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EDITOR'S NOTE:
The following item of interest features a transcript of remarks made by Ambassador Freeman in June at the
Center for American Progress panel titled "A Combustible Mix: Politics, Terror, Oil and the Future of the U.S.-Saudi Relationship." Ambassador Freeman addressed the question of "What are the prospects for democracy in Saudi Arabia?"
Click here to read Thomas W. Lippman's remarks from the same panel discussion.
A Combustible Mix: Politics, Terror, Oil and the Future of the U.S.-Saudi Relationship
[Part 2]
What Are the Prospects for Democracy in Saudi Arabia?
Remarks by Chas W. Freeman, Jr. �
June 15, 2004
Washington, DC
Chas W. Freeman, Jr.: I might say that five trips to Saudi Arabia in six months have been coupled with five trips to China as an antidote to the doom and gloom that one feels when one goes to Saudi Arabia as someone concerned about U.S.-Saudi relations these days. There is a tremendous contrast between what is happening inside Saudi Arabia on many levels and the state of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, notwithstanding the headlines, and I think the very serious problem of internal terrorism that has now risen. For example, over the last year and a half, the stock market in Saudi Arabia is up 125%. There is a building boom. There is tremendous bank equity. The economy is growing rapidly. Of course the non-oil sector has been doing exceedingly well, even as oil revenues have grown.�
When I went out to Saudi Arabia as ambassador in 1989, I did what I usually do when I go to places, and that is read everything I could find about the place I was going to. In the case of Saudi Arabia , this was easy because there wasn�t very much written, remarkably little for a country with which we�ve had such intimate relationships. What was written I discovered very quickly when I arrived was mostly not worth the paper that it was written on. There�s been an explosion of writing about Saudi Arabia since 9/11. I would say that there are very few things that have been written in that period that are anything but misleading, contentious or even malicious.�
It�s in that context that Tom Lippman�s book really stands out. It�s not a book about Saudi Arabia. It�s a book about the Saudi-American encounter. It�s very much from an American perspective but based on a lot of contact with Saudis. I read it with pleasure and with a sense that I was learning a lot of things I didn�t know. Therefore, it you want to get a balance view of this relationship and its history, I don�t think you can do much better than pick up the work that Tom did -- end of commercial. He didn�t pay me for that. [Laughter.]
Tom mentioned that we�ve given Saudis the notion of paper money. That is true but it is particularly ironic because of course because paper money originated in China and Japan and came to us through the Islamic world in the Mediterranean trade in the Middle Ages. It�s also an illustration, therefore, of how out of it Saudi Arabia was within that Islamic context as well as how new its arrival in the modern world is.
�In fact, Tom says in his book, that there�s been remarkably little change in Saudi Arabia on some levels. And, I take issue with that. I think what he documents in his book is the most remarkable pace of change from a living standard and a way of life similar to that of Mauritania to something very, very different over a very short period of time. I think part of the problem in Saudi Arabia that they are now experiencing is sort of a future shock.
One other comment about the book, the book documents what Saudis know about the United States, mainly that they owe a huge debt of gratitude to many Americans who gave their professional lives or significant chunks of them to helping the kingdom to modernize and who extended the hand of friendship to hundreds of thousands of Saudi students in the United States over the course of decades. That Saudi sense of intimacy with Americans was never shared by Americans en masse about Saudis. The imbalance in the relationship where Saudis knew us well and where we knew little or misunderstood them is at the root of much of the problem at the present.
The problems at present are being aggravated and consolidated over the long term, and I�m sorry to say, by a virtual collapse in travel and exchange of students. Visa applications brought by Saudis to come to the United States are now about 15% of what they were three years ago. There�s a billboard on the way in from King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh to the city, which says, �Visas in 24 hours, Embassy of the U.K.� They don�t have to say who they are competing with because if we put up a billboard, it would say, �Visas in a month or more, maybe. And guaranteed harassment on arrival at JKF as well as every other airport in the United States if you travel around.�
The huge number of Saudis who used to come here for summer vacation will be absent this year again, and they will go elsewhere. Saudis who had homes here, and there were 100,000 of them, have sold those homes. There are at most, a couple, a thousand students left, mostly finishing their programs and not being replaced by new applicants. So, the next generation of Saudis far from remembering the United States with gratitude and Americans with affection, will remember us as the occupiers of Iraq and the supporters of Israeli brutality in the West Bank and Gaza, maybe not Gaza if Israel pulls out.
I think, however, perhaps the most unnoticed impact is in the business area. Saudi Arabia was for a long time, 50% of the U.S. market between Morocco and India. There is always a lag in statistics. If you were to order an aircraft, you�d get it in five or six years later if you�re lucky. If you order any capital good, and Saudi Arabia is a major importer of American capital goods, there�s a similar lag. You can�t sell things to people who can�t visit your showroom. You can�t transfer technology when you�re unable to trade with people who must use the technology in your facilities. It is virtually impossible now to have a business meeting in the United States or to arrange a training program or to bring anyone here on a timely basis to view a product. So, there really is a widespread collapse going on in U.S. business with the kingdom or broadly in the Arab and Islamic worlds. And, I�m sorry to say even more broadly, internationally.��
In the case of China with which we have a vigorous business relationship and which one would not expect to be caught up in the vagaries of homeland security visa regulations, we find now that there are more Chinese students in the U.K. than there are in the United States. We are essentially isolating ourselves from Saudi Arabia. We are also isolating ourselves from the world, and we�re guaranteeing the next generation of Americans and Saudis will know even less about each other than the last one. In the meantime, of course, Americans read the headlines about attacks on residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the slaying of individual American workers. And, they don�t want to go to Saudi Arabia to sell their products or provide their services. So, it works both ways.
Now, who gains from this? Well, the people who have set out to do it -- Al Qaeda, which has as its principle objective the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy through the removal of American support for that monarchy and the attenuation if not elimination of American and other Western relationships with Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries. Some very misguided Americans, many of them associated with AIPAC, who believe the United States should really only have one friend in the Middle East, mainly Israel, and see any other relationship as some sort of zero-sum game, and who therefore are eventually piling on as Saudi Arabia thrashes around in the throes of political difficulty and achieves a kind of status of political incorrectness in the United States that is essentially irrefutable.
Tom mentioned at the end of the Joint Economic Commission, during the Clinton Administration, both in the book and today expressed some bewilderment about why that happened. The Joint Economic Commission was indeed a remarkable, self-funded Saudi aid program to Saudi Arabia itself from the United States. But, it ended for a simple reason, which I think needs to be recognized as one of the changed features of the kingdom, mainly the kingdom was in a sort of chapter 11 status during the Clinton Administration, having gone from zero national debt prior to the 1990-91 Gulf War. Saudi Arabia basically financed much of that war on the basis of an economy the size of that of the state of Georgia, not the size of the United States. And, it went from zero national debt to 55% of GDP, the equivalent of the U.S. spending at that time about $6 trillion in unbudgeted money, virtually within seven months. This financial laming, which came on top of a bad habit of deficit financing, drawn up in the earlier period of the eighties, had brought Saudi Arabia to the point where it could no longer afford the Joint Economic Commission or any other financially burdensome conditions.
Who loses from these trends that I have mentioned? Well, clearly the Saudi Arabian middle class, the cosmopolitan element of Saudi Arabia that looks to a continued process of modernization in the kingdom, including political transformation toward greater transparency and more popular participation and decision-making avails. Arguably, the monarchy does not lose because the effect of the terrorist acts drives the people and the royal family together in a stronger alliance rather probably than divide them. The other big looser is us Americans. We will no longer have the influence or the reliable friendship to call upon that we had in Saudi Arabia. And, there will not be the pressure on the Saudis to cut us the slack they have sometimes done in the past.
So, these are a few reflections on current trends. I will end, having exhausted my time.
About the Author
Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, Jr.
succeeded Senator George McGovern as President of the
Middle East Policy Council on December 1, 1997.
Ambassador Freeman was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense for his roles in designing a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system and in reestablishing defense and military relations with China. He served as U. S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the historic U.S. mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa and Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola.
Chas. Freeman served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge'Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok (1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984). He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon's path-breaking visit to China in 1972. In addition to his Middle Eastern, African, East Asian and European diplomatic experience, he served in India.
Ambassador Freeman earned a certificate in Latin American studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, certificates in both the national and Taiwan dialects of Chinese from the former Foreign Service Institute field school in Taiwan, a BA from Yale University and a JD from the Harvard Law School. He is the recipient of numerous high honors and awards. He was elected to the Academy of American Diplomacy in 1995. He is the author of The Diplomat's Dictionary (Revised Edition) and Arts of Power, both published by the United States Institute of Peace in 1997. Ambassador Freeman is Chairman of the Board of Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based business development firm that specializes in arranging international joint ventures, acquisitions, and other business operations for its American and foreign clients. He also serves as Co-Chair of the United States-China Policy Foundation and Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He is a member of the boards of the Institute for Defense Analyses, the regional security centers of the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Washington World Affairs Council.
Previous Positions
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1995 - Present Chairman of the Board,
Projects International, Inc.
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1994-95 Distinguished Fellow, United States
Institute of Peace
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1993-94 Assistant Secretary of Defense,
International Security Affairs
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1992-93 Distinguished Fellow, Institute for
National Strategic Studies
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1989-92 U S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia
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1986-89 Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State, African Affairs
Recent Honors
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1995 Elected to American Academy of
Diplomacy
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1994 Distinguished Public Service Award
(Policy innovation in Europe)
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1994 Distinguished Public Service Award
(Contributions in Defense Policy)
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1994 Order of 'Abd Al-'Azziz, 1st Class
(Diplomatic Service)
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1991 Defense Meritorious Service (Desert
Shield/Storm)
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1991 CIA Medallion (Desert Shield/Storm)
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1991 Distinguished Honor Award (Desert
Shield/Storm)
Recent Major Publications and Writings
Source: MEPC.org
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