U.S.-Saudi Relations Before & After 9/11
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Over the years, both United States foreign policy and American public opinion have tended to identify some countries in the Arab Middle East as allies, while others were viewed as enemies. Egypt, once viewed in the 1950s and 1960s as an enemy under Abdel Nasser, became an ally in the 1970s under Anwar Sadat, and has remained generally viewed as an ally. Syria was regarded as an enemy for decades, as was Libya in the 1970s and 1980s, when both countries were closely associated with Middle Eastern terrorism. Their status as enemies has faded somewhat, both in official pronouncements and popular image, though relations remain uneasy. Iraq under Saddam Hussein became, of course, the prime enemy from 1990 until the fall of Saddam Hussein; its current status and future prospects remain uncertain. On the other side of the coin, Jordan has consistently been viewed in favorable terms. For half a century the same was true of Saudi Arabia. A working US-Saudi alliance was formed in 1944, and persisted thereafter for decades. For the American public, Saudi Arabia was an unfamiliar and exotic land, but in some vague way a friendly one, like something out of the recent movie "Hidalgo." American public perception changed sharply as a result of a single day: September 11, 2001. Within days after the terrorist hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it was learned that they had been carried out by al-Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin La
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f its claim that it is an Islamic state, Saudi Arabia has remained consistently pragmatic and rational in foreign relations: It has not used Islam as a criterion for them, as Iran has (Muqtedar 1).
Official Saudi foreign policy -- and the Saudi-US relationship that grew out of that foreign policy, as well as out of Saudi Arabia's need to develop its oil reserves -- thus stands in marked contrast to its domestic policy, and of the parallel foreign policy followed by the Wahhabi religious establishment. So great is the tension that some observers have spoken of a "Saudi civil war," on the level of ideology if not of military confrontation (Muqtedar 2). Indeed, the 9/11 terrorist attack, though directed at the United States, can be seen as an action in that civil war, since Bin Laden's primary objective is to cause the overthrow of the Saudi government.
Over the years Islamists in Egypt, such as Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's right-hand man and mentor, had concluded that Egypt could not be transformed as long as it enjoyed US support. Bin Laden soon reached the same conclusion about Saudi Arabia (Muqtedar 2).
In a real sense, therefore, the US finds itself in the crossfire of an internal Saudi conflict. Why has that com
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Approximate Word count = 2736
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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