Saudi Breakpoint
A time for choosing.

By David Pryce-Jones
February 1, 2002, 12:30 p.m.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe.

he state of confusion in Saudi Arabia is coming to a head. There are intimations of a revolutionary rift with the United States, and with it the possible collapse of what hitherto has been one of America's indispensable allies in the Middle East. Overall, the desert kingdom bears on it the manufacturer's stamp "Made in Britain, about 1925," and that is no guarantee of endurance.

The country and its ruling family have had a bad war. Relations with the United States have been tested and found wanting. Though continuing to speak politely through tight lips, the Bush administration is far from pleased. It senses that the Saudi rule is being pushed to breakpoint by its internal inconsistencies. Sources inside the administration report that the utterances of the ruling princes have become even more mystically opaque than usual.

All of this has an impact on the continuation of American bases in Saudi Arabia. These exist in the country as a protection against invasion and occupation by Saddam Hussein, and although the Saudi regime sided with the United States verbally after September 11, in practice it placed restrictions on the full use of these facilities for operations in Afghanistan, obliging the American military to improvise far-fetched and expensive alternatives.

Verbally again, Saudi Arabia has broken with its native son Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime, but failed to examine its own previous sponsorship of these extremists or to stop surreptitious support for them, financial and moral. It has been, and still is, the source of much of the Islamic radicalism now destabilizing the world far and wide. That remains to be dealt with.

The Saudi confusion has several facets. First and foremost, the country is in the hands of an infirm monarch, his successor Crown Prince Abdullah and a handful of royal princes, most of them elderly men, self-selected by seniority among the four or five thousand available members of the royal family. The country's oil revenues are theirs to do with as they choose. Their notorious corruption and extravagance are evident for all to see. Their privileges place them above the law. At a whim they can make or break others.

Politics is nothing but the daily clashing of the personal ambitions of this ruling handful. Unable to agree among themselves, some take a view that their future lies with the United States; others that they must drop this strategic alliance and mend their fences with hostile Iraq and equally hostile Iran. This explains the spate of contradictory press reports about the closing of the bases. The Washington Post, the Guardian, the Associated Press, only to cite a few, have recently quoted Saudi sources as saying that the United States will shortly be asked to withdraw its forces on the grounds that they are a "political liability." Secretary of States Colin Powell says the base closure is not currently being discussed.

In favor of the bases staying, at least for some time, is the fact that Saudi policies have a habit of canceling each other out. About the only two things the family members seem to agree on are that their brand of Islamic radicalism is the right one, and that paying subsidies to like-minded groups, whether terrorists or not, is the approach to take. Money for them is a tool for buying friends and buying off enemies, but in their part of the world friends and enemies change places rapidly and unpredictably.

One of the reasons the Saudis may not be able to sustain this model much longer is that money at the moment is scarce; the economy is shrinking and unemployment is reported to be 30 percent. Elections and opinion polls are unthinkable in this society, but if there were such things they would reveal that Osama bin Laden is a national hero, far more popular than the monarchy.

Bin Laden's escape so far from capture or death gives him legendary status. His career rests on primitive anti-Americanism. To him, the presence of American bases has been sacrilege in a holy Islamic land, and the Americans have to go. Behind the rhetorical aim of destroying the United States was evidently his own bid to seize power at home from the royal family. And he has energized his fellow-countrymen in his cause. It was mostly Saudi citizens who carried out the September 11 attacks. As many as 25,000 Saudis have left the country to fight for one or another Islamist terror group.

In the aftermath of the Afghan campaign it is no longer possible for the Saudis to continue double-dealing, offering the Americans a disdainful lip-service loyalty while also tolerating, or worse encouraging, anti-American extremism. A choice has to be made, and it will determine the future of the region. The Saudi rulers could crack down on the Islamist extremists, arresting the many sheikhs who preach in favor of bin Laden and destroying the networks of his supporters. Or they can delude themselves that the cause of present distress is not their own corruption and privilege and incompetence, but the presence of American bases in the country, and the bases will accordingly have to close.

The Saudi princes should remember, however, that this has been bin Laden's particular demand, so that such an outcome would be a meaningful victory for him and his cause. In the ability to have his way even though he is absent and possibly dead, the Saudi population would find confirmation of the man's heroic stature.

As the ruling princes meet in secret family conclaves in their Riyadh palaces, they will have another consideration to bear in mind. They know that they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on military equipment, but to no avail. The Saudi army is not an effective fighting force, and many, if not most, of the airforce pilots are only mercenaries on hire from other Islamic countries such as Pakistan. Maintenance and morale are equally poor. In their one and only experience of battle, Saudi soldiers ran away from the Iraqis during Desert Storm in 1991. Had the American military not been present, Saddam Hussein could have captured Saudi Arabia as swiftly and easily as Kuwait.

The withdrawal of American bases consequently would expose Saudi Arabia once more to that existential threat. And just over the horizon is Iran, acquiring weapons of mass destruction as busily as Iraq. The Saudi rulers may well prefer to have America with them when the time comes to confront these dangers. They are in the process of weighing up whether they are most afraid of bin Laden's shadow, and so need to propitiate their people by removing the American presence; or whether they are most afraid of Saddam Hussein and Iran and so must keep the American protective shield. Fear is famously a bad counselor, particularly for a body of timorous old men with a long track record of misjudgment. One last consideration for them: Iraq or Iran could well precipitate a crisis in which the United States would have no choice but to occupy at least Hasa, the Saudi province where the oil fields are, putting on the country the new manufacturer's stamp of "Made in America."