The End of The House of Saud

It costs nothing to be allies in good times. 

Now that bad times have come for the House of Saud they are learning where they truly stand in the imperial pecking order. 

The Saudis invaded and attacked Yemen more than a decade ago with no long-term strategy. They just financed a lot of Al-Qaeda terrorism, mass bombings, and assassination strikes. 

They acted from a false sense of military superiority. They lost then and they’re losing now.

Without a strong military it’s foolish to project power. Saudi Arabia assumed it was a great power. But it is a collection of tribes with an ungodly amount of oil money. Yemen is the true power of the Arabian peninsula. The Houthis are reasserting Yemen’s natural position in the region. And it’s not wise to assume they won’t deviate ideologically if push comes to shove. 

The Saudis still have some economic leverage over Washington, but do they have the guts to financially punish the United States and try to devalue its currency? I don’t think so. 

The Jews can afford to act like renegades and pirates because of the immense power they wield in Washington. The Saudis do not have that luxury. Besides, good times have made them weak and cowardly. And the Houthis smell that fear. 

They should have made peace. 

They should have known attacking a neighbouring country was a foolish thing to do.

II.

An excerpt from, “From Pawns to Global Powers: The Nations of the Middle East Strike Back” by Chas Freeman, February 14, 2023:

For the past two centuries, the West Asian and North African sub-region we call the Middle East has been the playground of external empires and great powers.  But for millennia it was itself the birthplace of its own great empires and religions.  Now, in the new world disorder, the nations of the Middle East are re-emerging as powers with regional and global influence. This is altering the relations of the United States and other external powers with them in ways that cannot be explained by “great power rivalry” and cannot be addressed by military means.

. . .The United States has assumed formal and informal commitments to come to the defense of countries in the Middle East, most clearly Israel and Saudi Arabia, but no Middle Eastern country, including Israel or Saudi Arabia, has ever accepted any reciprocal obligation to defend the United States or American interests. The classic definition of an alliance is a relationship between two or more nations embodying a broad commitment to mutual assistance in defense of common interests. By this standard, U.S. relations with Middle Eastern countries, other than Turkey (which is a member of NATO), are not “alliances” but “protected state” or “client state” relationships. They are a manifestation of American regional hegemony.  In the new world disorder, the lack of reciprocity inherent in U.S. defense commitments in the region invites their reconsideration.

Israel was for long the only Middle Eastern country to disregard admonitions from its American great power patron and to act without consulting it. Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty and has murdered American citizens like Rachel Corrie, and, more recently, Shireen Abu Akleh with impunity.  Foreign statements of concern, including American statements, over each new display of Israeli racism and disrespect for international law evoke nothing but derision from Israel’s leaders. In the Middle East, sovereign indifference to patrons is apparently contagious.  Neither Israel nor any Arab country has joined the United States in condemning and sanctioning Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.  None is on board with isolating China.

Turkey refused to allow the U.S. to stage the 2003 invasion of Iraq from its territory.  More recently, its air and land forces have repeatedly threatened U.S. units protecting the so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), which Turkey considers to be linked to and led by terrorists.  Despite Turkey’s formal membership in NATO, in practice, it is now best described as an “entente partner” of the United States and Europe – an entente being a limited partnership for limited purposes.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia assembled a “coalition of the billing” and invaded Yemen, demanding and receiving reluctant American support for its operations there.  In 2018, Saudi agents murdered a Saudi journalist affiliated with the Washington Post.  In 2022, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman refused to take a call from President Biden before accepting an apologetic visit by the president during which the crown prince rebuffed his pleas for actions that could lower the price of gasoline at the pump before elections in the United States.

Clearly, the days are over when presumed client states in the Middle East could be counted upon to comply automatically with directives from Washington.  So is their exclusive reliance on Britain, France, Russia, or the United States for their strategic defense.  They are busily establishing their own military presences and bases abroad to project power against each other and to control key strategic chokepoints.  They now mount military operations beyond their borders that are not linked to those of any patron state or coordinated with one.