|
 lite
opinion is trotting out a seemingly compelling reason for not invading
Iraq: We can't even if we wanted to. "Unlike the situation
prior to Persian Gulf War," the New York Times wrote
yesterday, "Washington cannot count on the use of staging bases
in Saudi Arabia."
It certainly
seems that Saudi Arabia would have to provide the starting point
for any ground campaign, which would at the very least have to be
an option open to us if an air/proxy war didn't produce results.
As Steve Sailer
points out in an ingenious analysis for UPI, invading from Turkey
into the Iraqi north would be difficult, given the mountainous terrain,
and an amphibious landing would be risky. It is Saudi Arabia that
offers the route into Iraq with the broad, flat desert terrain perfect
for an American mechanized thrust.
But the Saudis
say "no," so end of story, right?
It shouldn't
be. This might be the occasion for the double-dealing Saudis to
decide whether they are a U.S. friend or foe. If they insist on
standing in the way of an American campaign against a regime that
we determine is a threat to us, and to the region, we can begin
to put the Saudis in the "foe" category — which will
have a clarifying effect on our relations with them.
The clarification
can start with the fact that Saudi Arabia is hardly even a country.
It consists of essentially a few thousand princes sitting above
a natural resource that they have had little or nothing to do with
discovering or developing, and engaging in one business: price fixing.
It should be
made clear that should they prevent our achieving what we consider
an important national goal — toppling Saddam Hussein —
we will lump them in with the international pariahs, ending all
U.S. aid and working to isolate the retrograde regime there. (As
for oil, the Saudis need to sell it just as much as we need to buy
it, and even if they stop selling it to us, it will have to go somewhere
in the world market, keeping the international price roughly the
same.)
Would this
provoke unrest in the fragile Saudi kingdom? Probably. Then things
can get really interesting. Steve Sailer outlines one scenario:
A coup attempt
against the Saud family or a terrorist attack on the Saudi oil
fields would provide America with ample pretext for seizing the
oil fields to secure them from threats. And then, why give them
back? A puppet ruler for the oil regions might be found internally,
such as Prince Bandar, the wily and genial Saudi ambassador to
Washington. Or a reliable friend could be imported, such as the
Sultan of Oman. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina, far from
the oil, could be left to the Saud family, or handed back to Jordan's
Hashemite dynasty, which ruled Mecca before being driven out by
Ibn Saud. Assuming a long run price of $25 per barrel, the value
of oil reserves in the Arab Gulf states (not even including Iraq)
is, speaking very roughly, at least ten trillion dollars. (Iraq
has a few trillion more.) That would take something like a century
to extract, providing an annual eleven or twelve digit cash flow.
The vast oil wealth of the Gulf is currently a nuisance to the
U.S. that could be turned into an asset.
Sound outlandish?
It certainly does now. But wars tend to get broader rather than
more narrow, and to scramble the international order in ways that
seemed impossible before they started.
Already, the
logic of Bush's position on terrorism has pushed him into issuing
an ultimatum to Iraq, and the logic of a confrontation with Iraq
could well force a showdown with Saudi Arabia.
But before
we begin planning on pumping Saudi oil ourselves, we should realize
that the likely result of such a test of wills would be much simpler:
an abject Saudi surrender.
The Saudis
would be forced to make the same calculation as the suddenly pliable
Pakistani President Musharraf: defying the U.S. at the risk of being
thrown to the wolves, or going along to ensure his own survival
and lots of money and praise.
In the end
Musharraf feared the U.S. more than he did his domestic radicals.
If the Saudis are made to feel the same fear, they will make the
same choice. If they don't make the right choice, well, life suddenly
won't be so comfortable anymore for all those Saudi princes.
Flight
93 Heroics
Check out the simply fantastic account of the heroic struggle aboard
Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, in this
week's Newsweek.
|
