Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Saudis Fight a Lost Battle against Change
By Nicola Nasser*
The ongoing aggressive Saudi policy for a militarized
“regime change” in Syria is more an expression of internal vulnerability,
trying hopelessly to avert change outside their borders lest change sweeps
inside, than being a positive show of leadership and power, but Syrian
developments are proving by the day that the Saudis are fighting a lost battle
against change.
Surrounded by a turbulent changing regional and
international environment, the Saudi Arabian rulers seem worried as hell that
their system is facing an historical existential test for the survival of which
they are unwisely blundering in foreign policy to alienate friends, win more
enemies, exacerbate old animosities and trying counterproductively to promote
their unmarketable way of life as the only way they know to survive, instead of
reforming to adapt to modern irreversible changes that are sweeping throughout their
surroundings and the world like a tsunami of an irresistible fate.
Change is inevitable and if they insist on resisting it
they will be shooting themselves in the legs and fighting back a lost battle,
which might delay change for a while, but cannot stop it from flooding their
outdated feudal type of family governance, where more than seven thousand royal
princes spread over the country like a spider’s net of rulers who dominate
every aspect of the political, administrative, security, military, economic and
social life.
True, there is the oil factor underlying the aggressive
Saudi regional policies, especially vis-à-vis Iran and Iraq, which is covered
up by trumpeting the not so unrealistic threat of sectarian Shiism, Iranian
regional hegemony and Iran’s nuclear threat lest they endanger the Saudi similar
sectarian Wahhabi theology and political prominence in the region where the
United States has been the only real hēgemōn since the Saudi family came
to power in the Arabian peninsula some one hundred years ago.
For a country where petroleum
exports account for some 90
percent of revenue, the prospect of lifting the sanctions imposed by the
United States and Europe on Iran and empowering Iraq to carry on with its public
plans to increase its oil production to equal or exceed the Saudi level in a
few years would bring into oil market very strong competitors who in no time
would end the Saudi dominance amid “a continuous decline” in international
demand for oil (Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin
Talal, news.sky.com,
July 29, 2013), dwindling US demand for Saudi oil (read Gal Luft and Anne Korin in foreignaffairs.com on Oct. 15, 2013)
and the emergence of China as number one importer of oil in the world last
September.
Comparison is noteworthy here; Israel likewise has been
trumpeting a hypothetical Iranian threat of a non-existent nuclear military
program to cover Israel’s own proven nuclear weapons and its real reason for
warmongering against Iran, namely to preempt the emergence of a regional
competitor in nuclear and defense technology who would compete with Israel’s
most lucrative industries in the same Asian, African and South American
markets.
True also that there is the political factor of the
growing Saudi feeling of an American betrayal and that the US London
Nonetheless, as proved by the US Secretary of State
John Kerry’s visit to Riyadh on Monday, after about a century old bilateral
strategic ties, the ruling Saudis have no other option but to continue risking
their survival on US untrustworthy guarantees for their security and to take
the advice of “Ergo” in its Feb. report last year, titled “The Waning
Era of Saudi Oil Dominance,” that Saudi Arabia “must
strive not to alienate the United States,” unless they decide to adapt to
change internally and change their foreign policy to adapt to the regional changes
as well as to the emerging multi-polar world.
In his obvious
attempt to contain the Saudi “frustration,” “to make certain the Saudi-US relationship is on
track” and will remain “strategic” and “enduring,” despite the “solid” disagreements, Kerry during his visit to
Riyadh went as far as to let down the equality of women as a universal standard
enshrined in his country’s constitution when he said that “it's up to Saudi
Arabia to make its own decision” and that this issue “is best left to the Saudi
Arabian people.”
The Real Threat of
Ideas
However, it is not only the oil and political factors or the
sectarian or military threats that are motivating the aggressive Saudi regional
policies, but the preempting of the real threat of the ideas and thoughts of
change, regardless of whether they come from a rival conservative (Iran) or
moderate (Syria) sect or trend of Islam or from the liberal modernity.
It is true also that the Iranian pronounced “Vilayat-e Faqih”
leadership of the Shiites outside Iran threatens to encourage the large Shiite
minority sitting on the oil fields in the east of the country, or the Shiite
majority in neighboring Bahrain, or the large
minority of the Zaidi
Houthis in northern Yemen just across the
southern border of the kingdom, to follow the example of Hezbullah of their Shiite brethren
in southern Lebanon in seeking the military and political support of Iran in
their decades long struggle to end social, political and economic
marginalization; hence the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain.
But the real threat is much more serious than merely
inciting minorities inside or beside the country to rebel and revolt. The
underlying main message coming out of Iran
The cornerstone of the Islamic revolution which late Imam
Grand Ayatollah Khomeini led and swept
away the more powerful and pro-American hereditary rule of the Shah of Iran was
the central idea in his book, “Vilayat-e Faqih” (The Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist), that there is no hereditary government in Islam.
"Anyone
who has some general awareness of the beliefs and ordinances of Islam" would "unhesitatingly give his assent
to the principle of the governance of the faqih as soon as he encounters
it," the late Iranian leader wrote.
Although
it is public knowledge that there is no priesthood in Islam, the “elected” government
reports to the “male” faqih who is “elected” from a pool of religious hierarchical
elite in a somewhat Islamic copy of the Catholic process of electing the
Vatican pope.
The
Iranian electoral message is a clear threat to the hereditary “royal” court of
the Saudi ruling family to whom a similar religious Wahhabi “priesthood” report
instead vice versa like in Iran.
This
same elected – versus - hereditary argument explains the Saudi U-turn against
the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) whom the Saudi royals had nurtured financially and
politically, and still nurturing in Syria
As
long as the MB was not in power and targeting only Pan-Arab and left – oriented
“republican” Arab ruling regimes and political movements, the Saudis perceived
no MB threat, but when the so – called “Arab Spring” brought them to power in
Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen in alliance with their ruling MB brethren in Turkey,
their threat became more realistic than hypothetical, to the extent that Saudis
risked public disagreements with both their US and Turkish longstanding allies
over their removal from power in Egypt, a Saudi – Egypt disagreement over Syria
as well as the Saudi – Turkey war by their respective proxies among the armed
gangs who are fighting the Syrian government.
However,
the burgeoning liberal
pluralistic modernity as is unfolding in the “republics” of Egypt, Tunisia,
Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria as well as in the “monarchies”
of Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait represents a more challenging threat to the Saudi
hereditary monarchy and the pre-medieval closed society it hopelessly rules to maintain
as such for as long as possible.
Legitimacy Questioned
For this purpose, Saudis succeeded in posturing as the
leaders of the counterrevolution fighting both the rival Islamic and the
liberal challenges in a lost battle to reverse the irreversible course of
history.
Adding to the Saudi vulnerabilities, both challenges are
weighing in heavily on the legitimacy of the ruling family whose title to the throne of Saudi Arabia
Voices that
are marginal but loudly heard nonetheless are demanding the Islamic holy places
in Mecca and Madina be declared a Vatican – like status free for the Hajj for
all Muslim believers because the Saudis have no legitimate title from the
Sharia to be their guardians and because they have politicized the Islamic
ritual as manifested by banning the Syrians from the Hajj for political
reasons.
Resorting to their abundance of petrodollar wealth
accumulated from their depleting oil resources could buy mercenaries disguised
as Islamic “Jihadists” for the cause of their brand of Islam to confiscate
legitimate popular expressions of political and economic grievances in Syria
and elsewhere, could bribe their people as well as their Bahraini and Omani
brethren out of any integration with the popular protests known as the “Arab
Spring” and could abort popular revolts in surrounding Arab countries, but only
for a while. Change is inevitable both inside and around the country.
Their only hope for survival ironically lies in following
in the footsteps of their bitter foe in Syria
Still better, they could make a U-turn in their regional
policy to limit their political isolation in the region by reviving the trilateral
axis with Egypt and Syria, which stabilized the region and established a solid
basis for a minimum defensive Arab solidarity vis-à-vis Israel since the
kingdom joined both countries in their war to liberate their Israeli – occupied
lands in 1973; in such a scenario, Iran would be an added value and not “the
enemy” as pronounced by Riyadh now.
The alternative is waiting for change to come sooner or
later to the Saudi doorsteps; it’s a matter of time only.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit,
West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
