THE ONGOING MARGINALIZATION OF SAUDI ARABIA

The American pressure on the Kingdom is mitigated by good relations among the elite in both countries. Consider, for instance, the warm relations between Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States and the Bush family, including the President. The Saudi elite has little choice but to stick to the United States, regardless of how heavily the national security establishment pressures the kingdom. For that elite's investment in the United States is estimated by some to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Freezing that money (and making it available to pay damages as a result of law suits) would deal that elite the blow of its life. Withdrawing that money is not as easy as it may seem, since there's nowhere else to go with such a huge amount of capital.

SPC NOTE: If ever this money is frozen, the Kingdom's royal family will break up and a good part of it will be co-opted by Islamist Iran.

Warm relations between two royal families notwithstanding (the Najdi Sauds, reliant on fundamental Islamists for political power, and the Texan Bushs, reliant on traditional Christians for the same), the American military establishment has marginalized the Kingdom. Unable to subdue it fully to serve its purposes, the United States has side-stepped the Kingdom. It has chosen Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait as its new favored clients in the Gulf. Suddenly, the Saudi rulers are no longer able to influence all the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as member-countries are fast establishing their direct relations with the United States, without need for Saudi brokerage.

Saudi Arabia's insistence that the United States desist from using the Prince Sultan Air Base in the planned (still hypothetical) invasion of Iraq contributed much to this marginalization. But that was in no way the most important reason. After all, some secret agreement could've been worked out, (and may have been,) for the use of the base (If SPC were to bet on it, SPC would not hesitate for a second in asserting that such a secret agreement has in fact been reached, and the denials by the Saudi establishment are nothing but food for public consumption). It is that the other countries, particularly Qatar, have taken it upon themselves to lure a willing and eager United States. Only with the United States in their midst could they feel secure.