All Posts

post a reply | post a new topic

Author

Topic: The Saudi plan

topic by John Calvin 3/4/2002 (19:17)

reply top Middle East Conflict: The Saudi Plan stratfor.com Summary Saudi Arabia is drawing worldwide attention with its proposal for peace in the Middle East. But besides being ultimately unworkable, the plan has little to do with the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. It is instead an elegant solution to deflect the intolerable pressure Washington is putting on Riyadh both to participate in anti-terrorism operations in the Persian Gulf region and to help fight al Qaeda sentiment within Saudi borders. Analysis Saudi Arabia has proposed a Middle East peace plan that has gained worldwide attention. The plan proposes that, in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967, the Arab world would end its state of war with Israel, establish diplomatic relations and finally and definitively accept Israel's right to exist within its 1948 borders. It is a simple, elegant and ultimately mysterious proposal. There are two mysteries. The first is why Saudi Arabia chose this time to deliver its proposal. In general Riyadh has steered clear of major involvement in diplomatic initiatives concerning Israel, confining itself to platitudinous denunciations of Israel and financing of Palestinian groups. Why would Saudi Arabia suddenly insert itself into the crisis? The second mystery is why the world has gotten so excited about the proposal, at the core of which lies universal Arab recognition of Israel's existence. To the naked eye, Saudi Arabia is hardly in a position to deliver all the Arab states, let alone all the non-state movements that directly threaten Israel. Moreover, this is no longer a strictly Arab issue but a general Islamic issue. For example, Saudi leaders did not include Iran -- which is not Arab but is the patron of Hezbollah, one of the major threats to Israel -- in their offer. Therefore, it would appear that Saudi leaders have made a proposal on which they can't possibly deliver. Therefore, why all the excitement? The Saudi proposal must be viewed in two contexts to be understood. The first is the late January-early February confrontation between the United States and Saudi Arabia over the right of U.S. troops to remain in the Saudi kingdom. The second is the complex internal politics of the kingdom. The government needs to balance the imperative of maintaining good relations with the West, particularly during a period of economic difficulty due to low oil prices, with substantial anti-U.S., pro-al Qaeda sentiment within Saudi Arabia. Since Sept. 11, the Saudi government has been trapped between its relationship to the United States and pro-al Qaeda sentiment within its own borders. As U.S. war plans evolved, assets in Saudi Arabia -- pre-positioned equipment, command and control facilities, troops and bases -- figured prominently. As Washington turned its attention to liquidating nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction facilities in Iraq and even Iran, the United States' dependency on Saudi Arabia increased. This placed Riyadh in an intolerable position. Washington was demanding that Saudi leaders facilitate a U.S. assault on al Qaeda and its potential enablers, an assault in which the Saudis sought no part. The dispute broke into the open in late January, when it became publicly known that rather than wanting to help, Riyadh was actually asking the United States to withdraw some or all of its forces from the kingdom. After some tense and quite public moments, the dispute was contained without clear resolution. One aspect of this confrontation shocked Riyadh. Saudi leaders are masters of managing the United States. Their experience has been that occasional crises in Saudi-U.S. relations are generally beneficial. Saudi Arabia obviously needs the United States as the guarantor of its national security and for financial reasons as well. At the same time, Washington is continually spawning schemes in which Riyadh wants no part. Pushing back typically causes the United States to moderate its position, especially when Washington is told that further pressure might destabilize pro-U.S. elements in Saudi Arabia. In this sense, the Saudi pushback was simply part of the normal give-and-take in the relationship. The problem was that Sept. 11 fundamentally changed the way Washington responded. The United States was aware of pro-al Qaeda sentiment in Saudi Arabia. However, Washington assumed this sentiment was not shared by Saudi leaders. It also assumed Riyadh shared the U.S. interest in making certain that this sentiment did not lead to the provision of sanctuary or resources for al Qaeda members. The United States not only expected Saudi Arabia to permit the use of its territory for regional operations against al Qaeda but also expected Saudi leaders to work against domestic Saudi support for al Qaeda. In other words, what had been tolerable during the Khobar Towers investigation, in which Saudi officials were less than enthusiastic about throwing open the doors to U.S. investigators, was now seen by the United States as intolerable. When Riyadh pushed back against the United States, officials were shocked to discover Washington was, in effect, re-evaluating its relationship with Saudi Arabia in a fundamental way. The issue on the table was whether the Saudis themselves represented the core support for al Qaeda -- or put another way, whether Saudi Arabia itself was an enemy to the United States. Leaders in Riyadh were stunned to discover that the standard maneuver they had used for decades had a completely unexpected and totally unacceptable consequence: a complete breach with the United States and potentially having Saudi Arabia equated with countries like Iran. Most important, they realized that -- given world oil supplies and prices and the shock of Sept. 11 -- oil no longer constituted an effective bodyguard for Saudi interests, at least as far as the United States was concerned. Recognizing that Washington had redefined the terms of the relationship forced Riyadh in turn to redefine those terms. If the United States was beginning to view Saudi Arabia as an adversary rather than an ally, then the government had to reverse the process. They could not do so by giving the United States what it really wanted -- operational freedom of action within the kingdom. That was a price Riyadh couldn't pay. It needed to find a way to redefine the relationship without submitting to U.S. demands....

reply by John Calvin 3/4/2002 (19:18)

reply top The Israeli-Palestinian initiative was the solution. First, it recast Saudi Arabia as a peacemaker in an arena that was not of fundamental Saudi interest. Second, it recast Riyadh without forcing it to pay a price. Third, it put Israel on the diplomatic defensive. With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's popularity sinking in the face of intensifying Palestinian guerrilla activity, the proposal opened an apparent avenue that led away from a military situation that was not developing as Sharon had hoped. The proposal immediately put Sharon on the spot. In fact, it was the perfect framework for attacks last weekend by Palestinians. Finally, the proposal put the United States on the defensive. With Saudi Arabia now playing the role of peacemaker in the Israeli conflict, U.S. pressure on more fundamental issues was deflected. It would be simply impossible for Washington to force a confrontation with the Saudis at the very moment they appeared to have provided a potential solution to a problem, which itself superficially seemed the trigger for al Qaeda's antagonism to the United States. The initiative was a stroke of genius. Its delivery was no less brilliant and showed intimate knowledge of U.S. culture. Rather than delivering the proposal to U.S. officials, who might have recognized it as a deflection maneuver, it was given to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He did not immediately link the proposal to the crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations, treating it as a stand-alone proposal. Moreover, Friedman is Jewish. The proposal gained tremendous credibility by being not only delivered but also essentially endorsed by the Jewish columnist for the United States' leading newspaper. This also positioned Saudi Arabia as the broker of a definitive solution to a horrible situation. If the Bush administration confronted Riyadh publicly on the al Qaeda situation, a substantial bloc of opinion in the United States, and certainly in Europe and the Arab world, would see this as another example of America's obsession with al Qaeda undermining a real chance for peace in the Middle East. In short, Saudi leaders bought themselves a buffer against U.S. demands for military cooperation. This was done at little cost to themselves because the proposal ultimately cannot work. Saudi Arabia cannot deliver the two things Israel must have. First, it cannot guarantee the end of Palestinian attacks on Israel, because Riyadh cannot guarantee that some faction of the Palestinians -- faced with the requirement to give up their claims on Palestine as well as on all properties lost in 1948 -- won't choose to continue the war. Second, in the long run, Saudi Arabia cannot guarantee the future evolution of Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Should war parties return in these countries, the Palestinian state would represent an intolerable geographic threat to Israel. Apart from the fact that Riyadh cannot bring all of the parties -- Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah and so on -- to the table now, it cannot guarantee that any treaty that is signed would be honored. Saudi leaders similarly cannot give the Palestinians what they must have: a viable state. A Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza would be a miscarriage from the beginning. Apart from the fact that Palestinian territory would be bifurcated between the West Bank and Gaza, such a state could never experience any degree of economic or military autonomy. It would be, by its nature, a dependency. Whatever the treaty might say, the geographic reality is that a Palestinian state occupying post- 1948 borders could emerge from economic catastrophe only by becoming an economic extension of Israel. The Saudi proposal, from a Palestinian point of view, guarantees perpetual domination of the Palestinians. The tragic reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it has nothing to do with lack of good will or of creative diplomacy. The essential problem is that the Palestinians can never have what their nationalism requires within the confines of post-1948 geography, nor can Israelis be secure within those borders. The only possible compromise is geopolitically impossible. Saudi leaders know this. They know that they cannot deliver the Arab world and also that it doesn't matter, since at the final moment, as has happened before, neither side can take the deal being offered and live with it. Riyadh also understands fully that neither the United States nor Europe has grasped that fact - - believing that with more good will and a more creative negotiating framework, all will be well. Saudi Arabia has therefore spoken directly to both publics via Tom Friedman and the New York Times. But the Saudi motive has almost nothing to do with Israel and the Palestinians. The motive has to do with deflecting U.S. pressure on Saudi Arabia over its participation in U.S. military operations in the region and on dealing with al Qaeda sympathizers in the kingdom. The Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative is designed to position Saudi Arabia as an invaluable asset for the peace process -- much too valuable to destabilize over the al Qaeda issue. The United States will have to make some definitive military moves this spring and summer. Washington's fear that nuclear weapons will penetrate the United States requires action sooner rather than later. Saudi Arabia wants to have as little to do with such an action as possible. It needs to buy a few months. This maneuver may have done just that. The United States will have to make its plans without bringing definitive pressure to bear on Saudi Arabia.

reply by John Calvin 3/4/2002 (19:35)

reply top Maybe the Saudi plan was not such a brilliant defensive plan after all...maybe they'd better stop playing footsie with the U.S. and cooperate with 'The Dialogue of Civilizations', and league up with Iran? thr 112 Saudi-Terrorism /POL/  Saudi Arabia removed from list of anti-terrorism countries: daily Riyadh, March 4, IRNA -- United States has removed the name of Saudi Arabia from a new list of countries who are participating in the campaign against terrorism, said the Saudi paper 'Al-vatan' Monday. Al-vatan wrote that despite the statements made by Donald Ramsfeld, the US Defense Secretary and other high ranking officials in Washington regarding the positive cooperation by Saudi Arabia in campaigning against terrorism, the name of Saudi Arabia has been deleted from the new list. After the Sept 11th incident and involvement of certain Saudi Arabian citizens in it, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US began deteriorating. According to a report by Al-vatan, the attacks by the western media to the Saudi Arabia positions and the demand by Riyadh from Washington for removal of the military forces quartered in Hafr-ul-Baten region have strained the relationships between the two countries. BM/JB End ::irna 23:40

reply by Raquel 3/4/2002 (19:51)

reply top Thanks for posting the article John. It is really interesting!

reply by observer 3/4/2002 (20:09)

reply top Beware Stratfor.com. I strongly suspect this is a CIA controlled operation to spread disinformation and 'black propoganda.' The article makes the proposterous claim that unless the US greatly expands its 'war on terror' (probably by attacking Iraq) a nuclear bomb is likely to go off in a major city. This sure looks like a desperate effort to build public support for a US attack on Iraq under the guise of fighting Islamic terrorism. Of course the fact that Iraq is a secular state and the number 2 man (Tariq Aziz) is a Christian is almost never mentioned in the Zionist controlled media.

reply by John Calvin 3/4/2002 (20:48)

reply top I agree with you about using stratfor with caution but I doubt it is a CIA operation. They maintain a certain patriotic, America first tone- accepting certain absurd propositions - so that they can concentrate on providing information rather than arguing ideology. And, like in the above article, where they seem to imply that the Saudi plan was a 'brilliant success', simply wrong. Never-the-less, exercising one's wits on such matters advances one's understanding of the situation and reigns in the CIA, State Department and President by broading the field of information in which the debate takes place. In many respects the above stratfor article simply restates MER's analysis. I've thought about that too- what about MER....? Stratfor plays the role of a shadow government and loyal opposition, in a Texas sort of way .