The gap between Trump’s bark and his bite suggests that American
disengagement might be more deep-seated and historic.
The Desperate Saudi Bid to Prepare the State for All-Out War
By Prof. Hillel Frisch
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 644, November 17, 2017
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/desperate-saudi-bid-prepare-state-war/


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman knows he has to
transform the state into a war machine if the kingdom is to survive the
Iranian onslaught. To do that, he has to amass power by removing the system
of checks and balances of rival princely factions and tribal affiliations as
well as a security system that is weakened by both. The question is whether
he will be able to avoid the fate of the Shah, who transformed Iran into a
regional power but fell victim to wall-to-wall opposition bred by his
concentration of power.

Even in the US, a nation that enshrines its system of checks and balances,
which limits executive power and mitigates the risk of tyranny, there has
always been broad recognition that in times of imminent and vast external
danger, a War Powers Act must be passed to allow the executive great powers
to face the challenge. A well-known legal classic on the theme was aptly
entitled “Constitutional Dictatorship.”

Saudi Arabia is facing just such an external threat. In response, young
Muhammad Bin Salman (also known as MBS), the Crown Prince and Minister of
Defense, is determined to transform the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s system of checks and balances is based on rival camps
composed of hundreds if not thousands of princes and rival tribal
affiliations. Its security establishment is riven by competitive strife
between an army belonging to one part of the royal family, a National Guard
belonging to another, and a religious establishment with its own policing
arm. Muhammad’s aim is to reshape this agglomeration into a concentrated,
centralized war machine.

Why is this necessary? Because as was recently demonstrated when Houthi
forces in Yemen launched a ballistic missile at the state’s largest airport
in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is fighting an all-out war for survival.

Few states have been so beset by geostrategic misfortune as Saudi Arabia
over the past two decades. Mainstays of the Saudi security environment that
had allowed that unique and archaic state to thrive simply evaporated into
thin air one after another as Iran, its formidable nemesis, went on the
ascendant.

One of those mainstays was the US. The Saudis no longer consider the US to
be a reliable policeman who can be relied upon to stave off external threats
and maintain the sovereignty of states, as it did in 1991 when it amassed a
coalition of half a million (mostly American) troops to roll back Iraqi
forces from occupied Kuwait.

During Obama’s term in office, the Saudis could console themselves to an
extent that his belief in “engaging” enemies to the point of signing an
agreement with Iran over its military nuclear capabilities was a temporary
aberration. But the gap between Trump’s bark and his bite suggests that
American disengagement might be more deep-seated and historic. Trump knows
many of his supporters prefer guns in their closets to American arms abroad.
They certainly don’t favor using American weaponry and personnel to protect
the Saudi state, which produced most of the terrorists of 9/11.

Regionally, the Saudis have had to face the realization that though there
are plenty of Sunni Arab states in the area, it is the only such entity with
the potential power to meet the Iranian challenge. This solitary position
stems from the sharp decline of Egyptian power in the region. A half century
ago, Egypt was in a position to menace Riyadh by threatening to wage a war
to destroy the Yemeni dynasty and replace it with a military regime of its
own making. Today, Egyptian security forces are only barely succeeding in
containing ISIS, which operates in no more than 1,000 square kilometers in
Sinai between Al-Arish and Rafah. Given this performance, the Egyptian
military scarcely has the ability to come to the aid of the Saudis beyond
its borders.

To the east, the Saudis could once rely on Iraq to be a buffer between
themselves and Iranian imperial ambitions – though they loathed both the
Hashemites who ruled it when it was a kingdom and the Baathists who came in
their wake. This is why Riyadh financed Saddam Hussein, a man it intensely
detested, in his long, grueling war with Iran during the 1980s.

That buffer has not only ceased to exist, but Iraq has come under Shiite
rule. Its prime minister and political elite, at least from the Saudi
vantage point, have become Iranian puppets. Militarily, the Shiite
militias – which display a clear loyalty to the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard – might be even more powerful today than the official Federal Army.

To add insult to injury, the US, which destroyed this buffer by invading
Iraq in 2003, has committed itself to the strengthening of the Iraqi army,
which recently routed the Kurds in Kirkuk. The predominantly Sunni Kurds
were the last more or less reliable ally of the Saudis in the region after
the setbacks suffered by their proxies in Syria.

Worse still has been the failure of Saudi financial soft power to promote
proxies to wage war against the Iranians on the kingdom’s behalf. Financing
proxies was the central mainstay of the Saudi security architecture for
decades, but especially since the so-called Arab Spring. The comeback of the
Assad regime with the re-conquest of Homs and Aleppo, and the linking of
Syrian forces and Alawite and Shiite militias with their Iraqi counterparts
along Syria’s southeast border to recreate the Iranian-Shiite crescent, has
come at the expense of the Sunni rebels financed by Riyadh. This not only
represents a major strategic loss for the kingdom in terms of its balance of
power with Tehran, but also reflects the inadequacy of a basic tool of Saudi
power.

Muhammad bin Salman understands that Saudi Arabia has no choice but to wage
this war directly. This is why he has hit at the finely tuned checks and
balances of the Saudi system. They might have preserved internal stability,
but they severely limit the transformation of Saudi Arabia into an effective
war machine equipped to take on the Iranian threat.

Can Muhammad galvanize Saudi youth to meet the danger? Equally pressing,
will he be able to centralize power and become the leading regional power in
the manner of the Shah, yet avoid the Shah’s fate? Making bold moves like
entering the air war in Yemen or jailing a dozen or so political celebrities
in Saudi Arabia might be a promising beginning, but they in no way indicate
how successful Muhammad will be in meeting the challenges ahead.

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Prof. Hillel Frisch is a professor of political studies and Middle East
studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the
Greg Rosshandler Family