Over the last year or so, I’ve taken the bet
that Saudi Arabia is pursuing a strategy of regime collapse in Syria.
In practical terms, this means that the KSA won’t support a
Syria peace process that achieves a measure of accommodation between the Ba’athist
ruling party (with or without Assad) and the opposition, popular, overseas, or
otherwise.
Saudi Arabia, in my view, is not interested in the
humanitarian satisfactions of helping end the brutal civil war. Nor has it come around to the Obama
administration’s increased wariness about the virtues of insurrection
(especially when practiced by overmatched rebels who might be able to overthrow
the regime with outside help but might not be able to run the country), given
the post-intervention collapse of Libya into a failed state despite (or I guess
maybe because of) the existence of sufficient oil reserves to fund a
live-and-let-live pro-Western lifestyle.
No, I think Saudi Arabia has decided to play the long game, preferring
the triumph of a largely Sunni insurrection that would drive the Ba’athists
from power and install a new regime that is largely beholden to the GCC, fundamentally
hostile to Iran, and would serve as a counterweight/threat/practitioner of
destabilization against the Shi’ite-led and Iran-friendly government of Iraq,
and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The most recent harbinger of Saudi radicalism on the Syria
issue may be its high-profile decision to reject the non-permanent UN Security
Council seat that it had presumably yearned and lobbied for over a period of
years. The Saudi snub was couched in
terms of the UNSC’s inability to take meaningful action on the Palestinian,
Middle East nuclear free zone, and Syrian issues.
The coordinated nature of the Saudi move—it followed Foreign
Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal’s cancellation of Saudi Arabia’s scheduled
speech to the General Assembly in early October—indicates that a Saudi hardline
policy is not just the personal hobbyhorse of the Machiavellian Prince Bandar,
whose determination to dethrone Assad is rather unambiguous if perhaps underreported in the press.
Today, Egypt and the GCC weighed in to praise Saudi Arabia’s
“courage” in ditching the UNSC seat, a sign that bigger game is afoot than
simple pique at UNSC veto-holders Russia, China, and the US.
I think the target of the Saudi snub is the faltering Syrian
peace conference scheduled for Geneva in late November under the auspices of
the UN and the special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi. The KSA, it seems, would rather be outside the tent pissing
in, than inside the tent pissing out.
It looks like the Saudis are digging in for a posture of intransigence
on Syria—basically, stalling the peace process so that the jihadi groups can
escalate their campaign of car bombs, assassination, and armed resistance to
the point where the Assad regime might actually collapse or, failing that, remain a basket case.
As to why this is happening, I think a few forces are at
work:
First, the United States has marginalized itself in the eyes
of Saudi Arabia thanks to its new-found moderation on Syria, its pursuit of engagement
with Iran, and its Egypt policy. This
has encouraged Saudi Arabia to cobble together its own security strategy.
Second, absent an aggressive US policy on Iran and the
likelihood that Israel’s unilateral attack-Iran rhetoric is mostly bluster,
Syria offers Saudi Arabia the best venue to counter Iran’s regional
influence.
It might be pointed out that
Iran is a populous democracy, albeit of the mixed theocratic type, with a
diversified economic base. In peacetime
conditions, it has a good chance of outcompeting a sclerotic Wahabbist
autocracy. So, for that matter, does
Qatar, whose strategy of using the civil war to catapult Syria’s Muslim
Brotherhood into power is anathema to Saudi Arabia.
Peaceful competition in the marketplace of ideas, in other
words, is not a recipe for Saudi success.
Keeping the bloody Syrian pot boiling—and raising the specter of the
collapse of Shi’ite-led Iraq into civil war as collateral damage—is perhaps the
Kingdom’s best option.
Third, maybe Saudi Arabia is riding the jihadi tiger and can’t
get off—even if official government support for extremist factions (as opposed
to genuine private Saudi enthusiasm) has been as anxious and equivocal as some
think. If it supported a peace process
in Syria, there are a lot of jihadis who would take it as a betrayal. The US apparently has grand plans for a purge
of jihadis similar to the “Anbar Awakening” that expelled Al Qaeda from western
Iraq. But the Anbar operation probably
succeeded because of the efficiency of the US JSOC assassination squads, not
just the righteous indignation of the local sheiks. If a similar stunt were tried in Syria—but using proxies,
the factionalized Free Syrian Army, and/or the Syrian army as a substitute for US military muscle to put paid to the
jihadis—a lot would probably slip through the net and survive with a thought of
anti-Saudi mayhem on their minds.
If and when the Geneva peace conference goes ahead, it will
be interesting to see if a) what Saudi-backed opposition groups participate b)
if the outcome is rejected as a useless exercise in UN-peace-mongering neutered
by Russia and China (and the US) and c) if Saudi Arabia decides to throw
gasoline on the fire in terms of open provision of arms and money to the
insurrectionists, instead of just letting Syria burn.
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