Saudi Arabia is of course always a popular subject for bashing, or should I say, "probing cultural analysis", around here. It is a strange country, semi-feudal and opaque. But: I can't think of any other third world-ish country that the US has had more stable relations with over the past 60 years. Among the many things Saudi Arabia could be faulted for would be paying way too much attention to how US military types have been telling them to spend their money over the past 30 years.
A couple refs from memory.loc.gov
Cooperation with the United States
Between 1947 and 1991, Saudi Arabia's purchases under the Foreign Military Sales program of the United States Department of Defense totaled approximately US$60 billion. More than 80 percent of these purchases were for construction of infrastructure--bases and command and control facilities--together with maintenance, spare parts, and training. Fewer than 20 percent of the purchases were for weapons. memory.loc.gov@field(DOCID+sa0132)
Relations with the United States
Although Saudi Arabia and the United States obviously did not share any borders, the kingdom's relationship with Washington was the cornerstone of its foreign policy as well as its regional security policy. The special relationship with the United States actually dated to World War II. By the early 1940s, the extent of Saudi oil resources had become known, and the United States petroleum companies that held the concession to develop the oil fields were urging Washington to assume more responsibility for security and political stability in the region. Consequently, in 1943 the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that the defense of Saudi Arabia was a vital interest to the United States and dispatched the first United States military mission to the kingdom. In addition to providing training for the Saudi army, the United States Army Corps of Engineers constructed the airfield at Dhahran and other facilities. In early 1945, Abd al Aziz and Roosevelt cemented the nascent alliance in a meeting aboard a United States warship in the Suez Canal. Subsequently, Saud, Faisal, Khalid, and Fahd continued their father's precedent of meeting with United States presidents.
memory.loc.gov@field(DOCID+sa0105)
For the "Hashemite restoration" crowd, there's this ironic little tidbit:
Relations with Jordan
The final country with which Saudi Arabia shared a land border was Jordan, in the extreme northwest. Although the Hashimite dynasty that ruled Jordan also had ruled the Hijaz before being driven out by Abd al Aziz in 1924, past rivalries were buried after World War II, and relations between the two monarchies were relatively cordial, especially between 1955 and 1990. After the 1958 overthrow of the Hashimite dynasty in Iraq, the Saudis assumed a protective attitude toward Jordan. Riyadh provided economic assistance for development projects, and, following the June 1967 War, direct financial subventions for the budget. Saudi Arabia also mediated between Jordan and its various Arab adversaries, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1970-71 and Syria in 1980.
Jordan's refusal to support Saudi Arabia during its confrontation with Iraq in 1990 shocked and angered Riyadh. Many Saudis viewed Jordan's action as that of stabbing a friend in the back. The Saudi government reacted severely: all grants to Jordan were terminated; low-priced oil sales were cut off; and Jordanian imports were restricted. After Iraq had been defeated, Riyadh spurned Jordan's initiatives to reconcile differences. In 1992 relations between the two former friends remained deeply strained. memory.loc.gov@field(DOCID+sa0104)
Some scary statistics from the CIA fact book:
Population: 22,757,092
note: includes 5,360,526 non-nationals (July 2001 est.)
Age structure: 0-14 years: 42.52% (male 4,932,465; female 4,743,908)
15-64 years: 54.8% (male 7,290,840; female 5,179,393)
65 years and over: 2.68% (male 334,981; female 275,505) (2001 est.) cia.gov
This is one place where the traditional US national security priority of stability actually seems to have held up. Maybe that's good, maybe not. But: the current neocon paradigm shift from traditional "keeping the lid on" to "blowing the lid off" looks nowhere more frightening to me than in SA. Those guys think that some US orchestrated behind-the-scenes rabble rousing or "Hashemite restoration" is going to go off smoothly, without a ripple in the wider world? I think I'd prefer to stick with the old hands. The Friends of Cheney can't be all bad. |
