Executive Summary

The profound challenges to US-Saudi Arab relations engendered by the horrors of September 11th, 2001 have been amplified by the Bush Administration's policy on Iraq. Historically, this relationship has been highly effective founded on a mutual appreciation of strategic interdependencies and maintained by each country's political and business elites. But the shocks of 9/11 and the Iraqi invasion on, respectively, the US and Saudi populaces has interjected US and Saudi public opinion powerfully into the relationship's calculus. The uninformed and inaccurate picture painted of the Kingdom by the US media has produced fundamental misunderstandings, not the reverse, creating an environment of distrust. In the current context, when these two societies manifest such antipathy towards the other, there is the unwelcome and unnerving prospect that the shared strategic vision will prove insufficient to maintain the heretofore close and beneficial ties. If an emerging political aphasia, induced in no small part by US policy, does indeed trump the strategic understanding, then one of the key objectives of Usama bin Laden will have been achieved. In addition to potentially undermining US-Saudi ties, US policy towards the region is marked by a painful irony: unilateral acts coupled to democratic rhetoric underpin the widely held view in the Kingdom that the US will say one thing, and do another. That inconsistency resonates throughout the Gulf and it too can only aid and abet America's enemies.

Verily he is in danger who is satisfied with his own viewⁱ

Introduction

In the wake of the Iraqi invasion, the regional state that may experience the most dramatic realignment in relations is the one that has been most closely and continuously allied with the United States, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is reasonable to ask, of course, whether matters have not moved inexorably in that direction in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the resulting assessment of Saudi Arabia in the American mainstream media that, in general, has been overly negative, too often uninformed and, at times, seemingly provided with malicious intent. Much of this commentary questioned the Kingdom's value as an ally, indeed whether it was an ally at all, and explicitly called for a reassessment of the relationship. A prevalent, near dominant, view has been established in public commentary that the Kingdom, rather than being an effective partner in terror's eradication, has contributed directly or indirectly to terror's existence.

Nonetheless, the Bush Administration has acted, in the wake of the September's horrors and in the face of this media critique, to underline the importance, in general, of US-Saudi ties and highlight, in particular, its overall assistance in contending with the trans-national threat represented by al Qa'idah and Islamist terror. Iraq, to the surprise of many, was identified as the most pressing regional target in addressing terror. Yet, with no little irony, the Bush Administration's public articulation of its policy on Iraq compromises the divergent approaches towards these two countries and, in so doing, may serve to reinforce the US media's conception of the Kingdom.

President Bush has proffered the American public an intoxicating mixture of fantasy and fear to promote the Iraqi campaign. The fantasy that legitimated the invasion is the wholesale transformation of Iraqi politics into a democracy. At the same time, continual reference to an understandable fear of political terror manifested so horribly on September 11, 2001 propelled the insistence for war. In the world according to President Bush, it is the spread of democracy through force of arms that alone provides the potent policy that will eradicate terror and ensure US security. While the physically devastating consequences of the Iraqi campaign have unquestionably amplified the already tense US relationship with the Kingdom, inflaming anti-American attitudes among Saudi Arabs, it is this logic that arguably is the most threatening to US-Saudi ties. With the Bush Administration trumpeting success in Iraq, an overarching concern for the Kingdom now must be how it 'fits' in a regional order 'inspired' by American power.

What Can We Be Thinking?

The American public is very much caught between an Administration position that continues to acknowledge the strategic value to close and positive ties to the Kingdom, on the one hand, and the swirl of overwhelmingly negative media reports, conjecture and editorializing that can be so powerful in framing the debate about the Kingdom, on the other. The Saudi government's anxieties at the nature, and oftentimes ferocity, of the assessment of the Kingdom prompted it to enter the public fray in a concerted manner in 2002. But the Saudi effort to influence general opinion is likely to have enjoyed only limited impact in resolving a very contentious debate in its favor. One problem with the Saudi demarche was its reliance on public relations firms.

It is arguably the case that the discussion of the Kingdom in the media reveals as much about the US public's own deeply seated attitudes and anxieties, and the manner by which public perceptions are constructed in the US' political system, than it reveals the Kingdom's realities. With little risk of exaggeration, the Kingdom remains an unknown, enigmatic place to the vast majority of Americans, and the socio-economic, political and cultural issues that are relevant to any informed discussion on terrorism notoriously complex. Grappling with such issues is by definition problematic and opens the American public to the strong possibility of acquiescing to a biased deciphering of the Kingdom.

Polling of American attitudes on the Kingdom taken in the first couple of months after 9/11 are seemingly inconsistent and appear to be subject to pronounced swings indicating, perhaps, the tremendous initial uncertainty among the public about the reasons behind the event. But as 2002 progressed, there was a pronounced movement towards a much more negative reading of the country indicating that the media barrage against the Kingdom - embracing much speculation and innuendo - was having an effect.ⁱⁱ

While the results of any of the above polls should be greeted with a high degree of caution, they do strongly suggest that public opinion on the Kingdom can and was being molded by the media. With that in mind, the danger of a media ill-equipped to aid the public in competently addressing a topic of fundamental national concern cannot be overstated.

The Limits of Public Knowledge

Despite America's long history of commercial and political engagement with Saudi Arabia, the US public is not to any notable degree familiar with the country. Although work by Zogby International has shown, interestingly, that American and Saudi nationals rank 'value categories', comprising such matters as the importance of family and education, very similarly, it remains all too easy for each to consider the other as inherently different.

The media reporting on the Kingdom is often of limited or dubious quality offered to an American public who are not, in general, well equipped to filter the information. Nor, of course, can one exclude the overall political context from influencing the nature of the information available in the media. The Bush Administration has not done itself any favors in trying to quell the media's attacks on Saudi Arabia, and minimize the resultant impact on US opinion, by its insistence in this war on terror countries are either with us or against us. This stance does little at all to invite an approach to understanding the Kingdom and interpreting its policy positions that is sensitive to complexities.

It is also very important to understand how the shock of 9/11 has conditioned the US public's perception of the outside world and their receptiveness to information on the conduct of US foreign policy. It has become a truism within the United States that 9/11 changed the world. While such hyperbole accurately captures the wrenching emotional impact of the horrors of that day, it overlooks the fact that such terrorism was long in gestation, conceived out of a commingling of persistent realities and a perception of the world profoundly influenced by an radical Islamic ideology that draws on deep roots. Although the world did not change with 9/11, America's understanding of it did.

The merciless slaughter of so many Americans in that terrorist attack is understood among the US public, and rightly so, as totally unjustified. But this posture has tended to undercut a willingness among the general public to consider whether and to what degree US policy may have been a factor in framing the perpetrators' vision of the world and catalyzing their act. The distinction between understanding and justifying was lost in the revulsion; for most Americans, to look for answers in what the US may have done is to tread precariously close to somehow legitimizing the horror that took the lives of the innocent. The widely held refusal to countenance the idea that the US may in any way have contributed to 9/11 was evident in New York City's rejection of a sizable donation by the Saudi prince and financial entrepreneur Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud for the rebuilding of the city. The prince was rebuffed for, in offering these funds, he made reference to the immense difficulties that have long afflicted the Middle East and the importance of the US role in resolving them.

Out of 9/11 came a distinct predilection to locate the genesis of the attack exclusively in what the US is conceived to be - inherently good possessing a strong and desirable society - not in what we do. In an important way, the death of innocents does appear to have had the effect of 'sanctifying' in the US public's eyes America's role abroad. It has become something approaching an article of faith that the essence of the problem with our disruptive and dangerous encounter with the Middle East must reside in the failing of others. Without a doubt, the US media's take on the Kingdom outlined below both reflects and reinforces this predisposition. It can therefore readily have the effect of aiding any policy that intends to reshape the US' historic approach to the Kingdom.

The Media and The Message

The overwhelming, somewhat hysteric, impression conveyed by a review of US media coverage of the Kingdom since 9/11 is of a dysfunctional state struggling to govern a society riven by economic difficulties, demographic challenges, and social contradictions. The conclusion, either implied or explicit, is that the political order is on the verge of collapse, unable to offer viable solutions to the complex of problems, desperately embracing short term, tactical and untenable adjustments to retain its hold on power, inattentive to the long-term, destabilizing ramifications.