Sunday, October 1, 2017

ARAB SPRUNG: THE FUTURE CATCHES UP WITH THE HOUSE OF SAUD

How do you change a system that is determined never to change? You rush it, the more radical the change, the better; said no strategic adviser, ever. This elementary mistake us unavoidable when they people unite behind change. For those who desire to remain in control, rushed radical change is best avoided especially when trying to anticipate and avert undesirable bottom-up change.
Repressive regimes seeking to liberalize have three pathways to clinging to power. Double-down and hope for the best (the North Korean Model). Instant political freedoms (the Soviet Model ca. 1989). Gradual economic reform, followed by strengthening and modernizing the military, all cloaked by projecting low expectations internally and offshore, with the occasional crackdown as needed (the China Model 1978-Xi).
Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s instinct is spot-on. Yet, his execution is more likely than not to precipitate the change he most needs to avoid. It may not be too long before he appreciates the ultimate irony of rushing to liberalize just as the rest of the world, including many of the old democracies, slide into varying degrees of authoritarianism. Oh, to be young again!
If you are excited about women getting driver’s licenses, you are completely missing the point. Less reported, but about a thousand and one times more important was the disempowerment of the religious police. The nexus of power in Saudi Arabia lies at the intersection of Mosque and State. Saudi Arabia has always been a revolutionary Islamic power. Its Sunni revolution predated the Iranian Shiia revolution by centuries and was neatly masked by an institution European powers could recognize: a Royal family. Superficial mimicry of western institutions concealed an ancient culture that lived by the sword coupled with implementation of the literal word if the Prophet. Radical Sunni Islam was exported in exchange for maintenance of the mask. Iran had a royal family, too. At least until radicalism could no longer be contained.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS in the social mediasphere) struck the religious community hard. Scores of clerics have been arrested in simultaneous raids across the country. Said one, “all those who thought about saying no to the government got arrested.” (NYT, 6Nov17, p.A9). This action extends beyond the Mosque, particularly given the judicial bureaucracy is the domain of the clerics. At least until now. It remains to be seen whether MBS is challenging this arrangement beyond symbolic gestures. Formally, the Royal Household interacts with the religious community through the Council of Senior Scholars. Its carefully selected membership is unlikely to represent the full spectrum of religious thought resident in the Kingdom. Nevertheless, the Council has got behind the mass arrests of clerics, possibly seeing some opportunities for its members in the short term. Yet that is no the same as endorsing MBS’ vision if a “moderate, balanced Islam that is open to the world and to all religions and all traditions and peoples” (Ibid).
MI is skeptical that centuries of conservative religious belief can be overturned by a round-up of radicals and the selection of acceptable replacements. More likely, the lightning strike against extremist elements will empower their message and drive their supporters underground. The world has had some experience if radical Islamic extremists reacting to what they perceive as oppression by heretical rulers.
This profound shake-up of the religious order has been joined by similarly novel strikes against the political and financial order. Under the guise of an anti-corruption royal decree, MBS and his faction may “detain individuals or seize assets without any trial, process or disclosure.” (Ibid). Thus far, four ministers and 11 princes have been detained, with a ban on travel for all royal family members numbering in their thousands. The arrests have relieved key leadership positions in the remaining national security establishment that had not hitherto been effected by the rise of MBS.
King Salman, 81, initially appointed MBS as defense minister, chief of the royal court, a top economic adviser and deputy Crown Prince. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was Crown Prince and interior minister responsible for internal security forces, the secret police and all counterterrorism operations. All of these roles shifted to MBS when his father put Prince Nayef under house arrest in June of this year. Of the three core ministries underpinning power, the National Guard was the last remaining power base outside MBS’s grip, until Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah’s arrest in the most recent crackdown. Another surprise was the arrest of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, billionaire investor and pro-reform modernizer.
The timing of the crackdown is also significant. It follows weeks after MBS brought the world’s financial leaders to Riyadh to discuss his Vision 2030 project and within it, the IPO of Saudi Aramco estimated to be valued to be valued at $2 trillion which would make it the largest company in the world. The money would be added to the recently created sovereign wealth fund which is the vehicle to a diversified economy. No doubt MBS has in mind the kind of visionary transformation that has taken place in neighboring UAE.
The arrest of Prince Alwaleed, the most business and finance savvy of all Saudi leaders seems incongruous in this setting. Except that it makes perfect sense once the role of the Trump Administration is taken into account.
Jared Kushner had just returned from the third major Administration visit to the Kingdom mere days before the Royal round-up. Kushner reportedly spent four days with MBS, bonding into the early hours in private talks.
Prince Alwaleed had famously tweeted that Donald Trump was “a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America” during the 2016 election. He had not endeared himself to King Salman or MBS either, having been outspoken against the latter’s appointment as Crown Prince. Reportedly the Talal clan had been one of only three dissenters among 34 members of the allegiance council that endorsed the King’s appointment of MBS.
Did Jared Kushner greenlight the crackdown? It certainly looks like it. MI is reminded of Kissinger’s visit to Jakarta just days before the Indonesian invasion of neighboring East Timor in 1975. The Kushner visit bears all the hallmarks of very close coordination. This follows the visit if President Trump at the end ot which he vocally declared the US’ seemingly total commitment to the Kingdom. 
The Saudi Aramco IPO will net as much as $1 Billion in commissions and fees. On Kushner’s return to the US, President Trump, not known for his subtlety, patience, or tact, tweeted that Saudi Aramco should list on the NYSE. The smart play would have been to cut the deal privately and crow about it afterward. Now London’s bid will be taken more seriously, if only to give the appearance of independence. The fact is, however, the listing will go to the US not because of anything Trump has said but because it’s the natural choice given the focus of the US economy and the scale it will bring the transaction.
This raises the bigger question of Trump’s Middle East policy. OK, so that was a stretch; there is no policy in the traditional sense.  As in domestic policy, Trump’s sole objective is to reverse whatever Obama did, regardless of the consequences. The Saudis have been unhappy with America ever since President George W. Bush ignored their advice and invaded Iraq. They knew the most likely outcome would be an empowered Iran – their arch enemy. Why? Because America likes to impose democracy and the majority of Iraqis are Shia. The chaos that ensued was far worse than even the Saudis imagined. Iran was not only able to essentially take over Iraq’s political life, it ran covert ops against the US, killing thousands of US service men and women on Iran’s home turf. The Bush Administration wanted to ‘bring it on’ by encircling Iran and ratcheting up the pressure; at least, that’s how they spun it when the wheels fell off.  Instead, Iran jumped at the opportunity to engage in ‘forward defense’, killing representatives in adjacent lands. It turned out that in fact America wan encircled in Iraq and Afghanistan, not Iran. Welcome to 4th generation warfare.
The Saudis showed their displeasure by ignoring W’s pleas to open up the spigots during a desperate 2006 visit to the Kingdom. Five dollar a gallon gas was his punishment and contributed significantly to the economic slow down that became a rout by 2008.
Obama fared no better. Wanting out of Iraq (the war of choice) in order to focus on Afghanistan (the war of necessity), Obama’s planned drawdown was too rapid to be stable by the time he was able to act. The 2017 putdown of ISIS in Iraq and Syria by indigenous forces shows that the Iraqification of the war, had he stuck it out a little longer, would have worked. Hindsight is a cruel master and unfair given that America’s war in Iraq seemed endless and there were no good alternatives. The only way to get Iraq to take responsibility was to force it. The free riding on the US had to stop. The cost was the rise of ISIS.
In visits to the Kingdom at this time, Saudi military officials were vocal in their criticisms on US policy under Obama in particular as it impacted Syria. MI responded that the KSA had a substantial military doing nothing and that America was reluctant to get into yet another ground war in the Middle East. It was a rhetorical point, yet subsequent Saudi engagement around the region suggests that on some level they agreed.
Saudi has long engaged its region via the deployment of covert funds, not forces. Sometimes it worked with Israel, with whom it has a natural intersection of interests against Iran and its proxy forces Hezbollah and the IRGC’s Quds force. To these traditional foreign policies Saudi has recently added conventional military deployments against Iranian backed aggressors in Yemen (where Saudi has a long history, including participating in its civil war).
More recently, under MBS, the Kingdom has used its new-found American backed freedom to act forcefully in quarantining Qatar (home to the USAF in the region) and to force the resignation of the Prime Minister Hariri of Lebanon. Neither of these moves makes much sense to MI. Any dispute with Qatar should have been managed subtly in the shadows for the sake of the appearance of unity among Gulf Cooperation states. The Lebanon example seems to be directed at destabilizing that country which is defacto a safe haven for Hezbollah. Hariri was the key Sunni in a complex sectarian power-sharing arrangement designed as a check and balance against sectarian forces prone to violent disputes. MBS must have made the judgement that having Hariri inside the tent was not enough. With the Syrian civil war resolved in the regime’s favor with the support if Russia and in particular Iran and its proxies, the calculations must have been that the Lebanese safe haven had to be denied to Iran et al, even at the cost of another civil war in that fragile country. No doubt MBS wanted to turn Lebanon into Iran’s Yemen. Further, this action would not have been taken without American assent, either active or passive. Given the instability along Iran’s direct borders in Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan, the choice of Lebanon seems wrong-headed in the extreme. There already exist plenty of opportunities to take the clandestine war to Iran right up to its border and in extant conditions that are amenable to a proxy war. The choice of Lebanon might also hint at a sub-rosa concord with Israel which has much stronger reasons and access to disrupt on its northern border. Yet even in their case, there are better reasons to undertake covert actions further away from home while running traditional HUMINT ops inside Lebanon.
Saudi even went do far as to issue a warning to its citizens in Lebanon to leave. If MI’s analysis is right, and there is a good chance that we do not have sufficient insight from this remove to appreciate all the factors, KSA and Israel (more accurately PM Netanyahu            ) have much more to lose than to gain in the Lebanon gambit. That all of this is taking place with US acquiescence is disturbing. Iran must be countered, but in such a way as to use the abundant opportunities for clandestine mischief making that already exist, not by spreading the regional war yet further. Traditionally, Lebanon has been a difficult but useful space where all sides to complex security dilemmas could meet and interact in the shadows. That can still happen under a new civil war, or Israeli invasion, but these objectives are unnecessary and will be counterproductive. Lebanon is at the brink with Syrian and other refugees. If MBS/Netanyahu/Trump’s plan leads to war, it will result in destabilizing Jordan, the last bulwark from which US forces and covert teams can move with relative operational freedom. MI feels for the King of Jordan and hopes that his counsel will be heard in Washington, if he judges it even worth the political capital in making a case for moderation combined with a smart covert plan. MI suspects that there is a stronger linkage between the young princes in Saudi and UAE to the Administration through Jared Kushner (all in their 30s) than there is between the Jordanian and Saudi Kings and President Trump.
When he came to power, Obama wanted to reframe America’s outlook in the region and clarify America’s respect for religious tolerance. The focal point if this was the Cairo speech. Knowing bin Laden’s rhetoric against US regional allies was effective and dovetailed with American distaste in dealing with dictators, Obama wanted to walk the fine line between criticizing Hosni Mubarak (for example) and encouraging sustainable (read democratic) reforms. It turned out that the people of the region read much more into Obama’s intentions than was actually there. Like Gorbachev, he read the symptoms correctly he read the symptoms correctly, but his recommendation to take some aspirin was interpreted as a call for open heart surgery. It did not take long for the region to burst with reformist zeal. The people demonstrated for jobs and a good life – after a decade of war imposed by the US they were not calling for death to America or burning the flag. The Arab Spring suddenly gave voice to a thousand pro-democracy micro-movements that were crushed by the patient and highly organized radical Islamist movement that seized the revolution and turned it into a democratic gain for the long-repressed Muslim brotherhood.
This did not win Obama any friends in Riyadh, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, or Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf. Suddenly they all faced challenges to varying degrees. It was known that, as in Egypt, there was no cohesion to pro-democratic forces and that the instability of the Arab Spring would provide a vacuum in which militant Islam could flourish. Some of these regimes were reforming, but far too slowly to absorb the shock waves emanating from North America. In addition to the regime v radical split, the Sunni v Shia overlay vastly complicated things when Iran seized the moment to instigate turmoil from Bahrain to Yemen.
To top it all off, Obama’s strategic nuclear agreement with Iran, while masterful from the vantage point of global security and US interests, outraged the Prince’s because it flooded Iran with desperately needed funds with which they could intensify their proxy wars from Syria to Bahrain and beyond. The long war in the shadows between Iran and the US and its allies, was thrust into the limelight.
So by the time the real estate mogul and reality TV host, who had a fine appreciation for gaudy mock-baroque interiors, was feted in the finest palaces in Riyadh, he was ripe for the anti-Obama protests if the princes. In fact, to the extent that Trump has any policy, foreign or domestic, it is repudiation of anything Obama accomplished. The Trump-Saudi relationship was a match made in heaven. Not surprisingly, Trump came out swinging against Iran, Qatar, and in complete alignment with Saudi objectives. He was willing to destroy the nuclear agreement despite the fact that the funds that concerned the Gulf States had already been released to Iran. All that was left to lose in the agreement was Iran’s obligations to refrain from developing a bomb. Giving them the money and carte blanche to continue the weapons program was the worst of both worlds for all concerned.
So why did he do it? Well, it was an election promise, whether well conceived or not. It was also a Saudi demand. It repudiated Obama. The fact that these superficial reasons were nothing by comparison to the impact the decision would have by the time he took it seemed to concern him not at all. At least some of his advisors seemed to realize what was going on and prevented him from cancelling outright. But the bigger point here is the degree to which he had been captured completely by Saudi thinking.   As a diplomatic novice, he was not well served by his number one domestic priority, to shrink the bureaucracy, and in particular in this case, the Department of State. Still, when challenged about the cutbacks at Foggy Bottom his response said it all: “I’m the only one that matters”.
Capturing the undivided and uncritical attention if a new and inexperienced Administration may appear to be a positive in the short term but pose unanticipated costs over time. The emerging Trump=MBS relationship may afford a degree of freedom that might otherwise have been moderated by good judgement.
At first MBS appeared to be pursuing a China reform model. Vision 2030 was ambitious, but it had to be if it wanted to catch up with the degree if economic and social development sustained by similar reforms in other Gulf states. Countries like UAE saw the coming peak in energy a while ago and diversified. They offer attractive places to visit for Muslims and non-Muslins alike. Saudi, by contrast, has a long way to go, outside of the comfort of royal palaces. MBS knows this and no doubt has been champing at the bit to initiate reforms for years. His ardor for change may be as insatiable as some of his fiercest critics, with the exception that their ends are worlds apart.
Post Trump’s visit and the multiple visits by high level delegations, including three Kushner trips, MBS seems to have decided to do everything at once. He is following a hybrid China/USSR/North Korea reform program, mixing economic reform with instant political freedoms (declawing of religious establishment and police/driving for women), all topped off with a draconian power-politics crack-down against alternative sources of authority among the seven main branches of the ruling family. He now controls all instruments of state power and authority in his hands.  Previously these were carefully shared out among competing factions in a balance of power among the families and tribes. At the same time he has radically upset the political-religious balance of power that has existed between the House of Saud and the clerics.
International relations is fundamentally about the study of human thought and action. It is not like physics. It does not have hard and fast rules. But if it did, the first rule if international relations would be rapid political/economic/cultural change set in a contested strategic environment, never ends well.
MBS is gambling the house that he can pull this off all at once. No doubt he is driven by a concern that the forces of darkness within and around the Kingdom have the advantage of time and energy. He is right to be concerned. Yet despite the very different setting between the three models of change and contemporary KSA, he may come to regret not sticking just to his economic vision.
What’s the worst that can happen? Most commentary harks back to 1979. It was a revolutionary moment. Iran underwent a radical Islamic revolution. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and a group of inspired Sunni radical terrorists went all out for the ultimate prize - the Grand Mosque at Mecca. There is no more serious responsibility in the Islamic world than to be the guardian of the holy shrines. Thus the extended time it took to put down the attack was a profound humiliation for the guardian, the King, and through him, the entire system underpinning the state.
MI thinks that 1975 may be a better date to remember going forward in thinking about KSA’s future. Ten years before, a nephew of the King was killed by riot police as he demonstrated against the introduction of television into the Kingdom in 1965. His brother, Faisal bin Musaid, mourned his brother’s loss very deeply over the ensuing years. He assassinated King Faisal, his uncle, in 1975. Palace intrigue is not new in the Kingdom. Faisal’s father was himself deposed by a consortium led by the clerics. So recent events are in some degree merely part of the ebb and flow of Saudi political life. What is unprecedented is the concentration of all positions of power into one pair of hands, at the same time as a wide spread crackdown against all competing bases of power – religious, economic, financial and socio-cultural.
Grievance is the most powerful driver in contemporary culture and politics. It is driven by narrative. One consequence of information technology and social media in particular is the empowerment of people relative to states, an individual or group can compete for global attention today in wats that were simply not available pre-2000. The most compelling narrative wins over the power of even the most repressive state. This is the context in which one of the last near-absolute rulers created systemic instability in their country by choice. It was not a necessity, at least not yet. The concern here is that MBS has inadvertently merely hastened the day of reckoning and in so doing foreshortened a wide range of viable options that might have mitigated the radical change that would finally transmit the spring to Arabia.

Historically the greatest grievance and the power to do something about it was resident within the House of Saud. Palace intrigue, coups and even assassinations came from within. Focusing on the threat from below at the expense of balancing internal divisions within family factions, could well result in proving Lincoln’s old adage, that,  "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

The Real Coup Plot Is Trump’s

MI has not posted other content before. However, the essay linked below explains what MI refers to as 'American Self-Propagandizing'...