The Saudi conundrum: Squaring the security‐stability circle

Abstract

Saudi Arabia's foreign policy during the 1990-91 Gulf war represents a watershed in the kingdom's conduct in international affairs. After long obscuring its close ties to the United States with justifications, denials, and subterfuge, the kingdom has, as one former Gulf minister remarked, 'come out of the closet' . Following upon almost 10 years of providing measured financial, diplomatic, and logistical support to its bittersweet rival, secular Arab nationalist-Ba'thist Iraq, in that country's war with revolutionary non-Arab Islamic Iran to prevent an Iraqi defeat but without victory, Saudi Arabia sanctioned the use of overwhelming US force to crush Iraqi power. After decades of juggling internal, regional, and international interests in foreign policy, the kingdom has emphasised the primacy of the regional balance of power and its relations with the United States to preserve its security in the post-Gulf war era. Saudi Arabia's Gulf war policy also represents the culmination of nearly 20 years of unprecedented Saudi foreign policy activism. The 1973-74 Arab oil embargo and oil price increase thrust the kingdom into an Arab leadership role for which it was poorly prepared. The Saudis did not have the experience, security, military capability, or institutional strength to play their new part with confidence, nor did they have the requisite enthusiasm for it. The kingdom also had to contend with regional forces from all directions. Intermittent torrents of antimonarchist secular rhetoric poured in from Syria, Iraq, Libya, and South Yemen. Pahlavi Iran was beginning its insatiable drive for modernisation and regional hegemony. The Palestinian diaspora was evolving into a more potent political element, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which demanded of all Arab countries, particularly those well endowed with money and influence, maximalist efforts to reclaim Palestine. The kingdom was vulnerable because of its traditional political structure and conservative tendencies, its weak military capabilities, and its dependence on the United States for security in a political environment that associated the United States with Israel and held both as the Arabs' common enemies. Its 'deep pockets' enticed a swarm of extortionists who claimed their 'fair' shares in the name of Arab brotherhood. The Saudis, masquerading as Arab leaders, felt obliged to open their checkbook. In such political and economic circumstances, and as a result of them, Saudi foreign policy sought compromise and consensus. It avoided conflict that could, foremost, endanger the rule of the Al-Saud family in the Peninsula, and by the transitive principle of Arab politics, the security of the Saudi state. The abundant oil revenues of the 1970s and 1980s enabled the Saudis, more often than not, to