America's Unspecial Relationship: A cold look at the Saudis

Until recently, the official position of the government of Saudi Arabia was that it remained unproven whether there were any Saudi citizens involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. They meant "unproven" not in the sense that anyone really doubted that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but in the sense that the Saudis would really have preferred that no one take notice of that fact. The Saudi reaction to every terrorist attack against the U.S. to which the kingdom has had a connection in recent years has been a mixture of avoidance, dishonesty, and passive aggression.

The Saudis beheaded the suspects in the November 1995 bombing of the U.S. mission to the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh before the FBI could question them. They frustrated the U.S. investigation into the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, almost certainly to cover up evidence of Iranian involvement (the Saudis wanted to keep the U.S. from retaliating against Iran, at a time when the kingdom was cozying up to the mullahs). In general, the Saudis have acted like they have something to hide because they do -- the contradiction at the center of their relationship with the U.S.

Would it have made sense for the U.S. to be allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? That is almost, although not quite, the question confronting the United States in its relations with Saudi Arabia. It would be a more precise analogy if the Soviets had funded the international Communist movement at the same time they disavowed any hostile intent toward the West, and, in fact, depended on the American military for their very existence. This tangled arrangement with the Saudis could survive so long as it wasn't subjected to scrutiny -- in other words, so long as it existed in the pre-Sept. 11 world.

Mutual strategic and mercenary interests between the U.S. and the Saudis have long submerged the significance of the peculiar, intolerant, and anti-Western beliefs at the core of the Saudi monarchy. During the 1980s, at our request, the Saudis drove down oil prices in an attempt to starve the Soviets of revenue. That was no small thing. Neither are the American business opportunities in the kingdom -- oil, weapons sales, etc. -- to be lightly dismissed. But such considerations now pale against the cultural contradiction between the two countries. A variant of the Saudi ideology, after all, has incinerated and crushed 3,000 Americans.

The Saudi regime must be made to choose between the aggressive Islam at its heart and its friendship with the U.S. If it chooses the wrong way, we should contemplate the end of the House of Saud. There is no reason -- if it comes to that -- that one corrupt, self-serving Arabian clan can't be replaced by another.

Saudi Arabia is less a country than a family business, and, in fact, is named after its ruling family. In the 18th century, Muhammad bin Saud determined to conquer all of Arabia in league with a radical Islamic scholar, Abdul Wahhab. As British journalist Simon Henderson has put it, "The strategy was simple: those who did not accept the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam were either killed or forced to flee." Weathering the assassinations and betrayals typical of Arab politics, the al-Saud clan eventually prevailed, with King Abdul Aziz (commonly known as Ibn Saud) founding the modern state in 1932.

Ibn Saud relied on a Wahhabi religious brotherhood as his military vanguard, although the "battles" he fought were hardly worthy of the name. Ibn Saud captured Riyadh from another tribe, for instance, with a raiding party of 50 men. He fathered 44 sons by 22 wives (exclusive of the concubines and girls constantly offered to him as gestures of hospitality), and they have become the ruling flower of Saudi Arabia. It's as if America at its founding had been named Washingtonland, and ruled forevermore by the polygamous spawn of George Washington.

Saudi Arabia was never colonized by Western powers, since occupying large swaths of desert in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula never had much appeal. And so it never experienced any of the beneficial touches of European civilization. It instead has always been characterized by its backwardness and irrationality. Slavery was abolished only in 1962. Sheik Bin Baz, eventually the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa in 1966 ruling that the world is flat. Compared with most modern nations, Saudi Arabia is a lunarscape: no political parties, no trade unions, no movie theaters.

It would qualify as just another Third World backwater if it weren't for its two major exports: oil, of course, but, just as important, Wahhabism. What sets the House of Saud apart from the other, much more benign monarchies in the region is that it is an ideological regime, devoted to the enforcement and propagation of the Wahhabi creed. Wahhabism is a strict Islamic fundamentalism, formulated not in the yeasty mix of ethnicities and traditions that Islam encountered in its initial expansion, but in isolated, culturally arid Arabia. (Stephen Schwartz has written eloquently about it, including in NR -- see "Liberation, Not Containment," Nov. 19, 2001.)