Of (un)holy alliances
Heres a badly kept secret. The Saudi hegemony over the Middle East is actually based upon a model perfected by an Austrian prince, Klemens Metternich, two centuries ago. Unwittingly, the Saudi instinct for self-preservation has created a system remarkably similar.
The first Holy Alliance was ostensibly an agreement to instill Christian values of charity and peace through its signatories, the princes of Russia, Prussia and Austria. Although at first a loose concept articulated with the help of incoherent rhetoric, it was rapidly molded by Metternich who made it the beating heart of his system. It was essentially a reactionary mechanism designed to spring into action and strike across borders to crush any manifestation of democracy, liberalism or revolution; it became vital to sustaining the rule of European monarchs in the 19th century.
The Saudis have also built up a comparable and intricate alliance with the monarchies in the Gulf and the autocracies of the Middle East. The region is the last bastion of absolute monarchy in the world. The Saudis have cajoled, bribed, browbeat, strong-armed Arab States to keep things this way with an unwritten covenant based upon the continued suppression of any genuine move towards democracy. The presidents of the republics, taking a cue from the kingdoms, also seek to ensure succession of power to sons to create their own hereditary presidencies, although only Hafiz-ul-Assad of Syria was able to realise this ambition to date.
The Saudis have another willing partner in the oil greedy Americans. Both find such states more pliable than democratic regimes. The US is happier to deal with dictators than messy democracies, while the Saudi motive is easy to decipher; in a region of democracies, the House of Saud will be an endangered species.
This is why the Arab Spring has elicited such a negative reaction. In Egypt, the Saudis tried to give Hosni Mubarak a lifeline by offering to make up for the shortfall created when America finally cut $1.5 billion in funding when it woke up to its principles very late in the revolution. It was a desperate bid to maintain him in power which failed.
Saudi machinations are also visible in Yemen, instead of letting the people decide the fate of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Saudis are the driving force behind a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plan promoting the peaceful transfer of power to a successor and promising immunity for crimes racked up in thirty years of brutal rule. The opposition has angrily rejected the proposals, but the Saudis have important interests in the volatile country.
In August 2009, Yemeni forces launched an attack on embattled Houthi rebels in the northern Sadah region bordering Saudi Arabia; the battle quickly took on an international dimension. After intermittent skirmishing, the Saudis began to attack the rebels directly staging a bombing campaign and a limited invasion to bolster the flagging offensive. The Saudis were not shy in using their massive arsenal of US armaments to pound the Houthis into submission.
However, an armed deployment which has garnered greater media coverage was the intervention by Saudi forces in Bahrain under the cover of the GCC. It was launched at the apparent behest of the beleaguered Al-Khalifa monarchy which was on the verge of caving to popular protests on the pattern of Egypt and Tunisia. The action sufficiently stiffened the resolve of demoralised Bahraini security forces; the uprising was quelled but at the cost of dozens killed, hundreds arrested with at least two prisoners dying in police custody. Although the Bahraini royal family emerged as a Saudi vassal in the debacle, Saudi Arabia was desperate to stomp out a rebellion so close to home which it deemed an existential threat, lest any tendrils reach the restive and oil-rich east of their country and used every means at their disposal.
Although the Saudis have traditionally adroitly pushed the levers of power in the region through the disbursement of petrodollars or the propping of protgs, the true lesson of the Holy Alliance is that it is temporary. The stability which the wily Count Metternich forged was illusionary as the revolutionary tide of 1848 underlined. He was one of the main targets of the ire of the rioting mobs and was unceremoniously booted out of office. Just as the status quo was eroded in Europe, so it will in the Middle East as it moves inexorably towards popular representation.
