The decision to bring the anti-Saudi analysis before the Defense Policy Board also appears tied to the growing debate over whether to launch a U.S. military attack to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The chairman of the board is former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, one of the most prominent advocates in Washington of just such an invasion. The briefing argued that removing Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia — which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements.
Perle did not return calls to comment. A Rand spokesman said Murawiec,
a former adviser to the French Ministry of Defense who now analyzes international
security affairs for Rand, would not be available to comment.
“Neither the presentations nor the Defense Policy Board members’ comments
reflect the official views of the Department of Defense,” Pentagon spokeswoman
Victoria Clarke said in a written statement issued last night. “Saudi Arabia
is a long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The Saudis cooperate
fully in the global war on terrorism and have the Department’s and the Administration’s
deep appreciation.”
OIL FIELDS ‘TARGETED’?
Murawiec said in his briefing that the United States should demand
that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world,
stop all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the country, and “prosecute
or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence
services.”
If the Saudis refused to comply, the briefing continued, Saudi oil
fields and overseas financial assets should be “targeted,” although exactly
how was not specified.
The report concludes by linking regime change in Iraq to altering
Saudi behavior. This view, popular among some neoconservative thinkers, is
that once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor
regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West. That oil would diminish
U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so — in this view — permit the
U.S. government finally to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism.
“The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad,” said the
administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq. “Once you have a democratic
regime in Iraq, like the ones we helped establish in Germany and Japan after
World War II, there are a lot of possibilities.”
KISSINGER OBJECTS
Of the two dozen people who attended the Defense Policy Board meeting,
only one, former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, spoke up to object
to the anti-Saudi conclusions of the briefing, according to sources who were
there. Some members of the board clearly agreed with Kissinger’s dismissal
of the briefing and others did not.
One source summarized Kissinger’s remarks as, “The Saudis are pro-American,
they have to operate in a difficult region, and ultimately we can manage
them.”
Kissinger declined to comment on the meeting. He said his consulting
business does not advise the Saudi government and has no clients that do
large amounts of business in Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t consider Saudi Arabia to be a strategic adversary of the
United States,” Kissinger said. “They are doing some things I don’t approve
of, but I don’t consider them a strategic adversary.”
Other members of the board include former vice president Dan Quayle;
former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; former House
speakers Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley; and several retired senior military
officers, including two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
retired admirals David Jeremiah and William Owens.
‘A MISGUIDED EFFORT’
Asked for reaction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador
to the United States, said he did not take the briefing seriously. “I think
that it is a misguided effort that is shallow, and not honest about the facts,”
he said. “Repeating lies will never make them facts.”
“I think this view defies reality,” added Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign
policy adviser to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. “The
two countries have been friends and allies for over 60 years. Their relationship
has seen the coming and breaking of many storms in the region, and if anything
it goes from strength to strength.”
In the 1980s, the United States and Saudi Arabia played major roles
in supporting the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
pouring billions of dollars into procuring weapons and other logistical support
for the mujaheddin.
At the end of the decade, the relationship became even closer when
the U.S. military stationed a half-million troops on Saudi territory to repel
Hussein’s invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand U.S. troops
have remained on Saudi soil, mainly to run air operations in the region.
Their presence has been cited by Osama bin Laden as a major reason for his
attacks on the United States.
POPULAR IN NEOCON CADRE
The anti-Saudi views expressed in the briefing appear especially popular
among neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, which is a relatively small
but influential group within the Bush administration.
“I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country,”
said Kenneth Adelman, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,
who is a member of the Defense Policy Board but didn’t attend the July 10
meeting. He said the view that Saudi Arabia is an adversary of the United
States “is certainly a more prevalent view that it was a year ago.”
In recent weeks, two neoconservative magazines have run articles similar
in tone to the Pentagon briefing. The July 15 issue of the Weekly Standard,
which is edited by William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Quayle, predicted
“The Coming Saudi Showdown.” The current issue of Commentary, which is published
by the American Jewish Committee, contains an article titled, “Our Enemies,
the Saudis.”
“More and more people are making parts of this argument, and a few
all of it,” said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University expert on military
strategy. “Saudi Arabia used to have lots of apologists in this country.
. . . Now there are very few, and most of those with substantial economic
interests or long-standing ties there.”
‘A HUGE PROBLEM FOR US’
Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board, declined to discuss its
deliberations. But he did say that he views Saudi Arabia more as a problem
than an enemy. “The deal that they cut with fundamentalism is most definitely
a threat, [so] I would say that Saudi Arabia is a huge problem for us,” he
said.
But that view is far from dominant in the U.S. government, others
said. “The drums are beginning to beat on Saudi Arabia,” said Robert Oakley,
a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan who consults frequently with the U.S.
military.
He said the best approach isn’t to confront Saudi Arabia but to support
its reform efforts. “Our best hope is change through reform, and that can
only come from within,” he said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company