Patrick Martin
In its disgusting fawning and hypocrisy, little could top the
outpouring of praise from the major imperialist powers in response to
the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who died Friday at age 90.
Tributes have poured in from governments around the world. In London,
the British government flew flags at half-mast at government buildings
and at Buckingham Palace, prior to a trip by Prince Charles and Prime
Minister David Cameron to Saudi Arabia over the weekend.
As for the US, the Obama administration announced that it was
upending the travel plans of the president, currently in India, to make a
special trip to Riyadh to visit Abdullah’s successor, his 79-year-old
half-brother, Salman. The White House issued a statement noting the
“genuine and warm friendship” between President Obama and the departed
monarch.
It is perhaps a fitting expression of the nature of the government he
will rule that Salman, the sixth of the sons of Ibn Saud, founder of
the semi-feudal regime, is reportedly afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Simon
Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the
Washington Institute on Near East Policy, wrote
last month, “Salman’s brain is evidently ravaged by dementia. Visitors
report that after a few minutes of conversation, he becomes incoherent.”
It is, of course, possible for a ruler of such diminished capacity to
occupy a figurehead role for a significant length of time, as Ronald
Reagan did throughout most of his presidency. But these reports make it
clear why it was all-important, in the view of the White House, Pentagon
and State Department, that the new king’s first action was to confirm
as his successor and crown prince the youngest son of Ibn Saud, Prince
Muqrin, age 69.
Even more critical, from the standpoint of American imperialism, was
the designation of Prince Mohammed ibn Nayef, the interior minister, as
deputy crown prince and presumed successor to Muqrin. At age 55, the
prince is the first potential occupant of the throne chosen from the
generation of grandchildren of Ibn Saud. As chief of Saudi Arabia’s
antiterrorism operations, he has worked closely with the American CIA
and Pentagon. The Wall Street Journal noted in a column,
“Prince Mohammed was long seen as Washington’s preferred candidate among
the younger princes who aspired to be king.”
The close collaboration between Washington and the Saudi regime
speaks volumes about the nature of American intervention in the Middle
East. Despite claims by countless administrations that US foreign policy
promotes democracy, American imperialism has long relied on the most
reactionary and oppressive regime in the Middle East. For 70 years,
there has been an agreement that the US will back the Saudi monarchy,
arming it to the teeth against both domestic and external threats, in
return for Saudi oil supplies and Saudi backing to US foreign policy
generally.
While for more than a decade US administrations have embraced the
“war on terror,” now described by the Obama administration as the
“struggle against violent extremism,” the basis of American foreign
policy in the Middle East has been an alliance with a state that
espouses Islamic fundamentalism and finances and arms right-wing Islamic
fundamentalist groups throughout the region.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration and Saudi Arabia jointly
sponsored the Afghan mujaheddin, the guerrilla force of Islamic
fundamentalists recruited by the CIA and sanctioned and paid for by
Saudi Arabia, to fight the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. The
US-Saudi collaboration in Afghanistan gave rise to Al Qaeda, headed by
Osama bin Laden, son of a construction magnate made wealthy by his
contracts in Saudi Arabia. Saudi money—including some from the monarchy
itself—financed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and 15
of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudis.
But the Bush administration whitewashed these connections, first
invading Afghanistan, then fabricating a connection between Saddam
Hussein and 9/11 in order to justify its criminal invasion and
occupation of Iraq in 2003. While the Saudis offered verbal opposition
to the US intervention, (because they regarded Saddam Hussein as a
bulwark against Iran), the US military had full access to Saudi bases to
carry out military and intelligence operations during the war.
More recently, Saudi Arabia backed the US-NATO war against Libya and
intervened heavily within Syria as part of the US-orchestrated campaign
to destabilize the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is allied with Iran,
the Saudis’ main regional rival.
The US-Saudi alliance has been an unmitigated disaster for the people
of the Middle East. Iraq, Syria, Libya and now Yemen, on Saudi Arabia’s
southern border, have been destroyed as functioning societies,
devastated by military onslaught (either directly, as in Iraq and Libya,
indirectly as in Syria, or remotely, via drone missiles, as in Yemen).
Saudi military forces invaded the sheikdom of Bahrain—the
headquarters for US naval operations in the Persian Gulf—to suppress
popular opposition to the ruling family. In 2013, Washington and Riyadh
backed the coup of General al-Sisi in Egypt and the reimposition of
military dictatorship on the most populous Arab state.
In Syria, Saudi dollars and Saudi-supplied American weapons helped
fuel the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), leading to last
summer’s debacle, when ISIS fighters conquered most of western Iraq,
including the country’s second-largest city, Mosul. Now Saudi pilots
have joined in the US-led bombing campaign in Syria, the forerunner of a
much broader and bloodier conflict.
The latest example of US-Saudi collaboration is the Saudi-led
decision by OPEC to reject any reduction in oil production as prices
have plunged. This action is aimed at bankrupting Iran and Russia, the
two main allies of Assad in Syria, by slashing the oil export revenues
on which the governments of both countries depend.
This is something of a double-edged sword, however. In the US, the
oil price plunge has devastated the fracking industry and begun to
create mass unemployment in Texas, North Dakota and other states. In
Saudi Arabia, the drop in oil prices has put a hole of nearly $40
billion in the national budget, forcing it to draw down international
reserves.
Both poverty and unemployment are spreading in the country, despite
its oil wealth. A recently cited CIA country study estimated that
506,000 young people will enter the job market in Saudi Arabia in 2015,
where more than half the population of 27 million is under 25 years of
age. Given that only 1.7 million out of the 8.4 million wage earners in
Saudi Arabia are actually Saudi citizens—the vast majority are
immigrants—the regime faces what one imperialist strategist described as
“an incredible challenge in terms of internal stability.”
The most reactionary force in the region—the Saudi monarchy—is
aligned with the most reactionary force on the planet—US imperialism.
The result is a noxious combination of economic convulsions, widening
sectarian and tribal conflicts, and escalating imperialist military
intervention.
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