Interesting comments from ex-CIA Robert Baer regarding the Saudis.
Former CIA analyst comments on US-Saudi relations
abc.net.au
ELEANOR HALL: Well, now to the dramatic realignment of United States military forces in the Middle East. Overnight the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, announced that the US would close its military headquarters and pull out virtually all the troops now stationed in what has, for decades, been its key Arab ally, Saudi Arabia.
Washington is playing down the change, but Middle East experts say it has enormous political, as well as military, significance.
Robert Baer is former a CIA analyst who specialised in the Middle East for more than 20 years and who has just written a book about the region. He's warning that we should be prepared for the eruption of mass instability and terrorism in the Middle East in a very short timeframe, and that instability in Saudi Arabia alone could trigger a collapse in the world economy.
I spoke to Robert Baer earlier today and began by asking him how he's interpreting the changes announced overnight by the US Defence Secretary.
ROBERT BAER: For me that's indicative that relations are bad with Saudi Arabia. I mean this is bin Laden's platform. His precise platform is to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia and in a sense he's won, and I think it's a reflection of Saudi unhappiness with the United States rather than US unhappiness with Saudi Arabia.
ELEANOR HALL: So why is this happening now? Has it got anything to do with the war in Iraq?
ROBERT BAER: It has a lot to do with the war in Iraq. Here we are enforcing UN resolutions on Iraq and not on Israel. The Saudi people are saying, it's not fair and what do we get out of this? We paid for the last war and now they're asking us to pay a political price for this war.
I think the Saudis, the royal family, would be delighted for US bases to stay. I mean, they get free security from it, but I think there's such popular discontent with the United States and its, and the invasion of Iraq, that they're feeling this pressure from below.
ELEANOR HALL: And so does this mean that the Saudi Arabian regime, the Saudi royal family, is actually on very shaky ground at the moment?
ROBERT BAER: The people who work in the government I still talk to are worried about the stability of Saudi Arabia. People that, you know, work there now and are worried that will the regime as we know it today last a year? Will it last four years? People are saying three or four years. Something has got to give inside the Kingdom.
Now, whether it's a third generation prince who's going to come along and reform the royal family, reorient its foreign policy, I can't tell you. Or will it be revolution? I mean that's just unknowable right now.
ELEANOR HALL: Either way, it would be a seismic event for the Middle East and indeed for the US, wouldn't it, if the Saudi royal family was to collapse?
ROBERT BAER: It would. You know, I take the worst case possibility and that is that Saudi Arabia takes its oil off the market, either just closes off the taps or sabotages its own facilities. And we're talking, you know, upwards of 11 million barrels a day, which would cause a recession, you know, a deep recession.
ELEANOR HALL: But is it really likely that the Saudis would sabotage their own oil?
ROBERT BAER: Well who would have thought that 15 Saudis would have got onto airplanes and run into US buildings?
ELEANOR HALL: So you're saying it's terrorists inside Saudi Arabia who could actually attack the Saudi oil industry?
ROBERT BAER: They could. I mean, the attitude of a lot of Saudis, they're disenfranchised politically and economically, they're saying, listen, we don't get anything out of the oil, we sell it underpriced to the West, it's only caused corruption and an impure society. If we were to take this oil off the market or a lot of it, we could back to living like the Bedouins, under a pure Islamic utopian society. And if you took all of Saudi Arabia's capacity off for two years, again this is the worst case scenario, you're going to have a serious economic shot, a shock as bad as we saw in 1973.
ELEANOR HALL: As bad as '73?
ROBERT BAER: I think it'd be worse. You know, we could have the perfect storm if there were a revolution in Saudi Arabia and no one can really predict how bad it would be, or would it spill over into the other Gulf countries.
ELEANOR HALL: So are you saying that in some senses, in the next couple of years, it's inevitable that there'll be this sort of instability in Saudi Arabia?
ROBERT BAER: Yes, and I, what I'm saying is I think we should anticipate for it. If the United States keeps on its policy of, you know, aggressive, pro-Israeli policy in the Middle East, it could affect Saudi Arabia in terms of a revolution and we have to be prepared for the consequences.
ELEANOR HALL: So how should the US and indeed the world, be preparing for this sort of instability? What can the White House at the moment do?
ROBERT BAER: I think, you know, this sounds, sounds like a hawk now, but you know, we have to be prepared. We, the West, have to take over those oil fields if there's a serious Islamic revolution in the Gulf that affects all these countries.
I mean it's just as we cannot allow, you know, someone to burn the rainforests. It's a world commodity, oil, and it has to be protected for our survival. So I think we should, you know, everybody should be looking long-term in some sort of security arrangement in the Gulf.
Now whether, you know, whether it's seizing the oil fields or putting them under the United Nations' control or accommodating Saudi Arabian public opinion.
ELEANOR HALL: It's interesting that the United States was in some ways pitching the war in Iraq as a way of stabilising things in the Middle East. Do you believe that the war has meant more or less likelihood of stability for other countries in the region?
ROBERT BAER: Oh, I think it, I think it's ultimately destabilising because we've essentially effaced a country in the Middle East, which is Iraq. I mean there are no public records, there are no police, there's no central government, there's no military, and it's going to remain relatively stable as long as there are troops, Coalition troops there but if they leave, what's going to happen to Iraq and will that chaos spill over into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? I think that's something we need to watch very closely.
ELEANOR HALL: Well you've just returned from Baghdad. I mean, how would you describe the situation there? Is it as bad as it sometimes seems on our television screens?
ROBERT BAER: It's chaotic. I mean, I think it's worse than on the television screens because you know you go downtown Baghdad where the journalists stay, and the three police cars that belong to the city of Baghdad circle the hotel so the journalists can film them as if Baghdad's getting back to normal. But the fact is everybody's armed there, everybody has a grudge and there's no central authority.
ELEANOR HALL: You've got a lot of experience in this region. What advice would you give those now in charge on how to go forward?
ROBERT BAER: Frankly, I don't know how to put it back together. I didn't think the war was a good idea without some sort of plan for afterwards. I mean it was a brilliant military success in terms of taking a 1970s era Soviet army and crushing it. But the question is once you've broken the central authority, how do you put it back together?
ELEANOR HALL: And are you saying that the United States really went in there without a plan for what to do after the war?
ROBERT BAER: I mean, that's clear. I mean you wouldn't have had all this looting. I mean, why didn't they impose a curfew? Why didn't they have a police force to go into place? Why didn't they have somebody to repair the electricity?
I mean the hospitals, there's nothing there. You have to look at it. There's no libraries, they were all burnt. All the hospitals were looted. I mean it's a, I think it's going to be a nightmare for a central authority to put this back together and I think we're going to pay the price on this, on Islamic fundamentalism, Sunni fundamentalism which we allowed to flourish.
ELEANOR HALL: In some ways I guess people might have thought that Americans paid the price back in 2001. Are you saying that we're like to see more terrorism?
ROBERT BAER: I think so. We've humiliated the Arabs as they were in 1967 by Israel, and when you humiliate people, especially the middle class which is responsible for organising much of the terrorism, you see a reaction. The question is, how delayed will it be?
ELEANOR HALL: Robert Baer was a Middle East analyst for the CIA for more than 20 years and he was speaking to me earlier today from his home in Washington. Mr Baer's book on the US role in the Middle East, Sleeping with the Devil, will be published later this year. |
