The Saudi Contradiction

Riyadh's leaders must enter the 21st century. Their very survival is at stake.

Crown Prince Abdullah has now admitted what everyone else has been thinking, which is that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is "at a crossroads."

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Saudi ruler wrote to President Bush in August that "a time comes when peoples and nations part" and that "it is time for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to look at their separate interests. Those governments that don't feel the pulse of the people and respond to it will suffer the fate of the Shah of Iran."

It's time the U.S. took the Prince up on his offer. For the strains of the war on terrorism are revealing that the long-standing U.S.-Saudi bargain can't hold. In return for oil and the occasional pro-American vote at the United Nations, Washington has looked the other way at Saudi Arabia's precarious politics. Meanwhile, the princelings have long posited that if the U.S. doesn't support the House of Saud, it will end up with a radical Muslim replacement it likes even less.

That compact looked tattered long ago, but after September 11 it hangs in shreds. U.S. support for the House of Saud has now yielded Saudi support for those waging war on the U.S. homeland. If a more radical regime is going to take hold in Saudi Arabia, better to face that fact sooner rather than later. Coping with an overtly hostile Saudi government would at least have the virtue of clarity that doesn't exist today. It would also force a decision on whether to take over the Saudi oilfields, which would put an end to OPEC.

Today the dominant fact of the U.S.-Saudi relationship is that this "friend" is a principal source of funding for al Qaeda. The U.S. Treasury has identified several Saudi charities and a prominent Saudi businessman as bankrollers of terrorism. The Saudi response has been to decline to participate in an international consortium of more than 80 nations that have agreed to block the assets of terrorist groups.

This affront comes on top of the Saudi refusal to cooperate with the U.S. investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, in which 19 American servicemen died. Since last month's terrorist attacks in the U.S., numerous connections have also emerged between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers, some of whom carried Saudi passports. Many of those currently under arrest are Saudis, but the official Riyadh reaction has been to overlook these facts. All of this despite the fact that 5,000 U.S. troops are based in the Kingdom--less to protect American interests than to protect the Saudis from Saddam and other neighborhood bullies.

This contradictory relationship is not the fault of the Saudis alone; they get away with such behavior because Washington lets them. Even after September 11, senior Bush Administration officials inexplicably talk about being "pleased" with unspecified Saudi "cooperation," as if saying so will make it so. This is in keeping with a long history of U.S. complicity, led by a State Department that equates Saudi stability with the status quo.

The U.S. is so fearful of "instability" that it's afraid to criticize the current regime, much less encourage it to move in a more democratic direction. But the status quo is hardly stable. The U.S. has looked the other way while the Saudi ruling family has stifled even moderate challenges to its power. This in turn has bred radical Islam as the only outlet for dissent, which the Saudis have attempted to buy off with cash for fundamentalist mosques and schools that promote the most venomous anti-American sentiments.

The result is now not only terrorism against America but a threat to the survival of the Saudi royals too. The only thing the admirers of Osama bin Laden hate more than the United States is the House of Saud itself. Does Prince Abdullah really believe, as his letter to Mr. Bush suggests, that if somehow peace came to Palestine then bin Laden would leave them alone?

All of this is complicated by a succession struggle among princes nearly as old as the elderly and ailing King Fahd. Oil is another complication. It's an accident of history and geography that nearly a quarter of the world's oil sits in these political backwaters. But as a practical matter, the debt-ridden Saudis need the petrodollars as much as the West needs the oil. An OPEC embargo for political reasons might send the developed world into recession, but the West would weather it better than the Gulf countries.

So where does this leave the U.S.? The first imperative now is to stop Saudi financing of America's enemies. This is a direct threat to U.S. national security. It's also, however, a threat to Saudi security, something the U.S. could strive to help them see more clearly. It would be a mistake to let the Saudis act only behind the scenes without signing on publicly to the global effort against terror financing. Nod-and-wink "cooperation" sends one more contradictory signal about which side deserves to prevail.

Above all, it is in the U.S. interest to encourage the Saudis to enter the 21st century, now that they've missed the 20th. That includes a more open politics, so that the only dissenting voice is not radical Islam. Bahrain, newly liberalizing under a young emir, is proving that this can work. Five years ago that Arab nation faced political unrest, but after its democratic reforms Bahrain has had to confront relatively little anti-American sentiment now. It's past time Saudi Arabia learned a similar lesson.

Yes, the U.S.-Saudi relationship is at a crossroads. But so is the House of Saud. The current path is the one the Shah trod down, a walk into exile and chaos for his country. The alternative has its own risks, but it also has the promise of long-term survival.

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