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Saudi Arabia Turns Down Seat on UN Security Council
This is the kind of story that tends to make American eyes glaze over, but it’s important. We’ll get to why in a minute. Here’s what happened.
Last Thursday, Saudi Arabia was elected for the first time to a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council, together with Chad, Chile, Lithuania, and Nigeria. Then, even as Saudi’s own diplomats in New York and Riyadh were celebrating and tweeting their delight, the Saudi Foreign Ministry released a statement turning the seat down — the first time in history that any country has done this. The decision to reject the seat could only have been made at the very highest level, almost certainly by King Abdullah himself.
This is primarily about Syria, but on a deeper level, it’s about the Saudi-American relationship. Whether that longstanding alliance still has value is a question worth debating, but the question raised by the Saudi rejection of the UN seat is this: are the Americans aware of the seriousness of the rift, and are they gaming the consequences of a severing of the alliance? Are they active, knowledgeable participants in this drama, or are they blundering about, allowing history to write itself around them?
The Saudi statement read in part:
Saudi Arabia … is refraining from taking membership of the UN Security Council until it has reformed so it can effectively and practically perform its duties and discharge its responsibilities in maintaining international security and peace.
…Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill and burn its people by the chemical weapons, while the world stands idly, without applying deterrent sanctions against the Damascus regime, is also irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out its duties and responsibilities.
It is unfortunate that all the international efforts that have been exerted in recent years and in which Saudi Arabia actively took part did not result in achieving the reforms necessary to enable the Security Council to restore its role in serving peace and security worldwide. [T]he method and work mechanism and the double standards in the Security Council prevent it from properly shouldering its responsibilities towards world peace.
In other words: the Saudi king is tired of being blocked at every turn by Russia and China, whose support for Assad effectively neuters the Security Council on Syria. (The statement also threw in some boilerplate about the failure of the Security Council to find a “just and lasting solution” to the Israel-Palestinian mess and slipped in a dig about Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, but Syria and Iran are what the Saudis are really worried about.)
Why does any of this matter? Here’s why. The Saudis’ rejection of the Security Council seat is, to use the Times’s phrase, a slap in the face to the United States, which allowed Russia to engineer its retreat from intervention in Syria. To put that slap in context, the Saudis have been horrified not only by the Americans’ responses to the Arab Spring upheavals over the past two years but by their desire to warm relations with Saudi’s bitterest enemy, Iran.
The Saudi rejection of the UN seat could conceivably be the harbinger of doom to the Saudi-American alliance. And that could have a host of consequences that one hopes someone in Washington is thinking about, or at least aware of. Walter Russell Mead lists a few possibilities:
The Saudis could move more aggressively to fund the kind of jihadis we don’t like in Syria and perhaps elsewhere; they could switch to a more aggressive price policy in OPEC; they could cut the legs out from under the Palestinian moderates on the West Bank; they could aggressively promote radical Salfism in Egypt to take advantage of the Muslim Brotherhood’s eclipse. With Saudi help, however quiet and in the background, Israel’s calculations about an attack on Iran could change, and a conflict could start that the White House might not be able to stay out of.
Mead summarizes the current situation this way:
Published in GeneralIt’s hard to think of a more powerful diplomatic signal of rage and frustration that the Saudis could send [than their rejection of the UN Security Council seat]. The White House needs to do one of two things: figure out how to get things on track with our oldest ally in the Middle East or figure out how to withstand serious Saudi efforts to undermine key US interests and goals.
Maybe the time has come for an alliance which (much more than the US-Israel alliance) has been the cornerstone of our Middle East policy since FDR was president, to break up. If that’s what the Obama administration really believes, it should move ahead. But if the Saudi alliance is still a valuable one, it would be a shame to throw it away because we weren’t paying attention.
The people Mead refers to here are not moderate and have no legs anyway.
Obama’s not trumpeting his middle name these days. What was it again, “Who’s sane?”
The Saudis have been good friends in a dangerous region. They have been good friends for a long time, because the regime could rely on stability provided by the Americans, and because they had friendly ties.
We used to recognize that democracy is good but stability is a more core element of “American vital interests.”
Now we put ideology ahead of everything, and the ideologues in Team Obama would be happy to see $8/ gallon gas, so they don’t see stability as an interest at all.
Remember when they were good personal friends of H.W. Bush? They helped us out in those days.
Not so much warmth in the current relationships.
It’s likely that Mead’s predictions would come true. But you cite that as a bad thing. A “bad thing” is our continuing ‘alliance’ with the Saudis. It’s ironic that a Kingdom clearly sees what a Republic can’t: that the UN is a farce.
Newsflash: Petro-dictatorship refuses to join debating society. Yaawwn!
I think you are naive.
The real issue is getting rid of the US ability to veto anti-Israel resolutions.
Saudi Arabia is in a good position to buy off China and Russia. The signing of a $50 billion contract for Russian fighters and another (see below) $20 billion contract for Chinese missiles would probably be enough to get Assad cut loose.
The references to Israel’s nuclear program is more than a slipped-in dig. It is critical to them. BTW, Saudi Arabia almost surely has a substantial nuclear arsenal. They have several large ballistic missile complexes with Chinese-made medium range ballistic missiles. The inaccuracy of those missiles combined with the massive infrastructure surrounding them is a clear indicator that the are WMD-armed. You do not build a hardened silo, etc. for something that is going to deliver a conventional warhead with an accuracy measured in miles. The main question is whether the warheads are Pakistani or Chinese.
We used to recognize that democracy is good but stability is a more core element of “American vital interests.”
Now we put ideology ahead of everything, and the ideologues in Team Obama would be happy to see $8/ gallon gas, so they don’t see stability as an interest at all.
Remember when they were good personal friends of H.W. Bush? They helped us out in those days.
Not so much warmth in the current relationships. ·2 hours ago
Two problems. First, even more than Obama, The Saudis would love to see $8/gallon gasoline.
Second, one could instead say that GHWB helped the Saudis out when they were threatened by Iraq.
Judith has this right.
Saudi foreign policy in the region is not primarily directed by their relationship with Israel–however tough they may talk, and whatever funding for Wabbahi causes. Rather, they are principally concerned with the messianic Shia regime in Iran. This withdrawal is as much a signal to Tehran that Saudi Arabia will not it idly by while it conducts a proxy war in Syria–regardless of what the international community may think.
One of the salutary aspects of an otherwise unsavory alliance with the Saudi regime has precisely been our ability to curb any development of a nuclear arsenal in Saudi before it begins. They rely on us (and our allies) to check the nuclear ambitions of Iran.
Your assertion here is incorrect.
The Saudis’ rejection of the Security Council seat is, to use the Times’s phrase, a slap in the face to the United States
It’s more of a slap in the face of the United Nations. Only the NYT could twist this around towards the US. I’m sure the Saudis are miffed at the US too, but the UN is ineffectual.
Or, put more succinctly,
The odd thing about Obama is not that he has alienated our sometimes-friends in the Middle East, it’s that he has also further angered our enemies. His dithering incompetence on the world stage has made everyone in the region hate us more than ever. Far worse, they no longer fear us.
One of the salutary aspects of an otherwise unsavory alliance with the Saudi regime has precisely been our ability to curb any development of a nuclear arsenal in Saudi before it begins. They rely on us (and our allies) to check the nuclear ambitions of Iran.
Your assertion here is incorrect.
If memory serves, Saudi Arabia has 4 MRBM complexes.
As Sulayil is the most famous. see 20.732072,45.561661
Al Joffer is a more recent one.
I believe there are yet more recent ones to the east and southeast of Riyadh.
You do not build this kind of infrastructure to house non-precision conventional missiles.
Did they propose specific reforms to the Security Council? What were they?
You do not build this kind of infrastructure to house non-precision conventional missiles.
Due to limitations of our medium, I am only able here to say that the infrastructure at those sites is reported in open source media as coordinate with the requirements of a non-nuclear CSS-2 MRBM program–a missile that was purchased during the Tanker War–and such as it is, is insufficient for a theatre level nuclear deterrent, according to open source reporting.
Whether anyone in Saudi Arabia has designs on a more advanced missile program, or on violating the NPT and developing a nuclear capability, I do not know.
But while American diplomacy with Saudi Arabia has proved remarkably adept at deterring the development of a nuclear capacity, surely there could be few incentives greater than Iran possessing a strategic nuclear deterrent or strike capability, coupled with the loss of faith in America to act in the face of such a escalation, to impel Saudi Arabia to consider development of their own program.
You do not build this kind of infrastructure to house non-precision conventional missiles.
Due to limitations of our medium, I am only able here to say that the infrastructure at those sites is reported in open source media as coordinate with the requirements of a non-nuclear CSS-2 MRBM program–a missile that was purchased during the Tanker War–and such as it is, is insufficient for a theatre level nuclear deterrent, according to open source reporting.
In Chinese service these are nuclear. I don’t see why they would not form a tolerable “theatre level nuclear deterrent”.
Their liquid fuel status makes them generally less desirable for military use but highlights the likely nuclear status. The liquid fueling adds substantial infrastructural and personnel costs which seem only justified by a WMD benefit.
I concur that your Commander in Chief has done more to encourage proliferation of WMD (by both friend and foe) than any other person in history.
It’s my belief that Americans gravely misunderstand how Iraq fit into what the Dubya called the Global War on Terror (conservatives, neoconservatives and progressives, alike).
This fundamental error pretty much caused all the other debacles we’ve witnessed since.
As for the Obama, he believes, and/or his progressive associates all believe that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait created the basis for the Reagan-GHW-Clinton boom years.
Economic expansion is all about cheap energy, if you see what I mean. The Saudis took their AWACS planes and walked out of OPEC talks. Both SA and Kuwait could be counted upon to ignore their AOPEC quotas since.
Saddam thought that Kuwait was waging economic warfare against him. I’m of the opinion he was quite correct. Crude in 1988 was cheaper than it had been in 1977.
Cheap energy is the cause of all pollution, it’s the cause of overpopulation, and it’s the evil little guy behind the curtain of the Great and Powerful Industrial Age.
So OF COURSE the Obama has been working against Saudi’s interests, just as he’s been relentlessly dismantling the US relationship with the UK.
Since the first days of his administration.