Betting on the Wrong Horse

It is easy to dismiss Saudi Arabia’s execution binge last weekend as barbarism or as a throwback to some form of medieval spectacle. Looking beyond the carnage, it is worth asking what these acts convey about the position of the Saudi state, both domestically and diplomatically. Why a mass execution and why now? To do so is to face an uncomfortable truth: the Saudi government doesn’t engage in mass executions because it is barbaric, but because it can. And above all, it is the United States that—much to its own detriment—grants the Kingdom the diplomatic cover to so brazenly flout the most basic legal conventions.

The killings are a signal that even in an era of falling oil prices, Saudi Arabia is still in a position of strength. This was clear enough in the State Department’s press briefings earlier this week, in which John Kirby stretched the English language to its creative limits in order to not condemn the executions. When the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State appeals to his unfamiliarity with the Saudi judicial system and claims, “It’s not for us to cast judgment” on the decisions of other sovereign states, you know the stars have aligned over the Arabian Peninsula.

It is interesting to note that the events of January 2^nd marked the Kingdom’s largest mass execution since January 1980, when the government publicly beheaded 63 rebels who seized control over the Grand Mosque in Mecca the year before. Then as now, Saudi Arabia faced regional upheaval, an ascendant Iran, and internal dissent from Islamists who contested the ruling family’s corruption, ostentatious lifestyle, and close ties with Western leaders. Yet, at least in material terms, January 1980 also seems like a world away from January 2016. Oil prices rose sharply in late 1979 and peaked at around $116 a barrel (adjusted for inflation) in April of 1980, sending countries worldwide into an economic frenzy over OPEC’s capacity to hold the energy market hostage to its political whims.

In contrast, oil prices are currently hovering around $37 a barrel and the IMF has recently reported that Saudi Arabia could run out of cash in less than five years. Based on this economic forecast alone, one might guess that Saudi Arabia is feeling particularly vulnerable today as a rentier state that relies on robust social welfare programs to quell internal unrest. But this is only part of the picture, because the American government is essentially subsidizing the Saudi state’s domestic stronghold and diplomatic strength. Saudi Arabia could execute Islamist dissidents en masse in 1980 because it was certain no one would either care or protest in any meaningful way. The same remains true in 2016, a fact that largely stems from America’s own misguided notion that Saudi Arabia is a key ally in a region where there are no better alternatives.

We have seen this before: from Mubarak’s Egypt to the Shah of Iran and Batista’s Cuba, America has a long history of supporting the dictatorial and despotic ways of allies who allegedly help secure our national best interests. The realpolitik camp will have us think that these alliances result from the amoral nature of politics, and if widespread domestic oppression in the countries we support is the price of securing American interests, so be it. To be clear: I don’t oppose this approach on account of some naïve idealism, but because as a historian of the modern Middle East, I don’t see any evidence that it works. There are at least two key problems with this mode of strategic thinking, both of which should call the American alliance with Saudi Arabia into question.

First, it is an incredibly short-sighted policy that, with the benefit of historical hindsight, should be archived along with the other artifacts of Red Scare. We cannot pursue such partnerships in an era of mass politics without expecting a popular backlash to follow us home and undermine us abroad. In the immediate context, for example, there is no historical explanation for the rise of Islamic radicalism that can overlook the role of American foreign policy in rendering religious politics those of the oppressed masses. In this case, the alliances our Cold War leaders viewed as ugly but necessary have helped propel what we now define as the greatest threat to American security.

Second, the idea that there are no alternatives has always been and continues to be patently false. In many instances, some of those alternatives were even democratically elected. But, as in Mossadegh’s Iran, they wanted to do unseemly things like nationalize their natural resources and impose labor rules on American and European corporations. What appeared to the Eisenhower administration as unconscionable now strikes many Americans as pretty tame in hindsight. This begs the question as to what we are currently missing in terms of our strategic imagination, and brings us back to Saudi Arabia, one of America’s chief allies in the so-called War on Terror.

By virtue of this position, Saudi Arabia has achieved near carte blanche to imprison and execute dissidents at will. The fact that the Obama administration’s “concern” regarding the January 2^nd executions has been mostly limited to the case of Sheikh al-Nimr—with the other 46 individuals often dismissed en bulk as al-Qaeda operatives—is a reminder that in the years since 9/11, Americans have reacted with general indifference to the execution of anyone who can be labeled an Islamist or terrorist. How many of those 46 convictions would stand up in a real court of law is almost besides the point when the War on Terror provides the Kingdom with the political cover to root out opponents in this fashion.

It is also worth noting that the executions of January 2^nd are not merely a sign of strength, but also a performative act – an opportunity for the Saudi state to show itself as even more puritanical than its Islamist foes. Not coincidentally, the executions in 1980 marked a turning point for the Kingdom after which, aiming at undercutting the claims of its critics, the state granted increased authority to clerics and began implementing shari’a in a more rigid fashion. The general uptick in executions throughout 2015 should be similarly understood within the context of Saudi Arabia’s attempts to cast itself as the morally righteous defender of true Islam.

If mass executions by one of America’s purported allies in the fight against ISIS seem a bit too close for comfort, this is also no mere coincidence. Whether it be ISIS distributing the writings of Abd al-Wahhab in occupied regions of Syria or appealing directly to recruits from the Arabian Peninsula, the ideological symbiosis between ISIS and the Saudi regime is hard to overlook. Saudi Arabia and ISIS oppose one another not because they advance competing views of Islam, but because they disagree over who should rule the Sunni world. This is less a battle over theology or practice than over claims to political and moral authority.

All this renders the notion that Saudi Arabia can serve as America’s ally in a battle against radical Islam almost comical. The Kingdom might be an ally in the struggle to contain ISIS, but it serves in this capacity out of pure self-interest rather than on account of some ideological alignment with the American agenda. And even if America’s goal is merely to defeat the separatists in black currently controlling vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, Saudi Arabia appears as no better ally in this struggle than Iran. Either way, hitching our cart to the Saudi royal family produces little in the way of short-term advantage, and like other episodes in our realpolitik fantasy, threatens to harm us even more down the road.