No matter how the Persian Gulf crisis ends-in a clash of armies in the desert or with diplomats negotiating over sweetened tea-the Arab states are looking ahead to the shape of a post-crisis Middle East.
Certainly a new axis between Riyadh and Cairo is emerging, with Damascus as the third point in a triangle of influence and power.
But trying to predict the profile of the post-crisis region has become almost a parlor game of picking winners and losers. There are enormous variables: Iraq would lose if it is devastated in a war and carved up at the dictates of its neighbors. If Saddam Hussein withdraws and maintains his army and position, however, he could be a big winner.
Syria has enhanced its profile in the region by siding with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. But Jordan may have lost considerably for its initial backing of Iraq`s leader.
Whatever emerges, the Saudis, with their enormous wealth, surely will be forced to play a larger role in the shaping of regional alignments.
”Saudi Arabia`s place in the world will change,” said an American official. ”It was already changing; the crisis in the gulf has just accentuated it. King Fahd has managed to turn the traditional Cairo-Damascus- Baghdad triangle into a quadrilateral that includes Riyadh.”
Diplomats in the region are calling it ”riyalpolitik,” playing on the basic unit of Saudi currency, the riyal, and the traditional word for hardheaded diplomacy, realpolitik.
The idea of the Saudis using their wealth as an instrument of foreign policy is not new. In the past, however, they used it as a carrot rather than a stick.
In the last 15 years, the Saudis say they have ladled out some $60 billion in aid to Arab states and Islamic causes. That works out to about 6 percent of their country`s gross national product, a enormous amount compared to the foreign aid given by the U.S. and other nations.
But the Saudis now feel betrayed and are displaying their enormous financial power in a new way: by withholding money from longtime recipients.
”We`ve already seen the Saudis abandon what had been one of the basic tenets of their foreign policy: that if you write a big enough check and throw it at the problem, the problem will go away,” said the American official.
Saudi Arabia has stopped its normal aid allotments to Jordan, Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organization, all backers of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. This year`s loss to Jordan alone is $100 million, said former Jordanian Foreign Minister Taher Masri, and next year it could double.
One of the Saudis ”weaknesses was they had all this money and never used it. They never had the courage to say, `This is what I want, and this is what you should do,` ” Masri said.
Saudi officials say aid will continue for Palestinian social services, but hospital officials in East Jerusalem say assistance from the Saudis has dried up completely.
Saudi Arabia`s chronic weakness remains its lack of military strength. Even after spending $200 billion on defense in the last decade-only the U.S., the Soviet Union and China spent more-the Saudis still had to call in American troops to protect them from Iraq.
If the kingdom wants to assume a big-time role in the region, it needs significant internal changes, including an overhaul of a military
establishment in which tribal affiliations are more important than competence. But Western diplomats and Middle East analysts think the invasion of Kuwait will be a turning point for Saudi society and politics.
Now that threats within the region have brushed Saudi borders, one diplomat said, discussions with the Saudi government about the balance of power after the crisis are more focused and immediate.
The Saudis are starting to take a more activist role-as leaders, not simply consensus builders eager to buy a piece of the action-in the gulf and even beyond.
They played a role in the negotiations that led to the Soviet Union`s withdrawal from Afghanistan; they helped negotiate the agreement to end more than a decade of fighting between Morocco and guerrillas in the western Sahara, and they hosted the meeting in the Saudi resort of Taif that led to establishment of a new formula for effectively governing Lebanon.
At the same time, the Saudis have lost a sense of trust, however misplaced, that no Arab state would ever invade another. There is also a suspicion, not irreparable, that Jordan and Yemen had an ”understanding,” if not a secret pact, to divide up the spoils of Saudi Arabia.
”We will never be the same. Our eyes were opened,” said Tareq Maeena, a member of a large merchant family in Jiddah. His American-born wife, Lori, described a new and uncomfortable sense of vulnerability: ”We were sitting in this bubble and then the bubble burst.”
Similar sentiments came from Abdel Rahman Awadi, a senior Kuwaiti Cabinet minister who lamented: ”We look now at the empty half of the bottle. Before we looked only at the full half of the bottle.”
For its part, Egypt appears likely to come out ahead no matter the outcome of the crisis. Simply by taking the lead in sending troops to the gulf, it has re-established its position as the center of gravity in the Arab world after a decadelong banishment because of its separate peace with Israel. That reinvolvement was already well under way, but the crisis has propelled Cairo into the forefront.
In straight economic terms, Egypt has reaped a financial bonus.
Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia forgave more than $12 billion in debts. Japan and Western Europe have pledged additional billions.
Syria also has gained. Because Syrian President Hafez Assad was willing to join the coalition against Iraq, President Bush gingerly embraced him and allowed Syria, at least temporarily, to shed its outlaw image.
Even for a chastened Iraq, the prospects are not that bad.
Secretary of State James A. Baker III said once Baghdad complied with the United Nations resolutions to withdraw from Kuwait, it would be free to negotiate anything with that nation, including the fate of two Kuwaiti islands that would give Baghdad an outlet to the gulf and access to an oil field straddling their common border.
There is widespread agreement, however, said Egyptian diplomat Mohamed Hegazy, that even after the crisis is resolved, sanctions on the flow of strategic materials and weapons parts should be maintained against Iraq.
Some of this change dismays Israel. Initially buoyed by Washington`s decision to confront its most menacing enemy, Israel is concerned that realignment in the region will prompt the U.S. to join its Arab allies and pressure the Jewish state to make peace with the Palestinians.
What the U.S. role will be in this reconfiguration of power and interests is still uncertain. The major variable is Saddam Hussein and whether he remains a strong military power and whether Iraq retains a belligerent attitude toward it neighbors.
Many Saudis and Kuwaitis expect the U.S. to maintain a ”peacekeeping”
presence in the gulf for many years.
Despite a routine public insistence that all foreign troops will leave Saudi Arabia once the threat ends, others expect Washington to retain some troops as either ”advisers” or to help with equipment training and maintenance.
Despite its expectations of a prolonged stay for some foreign soldiers, this desert kingdom never has felt comfortable with outsiders, viewing them as either simple laborers or a potential threat.
King Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, spoke to that once, and it is a thought that may well apply to the American presence now:
”My kingdom will survive insofar as it remains a country difficult of access, where the foreigner will have no other aim, with his task fulfilled, but to get out.”
