There are two developments related to Saudi Arabia that deserve attention. First, the Saudi government has uncovered a terrorist plot to disrupt the country's oil production. Second, Saudi Arabia is planning to collaborate with Russia on the question of oil exports.
The Saudi Interior Ministry recently made a dramatic announcement. It claims to have foiled a terrorist plot to sabotage vital oil installations in the kingdom. After the May terror bombings in Riyadh the Saudi government arrested and interrogated Islamic militants. This crackdown led to the detection of a terrorist network with plans to disrupt Saudi oil facilities. The Saudis arrested 16 suspects connected with the plot. They captured weapons that included 160 pounds of explosives, 20 tons of chemicals used to make explosives, and detonators.
The possibility of a future attack against Saudi oil production is underscored by the fact that Saudi Arabia is riddled with bin Laden supporters. In other words, the Saudi government faces a difficult internal problem. During the last decade experts have warned that Saudi Arabia is a "powder keg," ready to explode. It was in 1995 that Said K. Aburish published his indictment of the Saudi monarchy titled, "The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud." Describing the monarchy as "antiquated and insensitive," Aburish warned that a revolution in Saudi Arabia is inevitable. "Instead of mollifying the cries of discontent of its own people and fellow Arabs, [the Saudi monarchy] is making itself more dependent on Western support." By turning to the United States, the unpopular Saudi princes have drawn the United States into their circle of corruption. Abuse of power is so rampant in Saudi Arabia, and liberty so extinguished, that American support for the kingdom convinces many Arabs that America is not their friend. Aburish says that his book is "an appeal to the West to make plans to contain the damage which will follow the coming turmoil in Saudi Arabia ... by engineering a palace coup which would change the very nature of the rule of the House of Saud and reduce its kings to figureheads."
Aburish warns the West that a revolution in Saudi Arabia would have far-reaching economic consequences. Even a brief disruption or stoppage of oil production could lead to a global depression as well as a confrontation with the Muslim world. Any U.S. move into the Saudi oil fields would entail the occupation of sacred Muslim soil, and this could set the entire Islamic world on fire.
Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have been problematic since September 2001. Saudi investors have been accused of funding terrorists. Saudi wealth has been pulled from the United States due to legal actions aimed at Saudi assets. The Saudis have turned east, to China and other Asian countries, in search of business partners who will not hold them blameworthy or plunder their investments due to inadvertent (or advertent) terror connections. Furthermore, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the administration's plan to base an Arab democracy in Baghdad must necessarily leave the Saudi princes uneasy. Only last week President Bush stated that Iraqi democracy would have a positive impact on the Middle East. That positive impact, of course, cannot be positive for everyone. The Saudi government is worried about Washington's intentions.
It is therefore understandable that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has decided to visit Moscow in September. The stated purpose of the visit is to boost economic cooperation between the world's foremost oil-exporting giants. The Russian ITAR-TASS news agency recently claimed that Crown Prince Abdullah plans to sign cooperative treaties on gas and oil production. Abdullah's trip was originally planned for April, but the unresolved fighting in Iraq demanded the monarchy's full attention.
The prospect of cooperation between Russia and Saudi Arabia is strategically significant. If the collaboration proves worthwhile in its early stages, relations could be expanded into the security sphere. Recent friction between the two countries has stemmed from Moscow's claims that Saudi Arabia encourages Muslim support for rebels in Chechnya. But Moscow is willing to set its grievances aside. Any leverage over oil prices, however tenuous, trumps all other considerations for the Kremlin. Any combination that promises higher gas and oil prices will hurt the U.S. economy while benefiting the Russian economy.
Russian politicians have long criticized the "imperialism of the U.S. dollar." Since the dollar's position is increasingly challenged, anything that might lead to financial destabilization - like an energy crisis - would be viewed as "a good thing" from Moscow's perspective. A financial crisis in America might change the global balance of power in Moscow's favor.
There is a further element that plays into this. President Bush's road map to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is bound to fail. The attempt to use "moderate" Palestinians to disarm terrorists and militants ignores the fact that most Palestinians favor the terrorists and militants. Against this backdrop of popular feeling, if the Palestinian moderates are sincere then their elimination is certain. If they are insincere, then the peace process is nothing but a mask for ongoing war preparations.
Two years ago the Russian General Staff conducted a major study on the Middle East. They concluded that an Arab-Israeli conflagration "is almost inevitable and unavoidable." If this is true, then Washington has built its house upon the sand. Everything President Bush is attempting to accomplish in Iraq depends on his "road map to peace." Should the peace plan fail, Iraqi democracy would become an immediate vehicle for radical ascendance. In other words, Iraqi democracy would die in its cradle.
In the next Arab-Israeli war, the budding Saudi relationship with Moscow would open the way to an enlarged bloc of Muslim nations aligned with Moscow and Beijing. The price of oil would not only be affected by war in the Middle East, but by political combination - and this combination would include the hostile government of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, a major supplier of oil to the United States.
At the moment, many countries are playing along with the Bush administration. It would be strange if this situation continued indefinitely. According to terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, the Bush administration "finally grasped the extent of Arab hostility to the United States and Arab opposition to the war on terrorism" during Vice President Cheney's 2002 visit to the Middle East. Surely the administration realizes the gamble it has embarked upon. The opposition to peace and to America in the Middle East is not from governments. It is from the people. Meanwhile, the Russians and Chinese are cynically positioning themselves to take full advantage when the peace process inevitably fails.
Furthermore, Israel's "Operation Defensive Shield," conducted with the quiet approval of President Bush, has led to an eruption of anti-Jewish feeling in Western Europe that now coincides with an eruption of anti-American feeling after the invasion of Iraq. In Europe we can see that Russia has begun to cultivate the French and Germans. If Russia can successfully cultivate Saudi Arabia, the stage might be set for an unprecedented reversal of fortunes in Europe and the Middle East.
