Saudis try to reweave the fabric of Arab governments
Image via WikipediaSaudi Arabia is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East in a wide-ranging bid to contain the tide of change, shield fellow monarchs from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to calm turbulent republics.There are far worse governments in the region than the Saudis. The problems in Saudi Arabia are more cultural. The preachers of hate spread religious bigotry among the population of the country and in the Madrassas they have placed in other countries. The government, itself, seems to have to reel in the bigots from time to time while still allowing them freedom to repress those who do not agree with their strange beliefs.
From Egypt, where the Saudis dispensed $4 billion in aid last week to shore up the ruling military council, to Yemen, where it is trying to ease out the president, to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, which it has invited to join a union of Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia is scrambling to forestall more radical change and block Iran’s influence.
The kingdom is aggressively emphasizing the relative stability of monarchies, part of an effort block any dramatic shift from the authoritarian model, which would generate uncomfortable questions about the glacial pace of political and social change at home.
Saudi Arabia’s proposal to include Jordan and Morocco in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council — which authorized the Saudis to send in troops to block a largely Shiite Muslim rebellion in the Sunni Muslim monarchy of Bahrain — is intended to create a kind of “Club of Kings.” The idea is to signal Shiite Iran that the Sunni Arab monarchs will defend their interests, analysts said.
“We’re sending a message that monarchies are not where this is happening,” Prince Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, a businessman and high-profile member of the habitually reticent royal family, told The New York Times’s editorial board, referring to the unrest. “We are not trying to get our way by force, but to safeguard our interests.”
The range of the Saudi intervention is extraordinary as the unrest pushes Riyadh’s hand to forge what some commentators, in Egypt and elsewhere, brand a “counterrevolution.” Some Saudi and foreign analysts find the term too sweeping for the steps the Saudis have actually taken, though it appears unparalleled in the region.
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Their attempts to reimpose stability in the region at least show some strategy. The Obama administration has shown no obvious strategy for dealing with the changes. It also has failed to support changes in areas desperately needing them like Syria and Iran.
I do not believe monarchies are inherently more stable than other forms of government. I think true democracies have shown more long term stability. In the Middle East Arab culture, there aren't any, with the possible exception of one attempting to get off the ground in Iraq. With all its troubles, Iraq has weathered the storms better than the dictators.
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