987), via Juan Cole
  5. ↑ George Wright, The Destruction of a Nation: United States' Policy Towards Angola Since 1945, Pluto Press (1997), p.110
  6. ↑ Ibrahim Nawar, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Justice versus freedom," al-Ahram (July 2005)
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James R MacLean (01:20, 1 December 2007 (PST))

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