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2 The Saudi arms deal: Why
now? By Dan Smith
The
headline-grabber read: "US plans new arms sales to
Gulf allies". Nothing startling there. For decades
the United States has routinely sold or
transferred weapons and ammunition, sent military
teams abroad or brought foreign military personnel
to the United States for training, and transferred
technology that allowed "friendly" governments to
produce almost state-of-the-art copies of
US
weapons.
What was a surprise were two
details in the article's subheading. The main
recipient of Uncle Sam's largesse was Saudi
Arabia, and the value of the deal was said to be
US$20 billion.
Saudi Arabia? Isn't that
the country: - from which came 15 of the 19
men responsible for the attack on the United
States on September 11, 2001? - that opposed
the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and whose
king, this March, called the invasion an "illegal
occupation"? - that told the United States to
remove its troops and find some other country for
the US Central Command's (CENTCOM) forward command
post? - whose border is so poorly monitored
that 75% of all foreign fighters crossing into
Iraq do so from Saudi territory, far more than
from Syria? - whose autocratic government
either will not or cannot prevent its youth from
going to Iraq - an estimated 40% of all foreigners
fighting US troops and Iraqi government forces are
Saudi nationals - where they become bomb makers,
snipers, and suicide bombers? - that nearly 60
years after the creation of the modern State of
Israel still refuses to extend diplomatic
recognition to that country?
No matter how
deft the White House "spin", there will be
considerable congressional opposition to the sale.
Previous Congresses have opposed sales of weapons
to the Saudis on the grounds that the kingdom has
never signed a peace agreement with Israel. This
time, the opposition is fueled by the lack of
sustained support from Riyadh for US aims in Iraq
and in the "global war on terrorism".
Cost of oil There is also the
sense among some members of Congress that the
Saudis have not acted to control the soaring costs
of energy. In the run-up to the 2004 US elections,
the Saudis allegedly promised they would increase
production if necessary to preclude a price spike
that might hurt the re-election prospects of the
George W Bush-Dick Cheney ticket.
Once the
US election was concluded, however, the Saudis did
little if anything to curb higher prices - first
to $40 and then to $50 per barrel - pleading
market forces beyond their control. Coincidentally
with the announcement of the proposed arms sale,
the price of a barrel of oil hit $78. Yet there
was only silence from the Saudis.
From the
perspective of the hardliners in Bush's White
House, the Saudis were undercutting every US goal
in the Middle East, particularly the current
president's vision of a democratic Iraq as the
seedbed for transforming autocratic regimes to
democracies.
How different from 1990-91,
when president George H W Bush sent US troops to
protect Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein seized
Kuwait. In the first years after the 1991 Gulf
War, the Pentagon willingly sold almost anything
to the Saudis - with the stipulation, demanded by
the Israelis, that Arab countries would not get
equipment that technologically equaled the
equipment provided Israel. Even so, based on these
orders, the United States actually delivered $22.9
billion in weaponry to the Saudis in the period
1997-2004.
From Riyadh's perspective,
however, it is George W Bush who is undercutting
good governance in the Middle East, something more
important yet more elusive than the type of
government a country may have. Early 2006 was the
turning point. As soon as it became clear that the
Saudi-backed Hamas movement in the occupied
Palestinian territories and not Fatah had won the
January 2006 parliamentary election, the US and
Israel - which regard Hamas as a terrorist
organization - took steps to cut all financial,
commercial and diplomatic contact with the
incoming Palestinian government.
This set
the Bush administration on a collision course with
King Abdullah, who was pressuring Fatah and Hamas
to overcome their past animosities and form a
"unity government". By early this year, conditions
were so dire that Hamas and Fatah agreed to the
Saudi-sponsored "Mecca Accord" as the basis for a
united government. The agreement intensified US
and Israeli counteractions, and after three months
fighting resumed between the factions.
Supporters of the Bush administration
quickly saw Riyadh's effort to respect the
election results as yet another instance in which
Saudi Arabia was not pulling its weight in the
"war on terror". In
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