If Saudi Arabia destabilizes, what do you think would happen to any Iraqi attack plans?
If Saudi Arabia "destabilizes" - translated, if it falls into the hands of a fundamentalist Government - it would create a situation that would have to be dealt with ahead of the Iraq problem. Dealing with that situation would, however, be extremely difficult.
Two factors would have to be dealt with: first, the oil, and second, the probability that a fundamentalist Saudi Arabia would almost certainly become the new Al Qaeda base.
One option would be a limited military action in the NE corner of the country, seizing the major oil fields. This would be doable, much more so than seizing the entire country, would solve the oil problem, and would avoid the scenario of American tanks rolling down the streets of Mecca. It would not solve the problem of the Al Qaeda haven.
Conquering the whole of Saudi Arabia would be possible. Maintaining an occupation, especially with a sizable number of riled-up Islamic fundamentalists in the population, would be complex.
Off the top of my head and with no deep thought, I'd say a possible response might be to seize the oil fields, depriving the fundamentalists of their only significant source of revenue, contain the rest of the country as much as possible, and give the fundamentalists some time to piss the population off before making a further move. If we seized the oil fields, that would also provide a base for any move on Iraq.
The most unpredictable factor, I'd say, would be popular response to a fundamentalist takeover. The demonstrations after the school fire incident indicate that there is some popular resistance to fundamentalist excess. How strong this is, and whether it can be tapped, is another question altogether.
I hope we aren't forced into the job of regime change with nation-building in Saudi Arabia. A very messy prospect.
If the country is taken over by fundamentalists, though, an immediate response will be necessary, though it will likely be very messy indeed. |
