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SAUDIS HINT AT U.S. DEPARTURE
The Washington Post reports today that Saudi Arabia's rulers are increasingly uncomfortable with the U.S. military presence in their country and may soon ask that it end, according to several Saudi sources. Such a decision would deprive the United States of regular use of the Prince Sultan Air Base, from which American power has been projected into the gulf region and beyond for more than a decade. ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64536-2002Jan17.html )
Senior Saudi rulers believe the United States has "overstayed its welcome" and that other forms of less conspicuous military cooperation should be devised once the United States has completed its war in Afghanistan, according to a senior Saudi official. The United States has been using a state-of-the-art facility on the Prince Sultan base that was opened last summer as a key command-and-control center during the Afghan conflict.
Ivan Eland, Cato director of defense policy studies, had the following comments:
"If the Saudi government asks the United States to withdrawal military forces from Saudi territory, the United States should regard the request as a godsend and eagerly comply. According to Saudi government officials, the American military presence in Saudi Arabia is very unpopular with the countryís population and in other Arabic countries. In addition, the Saudi government is uncomfortable playing a role in the U.S. effort to contain Iraq, which it does not perceive as a threat. If Iraqís closest neighbor no longer perceives a threat from an Iraqi military decimated by the Gulf War, then why should the United Statesóa nation a half a world away from the Persian Gulf?
"Of course, the U.S. national security community argues that U.S. military forces are needed to keep cheap oil flowing from the Persian Gulf. But the security community, for self-serving reasons, fails to talk to the economics profession about that need. Prior to the Gulf War, prominent economists from across the political spectrum noted that the United States did not need to go to war to protect the U.S. economy from high oil prices. They agreed with the findings of David Henderson, a former energy economist for the Reagan Administrationís Council on Economic Advisers: if Saddam Hussein had invaded Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Kuwait (the worst possible case), the oil price increases that Saddam could have garnered because of increased Iraqi market power would have reduced the U.S. GDP by less than half of one percent. Oil makes up such a high percentage of the exports earnings of Iraq and the other Persian Gulf oil nations that they need to sell it more than the United States needs to buy it. The worst possible case is Saudi fundamentalist radicals torching the oil wells to undermine the Saudi governmentóa scenario made more likely by public resentment of the U.S. military presence. After all, that is Osama bin Ladenís chief reason for waging a worldwide jihad against U.S. targets.
"Even if rational economic arguments are swept aside and securing Persian Gulf oil remains a goal, U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia is not needed to defend against an Iraqi military that is only 40 to 50 percent as potent as the force that was roundly trounced during the Gulf War. The Gulf War and the recent successful campaign in Afghanistan should lead to the conclusion that carrier-based airpower and heavy bombers based remotely at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean could probably stop an Iraqi armored offensive on the open desert."