NO WAY OUT: THE SAUDIS WILL HAVE TO ACCOMMODATE THE UNITED STATES

Deteriorating relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have reached the lowest point ever. The American national security bureaucracy is weighing heavily on the Kingdom.

The Saudi Kingdom will have to live with a new reality: that its usefulness as agent against the Soviet Union in the cold war has now ended. It would need to find a new role to serve the United States. Too, its role as swing producer within OPEC (to keep oil prices reasonable and stable) could be coming to an end, should the United States succeed in installing a proxy regime in Iraq. Saudi Arabia's room to maneuver has thus tightened immensely, in its relations with Washington, regionally (See section below about Qatar and the end of the Gulf Cooperation Council) and domestically (See text below about the socio-economic problems.)

Unhelpful is the diffusion of political power in at least three centers: around Crown Prince Abdallah, around Prince Nayef at Interior, and around Prince Sultan at Defense (Not too much should be made of this; we have centers of power in our Executive Branch: Note the shadow national security government in the Defense Policy Board; yet we are not experiencing paralysis). The United States lacks experience in subduing a multi-pronged royal government. For each center of power shifts gears so often, to balance its relations with the United States against its need for approval from the traditionalist Islamists. All of this is done as good old politics, by one center to trump the power of the other.