DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - U.S.A./SAUDI ARABIA: THE "KERNEL OF EVIL"

Kernel of Evil
BY BRET STEPHENS

Selling weapons to the Saudis is logical. But is it wise?

It's hard to fault the logic of the sale, announced last week, of $20 billion in U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia, with trinkets going to the smaller Gulf states. The wisdom of the deal is another matter.

The Wahhabi kingdom is not, as of yet, an outlaw state: It can buy large quantities of sophisticated weapons on the international arms market from whomever it chooses. If the U.S. does not sell the Saudis upgraded versions of Boeing's F-15 Eagle, the Europeans can sell additional numbers of EADS's Eurofighter Typhoon (the Saudis already have 72 of these wonderjets on order). If the U.S. doesn't sell the Saudis laser-guided "JDAM" bombs, again courtesy of Boeing, they can buy the PR-632, an equivalent munition produced by Ukraine.

There may even be some non-mercenary advantages in tying the Saudi military to ours. When Washington cut its longstanding military-to-military ties with Islamabad in October 1990, after the U.S. "decertified" Pakistan as a non-nuclear state, the Pakistani military didn't simply mend its ways. Instead, what was once the most pro-Western institution in the country--thanks to generations of Pakistani officers trained at Sandhurst and the U.S. Army War College--came increasingly under the sway of Islamists. No need to repeat that experience with Riyadh. Then, too, as long as the Saudis operate U.S. military equipment, they remain dependent on us for training, maintenance and upgrades. The Iranian regime learned that lesson the hard way when they inherited the Shah's F-4s, F-14s and C-130s, but lost access to the planes' spare parts.

Yet the wisdom of arming the Saudis hinges in no small part on Riyadh remaining for the next few decades what it has been for the past six: a nominal ally of the U.S. It hinges, too, on the likelihood that the deal will advance American interests, and not just those of the Boeing Corporation, much as the two are sometimes confused. In both cases there is considerable room for doubt.

...

Back in 2002, a Rand Corporation analyst named Laurent Murawiec gave a briefing to the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board, in which he described Saudi Arabia as the "kernel of evil... active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Every word of that is true. Yet the administration walked a mile to distance itself from his remarks and Mr. Murawiec lost his job. Too bad. Had his advice been heeded then, we might not be trapped today by the weird logic of arming our false friends.




Pertinent Links:

1) Kernel of Evil