ABOUT rrrc Insert
The United States Institute of Peace is an inde-
pendent, nonpartisan federal institution created
by Congress to promote the prevention, manage-
ment, and peaceful resolution of international
conflicts. Established in 1984, the Institute meets
its congressional mandate through an array of
programs, including research grants, fellowships,
professional training, education programs from
high school through graduate school, conferences
and workshops, library services, and publications.
The Institute’s Board of Directors is appointed by
the President of the United States and confirmed
by the Senate.
BOARD or DIRECTORS
J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Wash-
ington, D.C. e Maria Otero (Vice Chair), President, ACCION
International, Boston, Mass. ' Betty F. Bumpers, Founder
and former President, Peace Links, Washington, D.C. 0
Holly J. Burkhalter, Director of U.S. Policy, Physicians
for Human Rights, Washington, D.C. e Chester A.
Crocker, James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic
Studies, School of Foreign Sen-ice, Georgetown University
' Laurie S. Fulton, Partner, Williams and Connolly,
Washington, D.C. ' Charles Homer, Senior Fellow, Hudson
Institute, Washington, D.C. ~ Seymour Martin Lipset,
Hazel Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University
e Mora L. McLean, President, Africa-America Institute,
New York, N.Y. ' Barbara W. Snelling, former State
Senator and former Lieutenant Governor, Shelbume, Vt.
MEMB6 DI MIG)
Michael M. Dunn, Lieutenant General, U.S.
Air Force; President, National Defense University ' Barry
F. Lowenkron, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor e Peter W. Rodman, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
' Richard H. Solomon, President, United States
Institute of Peace (nonvoting)
v In the near term, the U.S. and Saudi perspectives on Iraq will be quite similar, with
both countries tightly focused on restoring peace and order, and preventing the
propagation of terrorism spurred by the fighting in Iraq. Beyond that, however, there
is ample room for divergence. Saudi Arabia values its ties to Washington, but its abil-
ity to cooperate with U.S. policy vr/ill be limited by regional and domestic pressures.
Riyadh’s attention will frequently be distracted by the bumps and potholes on its own
developmental path. Ensuring that Saudi Arabia is a force for stability in the Gulf
rather than a source of disruption will be a continuing challenge for U.S. diplomacy.
Introduction
From the evening of August 6, 1990, when the late King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud
agreed to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney's request to deploy American troops in the
wake of Iraq's conquest of Kuwait, up to the launching of the coalition operation to oust
Saddam Hussein from power on March 19, 2003, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was the
United States’ key Arab partner in confronting problems to international stability emanat-
ing from Iraq. Throughout those years, however, the demands associated with containing
Iraq began to place unprecedented strains on the historic U.S.-Saudi relationship, strains
that erupted into the open after 9/11 and in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. These
strains have included not only differences over policy toward Iraq but also the domestic
effects in Saudi Arabia of prolonged deployments of U.S. forces, the impact on Saudi
public opinion of the violence in the Palestinian territories, and the role played by Saudi
citizens in the 9/11 attacks.
While Saudi Arabia and the United States have been strategic partners for decades, the
relationship was historically a low-key one, built primarily on shared economic interests
and the containment of communism, with any U.S. security commitment largely tacit
and, with rare and brief exceptions, out of sight. Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait
changed all that. For the first time, substantial U.S. combat forces were present in the
kingdom on a sustained basis, putting ties between the two countries under intense and
prolonged scrutiny, both from Arab-Islamic critics of the ruling family's pro-American
policies and from American critics of the kingdom's social and political systems. Moreover,
while the U.S. government has ample experience in dealing with the issues arising from
its military presence abroad, for the Saudis this was a novel and uncomfortable situation.
This abnormal situation has, in a sense, now given way to a more normal one in which
the two countries’ interests and approaches toward Iraq will converge or diverge, depend-
ing on the issue concerned. The purpose of this report is to explore how Saudi Arabia will
define its policies toward Iraq in the coming years and to what extent those policies will
tend to promote or hinder the attainment of U.S. objectives.
The Primacy of Stability
The Saudi foreign policy agenda toward Iraq, now and for the foreseeable future, can be
summed up in a single word: stability. As early as November 2003, Adel al-Jubeir, the
foreign affairs adviser to then—Crown Prince Abdullah, told a press conference in Wash-
ington, ”We are concerned that the situation in Iraq, unless we deal with it in a positive
way, could erode and unravel/'1 Within less than a year, Saudi officials were privately
describing the situation in Iraq as nothing short of chaotic, and the Saudi media had
become openly critical of the optimistic assessments of progress in Iraq coming out of
the White House.
This emphasis on stability is, in part, characteristic of the Saudi worldview in general.
On both a governmental and an individual basis, Saudis are temperamentally uncomfort-
able with disorder and unpredictability, which is why the Saudi government has tradition-
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