WHY THE WEST´S VIEW OF THE SAUDIS IS SHIFTING / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENT & ANALYSIS

Why the west’s view of the Saudis is shifting

 

Gideon Rachman

 

The rise of Isis, human rights concerns and less dependence on Arab oil are triggering change

 

 

 

Something is changing in the west’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. You can read it in the newspapers. You can hear it from politicians. And you can see it in shifts in policy.

 

Hostile articles about the Saudis are now standard fare in the western press. On Sunday, the main editorial in The Observer denounced the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia as an “unedifying alliance that imperils our security”. Two days earlier, the BBC ran an article highlighting an “unprecedented wave of executions” in Saudi Arabia. A couple of months ago, Thomas Friedman, arguably the most influential columnist in the US, labelled the terrorist group, Isis, the “ideological offspring” of Saudi Arabia.

Politicians are taking up similar themes. Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor, has accused Saudi Arabia of funding Islamist extremism in the west and added: “We have to make it clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over.” In the UK, Lord Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, has called for an investigation into the “funding of jihadism” in Britain and pointed at Saudi Arabia.

The sudden increase in concern about Saudi Arabia is driven, in large part, by the rise of Isis.

 

Western policymakers know that the battle with jihadism is as much about ideology as guns.

 

When they look for a source of the Isis worldview, they increasingly trace it back to the Wahhabi philosophy promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.

 

Saudi influence in the west has also been weakened by other developments. The “shale revolution” in the US has made the west less dependent on Saudi oil. Meanwhile, the turmoil in the Middle East has shone a harsh light on Saudi foreign policy , with particular criticism aimed at the high level of civilian casualties caused by Saudi military intervention in Yemen, and Riyadh’s role in crushing an uprising in Bahrain in 2011.

 

For the moment, however, all this criticism has led only to modest adjustments in western policy. For the Saudis themselves, the most alarming change has been President Barack Obama’s determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, facing down fierce opposition from Saudi Arabia. Beyond the Iran deal, however, there have been only small, symbolic gestures, such as Britain’s decision, driven by human-rights concerns, to pull out of the bidding for a contract to provide training for prisons in Saudi Arabia.

 

Western critics of Saudi Arabia want to see the gloves come off. They accuse the governments of the UK and the US of being in thrall to Saudi money. Lord Ashdown has pointed to the influence of “rich Gulf individuals” in British politics. Saudi Arabia also remains a crucial market for western arms manufacturers. Over the past 18 months the US has approved the sale of more than $24bn of weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

There are also solid reasons, that have little to do with money, for continued western co-operation with Saudi Arabia. The past five years have demonstrated that when bad governments fall in the Middle East, they are often replaced by something far worse. The most powerful internal critics of the Saudi monarchy are not liberals but hardline Islamists. The fear that Saudi Arabia could become yet another failed state haunts the west. One senior UK diplomat warns: “Get rid of the House of Saud and you will be screaming for them to come back within six months.”

Saudi Arabia’s relationship with jihadism is also complex. It is true that Islamists in Saudi Arabia have provided ideological and sometimes financial support for jihadis around the world. But it is also true that the Saudi royal family itself has been targeted by both Isis and al-Qaeda. At the same time, intelligence provided by the Saudis has been critical in thwarting some terrorist plots in the west. As one western counter-terrorism official puts it: “The Saudis are sometimes both the source of the problem and the best antidote to it.”

Some western strategists daydream about ditching the Saudi alliance in favour of a rapprochement with Iran. If international politics were a chess game, this might look like a clever gambit.

In the real world, any western alliance with Iran is still a distant prospect. There is no guarantee that “moderates” will ever truly gain control in Tehran and, in the meantime, Iran continues to supply radical armed groups, such as Hizbollah, and to destabilise neighbouring countries. Allying with the largest Shia power would also effectively alienate Sunni Muslims — fuelling groups such as Isis.

 

Human rights activists might note that Iran executes even more people than Saudi Arabia.

 

Acknowledging that there are still good reasons for the west to work closely with Saudi Arabia is, how­­ever, not the same as saying that nothing should change. Religious tolerance is the right issue on which to press the Saudis.

There has long been something repellently craven about the western approach to the Saudi monarchy.

The Europeans and Americans have accepted a blatant double standard, in which the Saudis are allowed to fund their own brand of religious intolerance while banning the organised practice of other religions inside Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps it is time to give the Saudis a choice: agree to allow churches, Hindu temples and synagogues to open in Saudi Arabia, or face the end of Saudi funding for mosques in the west.