Editor's Note:

The Saudi-American Forum wishes to thank Dr. Gause for permission to share this important contribution to the dialogue on US-Saudi relations with you.  This paper was originally published by the Brookings Institution, Saban Center for Middle East Policy. 

"The Approaching Turning Point: The Future of U.S. Relations with the Gulf States" is being provided to Saudi-American Forum members in weekly serials due to the length of the report.  A complete version is posted to the Saudi-American Forum library.

Since there is time, the United States can afford to deal carefully and prudently with the Saudis on domestic issues. Those issues can be divided into three categories – economic, political and social. They call for three different approaches from Washington. Economic issues are the least sensitive issues in terms of potential backlash from Saudi public opinion, and the area where the Saudis need the most serious American prodding. The Saudis have to create job opportunities for the growing numbers of Saudi youths, among whom unemployment is becoming a serious problem. Saudi economic reformers would welcome American input on opening up their economy, attracting both foreign investment and, more importantly, the billions of dollars Saudis keep abroad. One important avenue through which to raise these issues is Saudi accession to the World Trade Organization. In those negotiations, the United States can prod the Saudis to be more open to investment, to make their legal system compatible with economic change, to be more transparent in financial and budgetary matters, and to attack the problem of corruption, including within the ruling family. There are important forces within Saudi Arabia, including the Crown Prince, who want to move this way. The United States can help push these economic issues, and can do so openly.

On political issues, the Saudi leadership realizes that they need to develop new avenues for political participation in their society. This includes expanding the role of and opening the selection process for their appointed consultative council. Crown Prince Abdullah acknowledged this in his recent proposal to the Arab League summit, scheduled for March 2003.  A number of the smaller Gulf monarchies have taken such steps, without encouraging political upheaval and perhaps strengthening the stability of their regimes. The attention focused on Saudi Arabia by the world media since September 11 has had a salutary effect in pressuring the Saudi government for greater openness in the country. There is greater freedom in the Saudi press now to discuss political issues. Real public opinion polls are being taken in the country, and published. Human Rights Watch for the first time has been allowed to send a delegation to the country. Saudi reformers have brought a proposal for greater political freedoms to Crown Prince Abdullah, who publicly received them.  These are all to the good, and would not have happened without the sense in Saudi Arabia that the United States wants to see political reform. However, Washington needs to be avoid misreading these limited if important successes as a signal for more active intervention in Saudi political life. Particularly, it needs to resist the temptation to press the Saudis to institute democratic elections now.

The first request in the reform petition is for direct elections to the Saudi Consultative Council. Such elections would be a natural evolution for the Council, established in 1993, whose members are all appointed. However, such a move would, in the immediate term, inevitably produce a political system even more in thrall to the religious establishment, and less open to American pressures, than the one that exists now. It is the religious establishment that has the organizational means to mount a countrywide political campaign. Their sympathizers have greater access to the Saudi media. They have access to money, the mother's milk of politics anywhere. Moreover, with anti-American sentiment running high in Saudi pubic opinion right now, anti-American platforms would be appealing to the electorate. Without changes in Saudi Arabia allowing other social groups greater opportunities for political organization and access to the media, elections will not produce the kinds of changes that American critics of Saudi Arabia would like to see. Those Americans who emphasize the virtues of democratic change for the region as a whole, have to face the stark reality. Early elections in Saudi Arabia would likely produce representative assemblies that would push the regime in anti-liberal directions.

It is in the area of social issues that American pressure would be most counterproductive. Domestic social change that is seen as being imposed by outsiders, particularly in areas like education and women's rights that many Saudis see as directly tied to their interpretation of Islam, would mobilize domestic opposition and backfire on those who propose it. The "women's driving incident" of 1990 is an excellent example of this dynamic. During the lead-up to Operation Desert Storm, American troops poured into Saudi Arabia and the American media was allowed unprecedented access to the country. A number of brave Saudi women then challenged one of the more hidebound restrictions in Saudi society, the prohibition on women driving cars. They met in a Riyadh parking lot, in the presence of Western reporters, and proceeded to drive down a street. The reaction in religious circles, already fearful that the crisis would bring "un-Islamic" elements into Saudi society, was intense. The government reacted by formalizing the ban on women driving. It was not until the late 1990's that women's rights issues returned again to public Saudi political discourse. Importantly, it was encouraged by high-ranking members of the ruling family, who saw the need for change. The reform petition presented to Abdullah in January 2003 calls for a reassessment of the role of women in Saudi society, though within the guidelines of Islamic law. Likewise, the moves towards women's rights in other GCC states, such as Qatar, may provide a model. However, these issues cannot be imposed from the outside. It is only grass roots activism that can make changes on this issue more palatable within Saudi society.

Education is another hot button issue. There is no doubt that the Saudi educational system needs to be shaken up. Saudis themselves have been talking about this for some time, long before September 11. Graduates are not well prepared for the modern job market, exacerbating the youth unemployment problem. Religious instruction takes up a large part of the teaching day, and that instruction reinforces a narrow interpretation of Islam.  The Saudi leadership is moving, however slowly, on this issue. Crown Prince Abdullah used the public outcry surrounding the death of 15 young girls in a fire at a school in Mecca in March 2002 as a cover to remove the girls' education system from the direct control of the religious establishment, and place it under the Ministry of Education. Private education is growing in the kingdom, with the approval of the government, as a means to better prepare Saudi youth for the job market. For the United States to make the Saudi educational system, particularly the religious element of it, an element of the bilateral relationship, would be profoundly counterproductive. Nothing would more quickly mobilize Islamist forces in the kingdom – official and oppositional – than the perception that America was trying to dictate the content of the Saudi religious curriculum. Saudi Islamists are already raising this charge.  If the Saudi government asks for American help in educational reform, Washington should be ready to give it. But to make educational reform a central part of the bilateral relationship is asking for trouble, and would lead to results opposite from those desired.

What the United States should be seeking from Saudi Arabia is neither the "special relationship" of the recent past nor the open enmity that some ideologues seek. Washington should be aiming for a "normal" relationship with Riyadh. On issues of common interest like oil and economic issues, cooperation will be public and close. On security matters, we should certainly cooperate, but not see Saudi Arabia as a useful base for American forces. We should not assert a right to manage their domestic affairs.

Normality also means that, when we disagree with the Saudis, we do so openly. We need not fear that open disagreement will destabilize the regime. It might even increase the ruling elite's bona fides with its own public, which is distrustful of the United States. For example, one can question the wisdom of Congressionally mandated lists of "bad" countries as a tool of foreign policy. However, given that such lists are a fact of American political life, it makes no sense to leave Saudi Arabia off the list of states that do not practice religious toleration. We do not have to coddle the Saudis. But we do have to recognize their role in the region, in the larger Muslim world, and in the world oil market, and to realize that it is far better for American interests to have a Saudi government with which we can work.

"The Approaching Turning Point: The Future of U.S. Relations with the Gulf States" is being provided to Saudi-American Forum members in weekly serials due to the length of the report.  A complete version is posted to the .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

F. Gregory Gause, III is an Associate Professor of political science at the University of Vermont, and Director of the University's Middle East Studies Program. He was previously on the faculty of Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-1994).

His research interests focus on the international politics of the Middle East, with a particular interest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian/ Arabian Gulf. He has published two books: Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994) and Saudi-Yemeni Relations: Domestic Structures and Foreign Influence (Columbia University Press, 1990). His scholarly articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Middle East Journal, Washington Quarterly, Journal of International Affairs, Review of International Studies and in other journals and edited volumes. He has testified on Gulf issues before the Committee on International Relations of the U. S. House of Representatives.

Professor Gause received his Ph. D. in political science from Harvard University in 1987, and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo and Middlebury College.