Time For An Honest Talk

By Michael Elliott

Like a married couple who used to nuzzle in public but now squabble over everything from the kids to the breakfast cereal, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are getting on each other's nerves. The Saudis complain that Washington, biased toward Israel, isn't evenhanded in the Middle East. The Americans--to be accurate, elements within a very leaky intelligence community--say the Saudis have been insufficiently cooperative in the investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks. Though President George W. Bush has assured Crown Prince Abdullah of his undying affection, in some U.S. circles, it has become fashionable to question the stability of the Saudi regime. One intelligence source says Americans should start preparing for "convulsions" in the kingdom.

Stability is not necessarily a virtue. But a Saudi Arabia that "convulses" in the direction of greater Islamic extremism would be terrifying. In the short term, the price of oil would surely rise, as it did after the Iranian revolution of 1979. The Saudi holy cities of Mecca and Medina are the destination for millions of Muslim pilgrims each year. They could easily become the rallying point for the sort of global jihad that could quickly turn into a clash of civilizations. For now, that is an unlikely prospect; the Saudi royal family has deep reserves of loyalty, and Abdullah seems to be personally popular. But the U.S. can help ensure stability by being honest with its ally. The real problem with U.S.-Saudi relations is that one strategic issue--oil--needlessly gets in the way of a frank discussion of others.

Saudi Arabia is changing fast. Its population is growing at one of the fastest rates in the world: just 7.3 million people lived there in 1975, but more than 20 million do today. The Saudis have failed to invest their vast royalties in businesses that will provide jobs when the oil runs out--as one day it will. And for most of two decades, the price of oil has been relatively low. Political tension has been injected into a fragile economy. On television, Saudis see what they believe is a ruthless, U.S.-backed Israeli army shooting their fellow Arabs in the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, Abdullah has consolidated a hold on the power formally exercised by an ailing King Fahd. The Crown Prince and his advisers are more nationalist, more religiously conservative and less instinctively supportive of the U.S. than their predecessors. Abdullah's advocacy to Washington on the part of the Palestinians, for example, has had a particularly sharp edge.

In the immediate future, Washington has two strategic reasons to desire good relations with Riyadh. The first is a need for Saudi cooperation in the war against terrorism. The second, of course, is oil. In the war on terrorism, Washington has a right to expect all the help it can get. It is clear that some Saudis give financial support to terrorist groups and that others join them. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 are thought to have been Saudis. The house of Saud has no reason to pussyfoot with terrorists. Osama bin Laden has made plain that the Saudi regime is his ultimate target. Saudi rulers know all about Islamic militancy. They have been dealing with it--rather effectively and rarely with kid gloves--since Ibn Saud's forces slaughtered the religious zealots of the Ikhwan in the 1920s.

The point is not whether Saudi rulers hate terrorism; they do. But in a mature relationship, Washington could ask for more than assistance with criminal investigations. It would be able to talk to the Saudis about the need to head off extremism by encouraging democratic debate. It could discuss with Riyadh reform of an education system in which schools preach hatred of infidels. It could suggest ways in which oil revenues could be channeled into a diversified economy, not into princely palaces.

Washington has shied away from such a dialogue because of oil, as if criticizing the Saudis in public would lead to lines at the gas pumps and memories of Jimmy Carter. That misunderstands the economics of energy. True, the U.S. now imports more than 50% of its oil, and around two-thirds of all known oil supplies are in the Middle East. But--here's the thing about oil--those supplies do no good unless they're sold. Any oil exporter that attempted to discriminate against the U.S. would hurt itself just as much as the U.S. Moreover, the American economy has become much more "energy efficient"; it spends only about 2.5% of its GDP on oil, compared with about 8% 20 years ago.

In the long term, the U.S. can and should do more. The next four decades will see an enormous demand for oil from developing economies like China and India. Energy conservation and the development of new transportation technologies--68% of all petroleum consumed in the U.S. is used in transport--are desirable for all kinds of reasons. One of the most important is this: such policies would enable the U.S. to talk honestly to Saudi Arabia about the ways that its society might best develop. Both countries would benefit.