A Brave King - Part Two - Speculation

What could a brave king do?

One way in which geopolitical analysts attempt to predict the future is a method known as ‘scenario planning’. According to this method you think up as many possible scenarios as you can, within reason, and then you try and estimate the percentage chance of them coming to pass.  This is a fun task for analysts because it is one of the few times where they are seriously asked to plan out the most dramatic and extreme scenarios.  In this short article we will not attempt to set out a range of scenarios and estimate their chances of coming to pass.  What we will do though is endeavour to give you an idea of what the potential consequences of having a ‘brave king’ in Saudi Arabia really are.

Saudi Arabia’s potential for expansion

Point One:

In this world of nation states the Arab lands are an anomaly. From Morocco to Oman you have a great string of countries that are all inhabited by a people who speak the same language and define themselves as being from the same culture; they are Arabs. Consequently, most of the nations which the Arabs inhabit have few natural borders with their neighbours. On both sides of the border the people speak Arabic and call themselves Arabs and there is a past history in which the border did not exist and the inhabitants of both countries lived happily together either as part of the Ottoman Empire or one of the earlier caliphates. Not surprisingly, therefore, there have been many political leaders in the Arab World who have been advocates of Pan-Arabism and have dreamed of uniting the Arabs into one super state.  Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt briefly united Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic and Saddam Hussein tried to present himself as a Pan-Arab unifier in his invasion of Kuwait.  Given this unique circumstance of the Arab nations, whenever a strong leader emerges in one of their countries there are always some who will ask, “Could he be the one?”

I do not raise this matter in order to discuss whether  Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud could be the man to reunite all the Arabs, but to simply emphasise that the borders surrounding most Arab countries are more easily shifted or dissolved than those that correspond to real ethnic and cultural divisions; and that consequently Saudi Arabia would have less barriers to expansion than most countries simply by virtue of being Arab.

Point Two:

I said in the previous article that Saudi Arabia is the strongest state in the Arab world, one might argue that Egypt with its massive population is the strongest, but due to its poverty and Saudi Arabia’s wealth it is Saudi Arabia which influences the Egyptian government at the moment and not vice versa.  Egypt has been a heavily populated behemoth throughout recorded history, but it has often had outsiders come in and take over the running of its political structures.  Simply having a larger population than Saudi Arabia does not make it immune from being influenced or even dominated by Saudi Arabia. Egypt is currently part of the Saudi led coalition which is attacking Saudi enemies in Yemen.

Egypt is large, but it does not currently have the power to exert much influence on other countries.  Saudi Arabia by contrast, through its money, and increasingly through its military capabilities, does have that ability.  It is by far the most influential Arab state in today’s world.

Prediction:

The above two points being made, my prediction is that, under a brave king, Saudi Arabia will be the state to occupy the space currently occupied by the Islamic State.

Why?

1.       The Sunni Arabs of this region will prefer Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia to Shia dominated Iraq or Alawite controlled Syria.

2.       Saudi Arabia is a very traditionally Islamic state and is the keeper of Islam’s two most holy sites so to those locals who previously used religious rhetoric to support the Islamic State, Saudi Arabia will be an acceptable (even supportable) replacement.

3.       Saudi Arabia has the necessary internal and institutional strength for conducting an annexation of territory.  It has a compliant population who like to see their nation acting strongly and their military institutions are working well enough to conduct a sophisticated air campaign against Yemen and lead a 10 country coalition.  King Salman also  has particularly good support within the country’s power hierarchies after 48 years as the governor of Riyadh, during which time he was frequently used by the monarchy as the main man for healing rifts between factions and disciplining minor royals.  Tasks which show the high level of respect with which he was and is regarded and the great position he has enjoyed to build personal relationships and alliances within Saudi Arabia’s power structures.

4.       Saudi Arabia’s domestic policies make them particularly capable of dealing with the Islamic State zealots once they capture the area.  Saudi Arabia has already, in the time of its founder Ibn Saud, eradicated ultra-intolerant religious extremists by wiping out entire villages where some violently extremist forms of Wahhabism (a strain of Islam) had taken route.  Saudi Arabia can still act in this sort of dramatic but effective way as it is not accountable to any liberal/human rights focussed discourse within its political structures.  It is not a democracy. Its king is not accountable to any western notions of human rights and for the most part the Saudi population would probably view clemency for such violent enemies of the state as Islamic State as weakness.

5.       Saudi Arabia is made more acceptable to the local population by virtue of its proud history of creating itself through a process of tribal warfare rather than being a country created by western colonial powers.

6.       The area now controlled by Islamic State is a very attractive target of annexation to Saudi Arabia for a number of reasons: firstly, it has two major rivers running through it, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and Saudi Arabia is very water poor and in need of both water and arable land; secondly, the area currently occupied by Islamic State does not possess any major cities, thus if annexed it would not significantly change the power balances within Saudi Arabia.  If Saudi Arabia annexed an area with a city like Damascus in it, for example, that city would soon begin to exert an influence on the internal political dynamics of the country simply by virtue of its population and economic clout.  And given that cities tend to produce more liberal, secular and cosmopolitan views, the influence of a city like Damascus within the country might cause problems for the monarchy and their current ruling institutions.  By comparison the area currently ruled by Islamic State would be an ideal addition to the country possessing as it does a more traditionally minded rural and small town population along with the resources of water and arable land that Saudi Arabia would dearly like to possess.

7.       Although generally speaking the United States, and the western world, do not like the idea of borders changing and states expanding, they will nonetheless find very little to say against such an annexation by a former stalwart ally, particularly given the nature of the regime they will be replacing and the difficulty that any western liberal democracy would have in eradicating the Islamic State zealots from among the local population.

So, it can be seen that Saudi Arabia is essentially ideally constituted to annex the current territory of the Islamic State, so long as they are led by a brave king who is capable of seizing the opportunities that are presented to him.  If he plays his cards right he might even be welcomed in as a liberator by a significant proportion of the local population and hailed as a hero by the rest of the world.

Keep an eye out for ‘A Brave King - Part Three’