U.S. Patronage

Of all the client regimes of the U.S. around the globe, the House of Saud is arguably the most important one. According to the Wall Street Journal, the traditional security arrangement with Washington is “based on the understanding that the kingdom works to stabilize global oil prices while the White House protects the ruling family’s dynasty”. The Kingdom is the only oil producer with excess production capacity. This means it is the only actor in the energy market that can apply any downward pressure whatsoever on the price of crude. 

This is not the most important reason for U.S. patronage. Saudi Arabia is crucial to U.S. strategic plans–it underwrites the veto. Control of the Persian Gulf was recognized by U.S. planners as a “stupendous source of strategic power” as far back as the inter-war period. The idea being that having the ability to cut off access to Gulf oil endows the United States with an effective veto over potential challengers like China.

To be sure, ensuring the steady flow of oil from the Gulf is hugely important for the global economy. It is, in fact, a central reason why there is a Business consensus behind U.S. control of the region, and also the reason for across-the-board support for current levels of Pentagon spending, support for Israel et cetera. In other words, one shouldn’t expect defense spending to come down if ostensible major threats evaporate, say if the Islamic regime falls in Iran and is replaced by a friendly one. Similarly, dismantling AIPAC and the Israel lobby will have a marginal effect on U.S. policy vis-a-vis Israel.

The Saudi-U.S. client-patron relationship goes all the way back to the establishment of the Saudi regime in 1932. It was the first regime to come under U.S. protection in the region. Most regimes before the Second World War were under British protection but the Americans were the first to realize the emerging value of oil. Oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932 and shortly after in the Kingdom. Standard Oil moved in very quickly to acquire rights and the Arabian American Oil Company was established in 1933. Its descendent today, Saudi Aramco, is the largest company in the World with total value estimated by the Financial Times to be as high as 7 trillion dollars.

No one denies that Saudi Arabia is a U.S. client state but there is a lot of misunderstanding about what exactly this means. In particular, how much autonomy does the regime enjoy? For instance, the New York Times editorial board insists that Obama “got nowhere” when he tried quietly to persuade the al-Khalifa regime in Bahrain to engage the opposition and ease up on the brutal crackdown. The newspaper of record has a page devoted to Saudi Arabia which states that the Saudis are angry with Washington’s response to the Arab Spring and have questioned their reliance on the United States to protect their interests. Although they concede that “suggestions that Riyadh was ready to go it alone seem at least partly a display of Saudi pique, since the oil-for-protection exchange that has defined relations between the two for the past six decades is unlikely to be replaced soon.” 

The United States has approved a $60 billion sale of advanced weapons to the regime and there are plans to further deepen security cooperation. Obama did not mention Saudi Arabia in his speech on the Arab Spring but he did express concern over Bahrain. Given that we understand that the Saudi invasion was under U.S. authorization, it is better to see Obama’s pronouncements as hedging: Saudi brutalization of Shi’ite protestors directly bolsters Iran’s power, Washington cannot be seen to be authorizing it.

The Counter Revolution 

A month ago, the Saudi dominated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) invited Jordan and Morocco to initiate membership talks. The GCC is the club of oil rich Arab monarchies in the Arabian peninsula. Besides Saudi Arabia, it includes the Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. Marc Lynch has a hilarious article about it in Foreign Policy titled The What Cooperation Council?. The only thing Jordan and Morocco have in common with the GCC is that they are also Sunni Arab monarchies allied to the United States. Far more important than who is included is who is not. Egypt is not not invited because this is a Club of Kings.

In effect, the House of Saud sees itself as being the leader of a counter revolution in the Arab world. They are leading a region wide effort to contain the Arab spring. Analysts reckon we are back to the 1950s and 60s when the Saudis scrambled to contain the influence of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt who led a revolutionary pan-Arab movement and challenged the West and Israel. But they are wrong.

The Arab Spring is not about pan-Arabism and not necessarily antagonistic to the West. In particular, the import-substitution driven, autarchic, state-led model of industrialization and economic development is widely seen to have failed. No one is campaigning to revive it. Neither is anyone eager to challenge Israel or the United States. This is about political liberty and representation.

In other words, there is a real dilemma here for U.S. policy makers.

The Emerging Order                   

Things are not going well for the Saudi princes. To the South, civil war rages as Ali Abdullah Saleh refuses to cede power. To the East, a sectarian time bomb is ticking in Bahrain where seething anger threatens to boil over among the Shi’ite subjects of the Sunni al-Khalifa regime. To the West, revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia are moving towards democracy and popular representation, while American bombers pound Libya into a democracy. To the North, the Assad regime is tottering in Syria while Iraq is threatening to become a stable Shi’ite majority democracy. Turkey’s influence is growing in leaps and bounds. Erdogan is poised to come back to power with a huge majority next Sunday. 

Its clear that a dual system is going to emerge in the Greater Middle East. Turkey and Egypt will lead a bloc of democracies which will certainly include Tunisia and Libya and maybe even Syria. The Arabian peninsula will be home to the counter revolution, led by the reactionary regime in Saudi Arabia.

Western commentators and pundits have convinced themselves that the United States is squarely on the side of democracy. This is such an article of faith that no amount of evidence can convince them of the contrary. We have seen how the U.S. has tried to contain the revolution in Egypt, and authorize Saudi domestic suppression and terror in Bahrain. Its naive to think that U.S. policy makers care about democracy and human rights. This is no state secret, they are realists.

But there is an inherent contradiction in U.S. Middle East policy. The more it supports the counter revolution the less leverage it will have with the revolutionary regimes. It will have to decide which side of the fence it will sit. Fortunately, for American policy makers there is a way out. But it requires being honest about their relationship with the Arab petro-dictatorships.  

Realism

The House of Saud is protected by the United States. Well, who is the U.S. protecting the regime from? In the best Catch-22 style, the answer is that the United States protects the House of Saud from the United States. In other words, this is a protection racket. Once we understand that, we can truly comprehend how much control the U.S. exercises over the House of Saud.

Now, spare us the garbage about the regime threatening to leave the U.S. orbit and tell them to behave themselves or else.

[Update: Someone thought that I was advocating that the U.S. threaten to invade Saudi Arabia. That is not my position. Simply put, I am advocating that United States reject Saudi claims over its sphere of influence, say in Bahrain and the rest of the Arabian peninsula that the Saudis dominate in the current framework of regional power. If it came to choosing between U.S. protection and Saudi alliance, we all know where Kuwait is going to go. Actually, its pretty obvious that all the other seven sisters will fall in line. What U.S. planners ought to be thinking about is an alternative regional power structure in the Persian Gulf. They can't afford to have the Saudis jeopardizing American and Western relationship with the democratic half of the Greater Middle East. Which is exactly what will emerge with current policy.]

This is the backdrop of the New York Times Week in Review article. Titled ‘The Larger Game in the Middle East: Iran’, it casts a penetrating gaze into the framework of decision making in the Obama White House. David E. Sanger reports

“Libya is a sideshow. Containing Iran’s power remains their central goal in the Middle East. Every decision — from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria — is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until mid-January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration’s regional strategy: how to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, and speed the arrival of opportunities for a successful uprising there.”

Looking at the prime example of Bahrain:

“To King Abdullah, President Obama’s decision to abandon President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was a sign of weakness, and a warning that he might throw the Saudi leadership under the bus if democracy demonstrations took root there.

Perhaps that explains why there was barely a peep from the White House when the Saudis rolled troops into neighboring Bahrain to help put down the Shiite-majority protests there. Much as Mr. Obama wants to see the aspirations of democracy protesters fulfilled, and urged steps toward reform in Bahrain, he has no desire to see the toppling of the government that hosts the Fifth Fleet, right across the Persian Gulf from Iran.”

There is nothing surprising about the framework being employed, this is exactly the framework of discourse among US Foreign Policy elites. It suffers from two distinct problems.

1. Keeping in mind US strategic interests, its clear that Iran is not a serious threat to US dominance of the region. Everyone will be happy to see the Islamic regime pack up and leave, and one can even sympathize with American-Israeli efforts to thwart the regime’s attempts to enrich uranium. But Iran can no more challenge the US in the Middle East than Bangladesh. The CIA fact book records Iranian military spending at about $21 billion (2.5% of GDP estimated to be $863b), or approximately the moolah that would come out of the Pentagon’s nose if it sneezed.

2. Lets be ridiculous and assume that undermining the Islamic regime in Iran is the principal goal of US Middle East policy. (Given the events of the past few months, one would think that managing the overall emerging order in the region would be more crucial.) It does not immediately follow that this is consistent with supporting Saudi repression of its own Shi’ite minority and that of Bahrain’s Shi’ite majority. Even if one were to put some weight on claims based on sectarian gravity, a democratic Shi’ite majority regime across the water from Iran will undermine the Islamic regime in Iran. It will benefit the supporters of Mousavi, and more generally the cause of the democracy protestors who were brutally crushed last year.

As far as the Fifth Fleet is concerned, it is not clear why a democratic regime in Bahrain would want to kick it out. Even the Pentagon reckons that this is unlikely. Bahrain is almost 70% Shi’ite but dominated by a Sunni elite. A multi-sectarian regime that is responsive to demands of the disenfranchised majority will certainly not want to invite the wrath of the United States. They want to participate in the global economy and reap its benefits. Given how isolated Iran is, a democratic regime will no more want to ally itself with Iran than the current one. In any case, the Fifth Fleet can be relocated to a number of other places in the Gulf or to Djibouti without compromising on power projection capabilities.

Clearly, the xenophobic Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia would be displeased. But should US foreign policy be set according to the worst tendencies of its most radical allies? Will the regime not fall in line if the US insisted? How long would the House of Saud survive without US support? U.S. support for Saudi bigotry and xenophobia is already jeopardizing exit plans in Iraq and threaten to destabilize Yemen further.

The emerging order in the Middle East will have both democracies and dictatorships. The crucial question for US foreign policy is which side of the fence will it sit. If the United States continues to supports these crackpots, things will go the way of Latin America where endless US support for autocrats eventually led to a situation where the US ran out of allies.

So far the Arab spring has been markedly free of anti-imperialist sentiment. This might have to do with what Zizek would call ‘the absence of alternative visions’ since the fall of the Soviet Union. Protestors and potential voters understand that there are no credible alternatives to the current capitalist order and global strategic unipolarity. The Obama White House needs to sit back, relax and think things through.

The current strategy is neither consistent with American interests nor with American values.

Here is a map of the World with each country resized to reflect its net exports of crude oil. The big giant green blob is of course Saudi Arabia. One expects the Persian Gulf to be huge but its surprising to see how big Norway and Britain are, or for that matter Africa. See if you can name all the countries.

And here is one by military spending. The United States accounts for as much as the rest of the World combined.

These are both from WorldMapper. Check it out for more awesome maps.

Andrew J.  Bacevich has steller conservative credentials. He is a former colonel of the United States army, a Vietnam veteran and some time contributor of National Review, the conservative journal started by William F. Buckley, Jr. Bacevich lost his son to the Iraq war who was killed in combat in May 2007.

The book is subtitled ‘America’s Path to Permanent War’ and is a critique of post war US militarism. Bacevich identifies two components of the post war political consensus. The first component is the unquestioned assumption of the need for American global primacy. The idea is that the international capitalist system is a force for peace and prosperity and that it is underwritten by US military hegemony. The second component is the trinity of policy requirements for the US to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter threats by a policy of global interventionism. From Truman to Obama, this consensus has endured and lends a remarkable consistency to US military and foreign policy through the post war period.

All of the above is pretty obvious to any serious observer. Bacevich goes on to provide a history of defence policy through the post war period. There is a very interesting section on the policy of massive nuclear retaliation and the origins and structure of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) which was responsible for the massive nuclear arsenal of tens of thousands of warheads. Another section offers a brief but interesting look on the reliance on covert operations and the CIA. The discussion on the search for usable military options, i.e., the policy of flexible response, is an illuminating look inside the elite circle of strategic decision making in Washington.

Bacevich essentially subscribes to the theory of the military-industrial complex. The idea that the commercial and financial concerns closely tied to the Pentagon are the key beneficiaries and drivers of sky high defence spending and a policy of global military dominance. And that it is their influence in Congress and in the defence establishment (think tanks, the lobbyists etc) that perpetuates the consensus.

The problem with this theory is not that it is not credible, the military industrial complex is real. There is little doubt about the influence and power of the corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin and Blackwater. The problem is that the formulation of this consensus is too narrow. It is not just a consensus among politicians and the defence establishment. It is, in fact, a consensus among a large section of the the business and policy elites. From Wall Street to the New York Times, almost the entirety of the articulate elite who dominate the public sphere share this assumption: the global economic order dominated by Western capital is not just a force for good but rather it is necessary for civilization itself, and that US global military hegemony is required to underwrite it.

Bacevich’s criticism of this enterprise are all valid: the opportunity cost of the trillions of dollars spent on defence, the mounting toll of dead and wounded troops, the perpetuation of ponderous bureaucracies subsisting in a climate of secrecy and deception, the distortion of national priorities as the military industrial complex siphons off scare resources, the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small guard shoulders the burden of perpetual war while the vast majority shops.

Bacevich’s solution is to ‘bring America home’. He contends that the goal of American statecraft is not maintaining a specific world order, nor policing the planet by the force of arms. Rather it is to create a more perfect union at home. He wants to replace the old trinity with a new one, I quote:

1. The purpose of the US military is to defend the United States and its most vital interests.
2. The primary duty station of the American solider is America.
3. Consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self defence.

All well and good. But is it going to happen any time soon?

Not a chance.

For the foreseeable future the United States will keep its military commitments in the Middle East and the Far East. The military bases in Iraq and Kuwait are going to stay, as are the aircraft carriers in the Persion Gulf. The control and flow of oil is of crucial to the functioning of the global economy and of vital interest to Western capital. The aircraft carriers in the Pacific and the military bases in Japan and Korea are required to contain to only serious challenger to US global hegemony: China. Furthermore, the United States will get increasingly entangled in Central Asia and Africa, where most of the new oil fields are located. The military fight against radical Islam is expanding out from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Sudan and Somalia. It is going to last decades and we are certainly nowhere close to the end. Don’t expect the boys to come home any time soon.