Today, we present an interview with Chas Freeman, President of the Middle East Policy Council, and U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, on the state of the US-Saudi relationship. Ambassador Freeman discussed governmental relations, the business sector situation and the need for Americans and Saudis to each take responsibility for strengthening the relationship from their respective sides. 

SUSRIS thanks Ambassador Freeman for taking time to share his insight with our readers. The interview, by phone from Washington, DC, was conducted in late June, before the Lebanon crisis erupted, and therefore doesn't include comments on that development.

SUSRIS: Thank you for sharing your insight into the health of the US-Saudi relationship. Over a year ago President Bush hosted Crown Prince Abdullah, who became King a few months later, at the Western White House in Crawford. Some observers saw the meeting as a milestone in post-9/11 relations, a signal that the two sides were back on track. Where do you see the relationship at this point?

Ambassador Chas Freeman: I think, in effect, we have bottomed out and maybe are making a bit of a comeback. But it comes in the context of a very severe deterioration in the United States� relationships with the Arab and Muslim worlds which has been documented in repeated polling data including one I saw in the Washington Post today.

US-Saudi relations have always been viewed in the context of broader US-Arab relations. In many ways, as I have reminded those in the Arab world who tend to experience Schadenfraude when they look at the deterioration of US-Saudi relations, Americans really don�t make the same distinctions between Saudis and other Arabs as would be made by the Saudis. If Saudi Arabia is seen negatively that is  something that should be of deep concern to all Arabs and Muslims. The survey I referred to, the Pew Centers Global Project, details a deep divide between Muslims and Westerners.

The relative stability in US-Saudi relations reflects Crawford and efforts by both the Administration here and especially by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. Those efforts include initiatives like the opening of the �Strategic Dialogue,� the effort to remove some of the more egregious barriers to travel, thereby restoring the flow of students to American universities, and so forth. These steps, along with the excellent cooperation against terrorism, have served to stabilize things but the enemies of the relationship are not silent. They continue, as the recent textbook articles suggest, to seize any opportunity they can to amplify attacks on Saudi Arabia by the critics of the Kingdom. In this case the critics happen to be trying to advance the cause of Shia self-determination in the Eastern Province. So what you have is a stabilized relationship but one that is not advancing in any important way.

SUSRIS:  That�s in the government-to-government sphere?

Freeman: Yes, the government relationship. When you say stabilized, if you are talking about popular attitudes the fact that they are stabilized is not necessarily good because they are stabilized in a highly negative state on both sides. It would be hard to refute the thesis that Saudi Arabia has been successfully vilified in the American mind and vice versa. And in the minds of Saudis the United States is not favorably regarded anymore.

SUSRIS: Where do you see the situation can be improved by those who believe the relationship is important and needs to be strengthened?

Freeman: Well I think you have just put your finger on it. The only way this relationship is going to be rebuilt is based on the interests of the respective sides. That means that Americans must rediscover and recognize the very significant interest we have in cooperation with the Kingdom and our need to have a stable and cordial relationship with the Kingdom. 

That�s been pushed aside in recent years. I don�t want to belittle the utility of each side engaging in public diplomacy toward the other, but frankly Americans are going to have to make an American argument for an improved relationship with Saudi Arabia for any significant improvement to happen on our side. Similarly on the Saudi side Saudis will have to make their own arguments about why they need to improve the relationship with the United States. So far I�ve seen more arguments on the Saudi side to that end than I have on the US side. 

SUSRIS: What role should American businesses play in improving the relationship? 

Freeman: The business community, at least in the United States, and I think this is probably true in Saudi Arabia as well, is reluctant to take on questions that they think are essentially national security issues. This is not an area in which business people feel comfortable. They do not like to open themselves to image problems that come from appearing to question whatever the conventional wisdom might be, whatever the tests for patriotism might be. 

In the current period there are very strong negative attitudes towards the Arabs in general and Saudi Arabia in particular which deter American businesses from doing what they ought to be doing in their own interests. That�s the first thing. 

We know what the impediments are. Let me begin with the difficulty of securing visas, which is why efforts must be made to improve the situation. Here I would say again, Saudi Arabia is in effect not unique. It is a microcosm of a broader issue. The United States in 2000 had about 9% of the global tourist market. We are now at 6% and declining. That reflects image issues, it reflects anti-Americanism, it reflects visa and other travel obstacles, it reflects concerns about personal security of people in the United States and many other things. These all, in turn, affect business and tend to depress it. 

The United States has over the past five years isolated itself more and more from the world. We are obviously very much a part of the world but our relationships with other countries generally are far less open than they once were. Saudi Arabia has been one of the countries from which we have, at the popular level, distanced ourselves the greatest. 

I think this is the issue. You start with the fact that the business community is reluctant to engage on national security issues, and then the fact that for one reason or another Saudi Arabia is not an expanding market for American business even though it is expanding for most other countries, and that reduces the incentive to take the issue on. 

So I wouldn�t look to the business community for anything but a minimal sustaining role. I don�t think they will lead the charge. In fact, American interests that dictate a good relationship with Saudi Arabia obviously include the economic relationship but go well beyond that. If we can find an appropriate footing for a broader relationship with the Islamic and Arab worlds, Saudi Arabia will again, as it has been in the past, be key to developing that. 

SUSRIS:  What other areas concern you?

Freeman: We obviously have an interest in energy security but I don�t see any real evidence that we have any program for advancing our energy security either in cooperation with the Saudis or without them. That is in contrast to Sino-Saudi relations and the proposed Saudi owned and operated Strategic Petroleum Reserve in China that emerged from President Hu Jintao�s visit to Riyadh earlier this year. 

On the military side we don�t have the level of activity and cooperation that we once did, and clearly we have developed misunderstanding about the issue of Islam and the role of Saudi Arabia as the Custodian of the Holy places in Islam. 

The United States is not seen in Saudi Arabia or in the Arab world as being particularly helpful on the Palestinian issue or other issues of concern to Arabs. We are bogged down in an ambush in Iraq with no apparent means of extricating ourselves while accomplishing anything. And finally we have the continuing, in fact escalated, difficult situation in Afghanistan, which also tends to inflame opinion on both sides over issues related to Islam. 

So I think there are a lot of factors that suggest we have important things to do together, but we are not really doing them. 

SUSRIS:  You mentioned a misunderstanding of the role of Saudi Arabia as the Custodian of the Holy Places. In what ways is the United States not reading that and utilizing it to our advantage?

Freeman: Well I think the Saudis in fact have gone through various evolutions over the years in terms of their relationship to the broader Muslim world. There is no doubt that for reasons related to their desire to counter pan-Arabism in an earlier era they chose to define themselves in largely Islamic terms. Their own tradition of Islam, the dominant tradition, is Salafi and therefore puritanical. They spent a fair amount of money to ensure that their particular vision of Islam was exported more broadly in the Muslim world. So there is a tradition of Saudi activism which we found very helpful in an earlier era when America�s primary concern was the contest with the Soviet Union. 

Now we have a different set of issues.  I think the Saudis are attempting to provide alternatives to the extremist versions of Islam that have now become associated with terrorism. As I have said on numerous occasions the Saudis are doing an excellent job dealing with terrorism on their own soil. They have been very effective at discrediting the terrorists' ideology and the religious doctrine that is perverted to justify it. They have succeeded in co-opting or providing amnesty or otherwise causing the defection of people who might be terrorists before they actually commit terrorist acts, and finally, they have ruthlessly suppressed those who are actively engaged in terrorist acts. 

The first part of that is addressing the issue of religious justifications for criminal terrorist behavior. The Saudis are doing so very vigorously but we don�t seem to have found any basis for cooperating with them on it even though I think we have a major interest in doing so. Saudi Arabia, just because of its custody of Mecca and Medina and its character as an entirely Muslim nation, is a natural leader in the Muslim world and we would benefit greatly by working with it to ensure that that leadership was exercised in a way that served our common interests. I think the Saudis are doing everything that they can to behave responsibly but I don�t see us engaging them on this and that is what I meant about misunderstanding Saudi Arabia�s leadership role in Islam. 

SUSRIS:  Let�s talk about another important player on the American side. How do you see the often troubled relationship between Congress and Saudi Arabia evolving from this point.

Freeman:  One has to start by recognizing that again the Saudis are far from unique in experiencing potentially gratuitous insults from Congress intended to appeal to domestic constituencies without actually accomplishing anything. This sort of symbolic �feel good� insulting behavior is something that has been applied by Congress to many countries. I believe the United States has sanctions in one form or another in place against over a hundred countries. So Saudi Arabia is perhaps one of the current principal targets of this sort of behavior, but it�s not unique.

I think the broader issue is: can the United States afford to alienate friends and insult countries all around the world, or is this in the end contrary to American interests and ultimately debilitating and destructive of our influence and therefore subversive of our power in the world?

I think this kind of behavior is generally extremely counter productive, and Saudi Arabia is not an exception in this regard. Unfortunately it is a bad habit the Congress has gotten into because of its sense that the United States is militarily so powerful that we can do what we wish. In the end certainly we are militarily vastly more powerful than anyone else, but the military dimension is far from the only one in international relations. Arrogance and �holier than thou� stances of one sort or another are basically more likely to injure us than they are to accomplish anything in the real world. In other words, I object to the general Congressional pattern of behavior which I am sorry to say is not limited to any one country. It�s far from unusual and it is no way to conduct foreign relations.

SUSRIS: Turning to the regional issues on the table for US and Saudi leaders, are we on the same sheet of music with Riyadh in dealing with the situations in Iraq and Iran?

Freeman: Well again I think we are not sufficiently engaged with the Saudis. I find it ironic that our Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been authorized to conduct discussions with the Iranians about the internal Iraqi situation, but that there is no comparable effort to talk with Iraq�s Arab neighbors, or the Turks, our friends in other words, about this. I should think that in addition to talking to one�s adversaries, and clearly Iran is an adversary in this context, one should be talking closely to and hoping for cooperation from one�s traditional allies and friends. 

The Saudi attitude on Iraq has fully reflected their desire to maintain and rebuild a relationship with the United States. They have not contradicted us in spite of their distaste and disagreement with what we are doing. Riyadh has also tried very hard not to get dragged in to the Iraq civil strife, even though clearly their sympathies are very much with the beleaguered Sunni minority in the center of the country. 

I think they are part of the solution, if there is a solution. The Saudis and others in the region see Iraq as a potential twenty first century version of the Spanish Civil War -- in which Iraqis fight Iraqis for their own reasons but enlist the support of neighbors and others and become unwitting accomplices in a proxy war among those greater powers. Alternatively they fear Iraq could be the cockpit for which some sort of Islamic version of the Thirty Years War in Central Europe, in which Catholics and Protestants who had coexisted uncomfortably but nonetheless had coexisted for many years suddenly began to slaughter each other. 

You could see that in Iraq, and I think people are concerned whether they are Sunni or Shia, or Arab or Iranian, they are concerned that Iraq not become the point at which a broader Sunni-Shia struggle in the world of Islam is ignited. 

The Saudis have things to contribute in terms of stabilizing or buttressing any effort inside Iraq that produces a more sustainable internal order than we have yet seen. I think we should be much more active in reaching out to them for advice, counsel and support for such an effort. Frankly I think at this point we should be looking at Iraq not as a military issue requiring military solutions but as a political problem requiring a peace process. Not only among Iraqis but among Iraq and all its neighbors including Saudi Arabia as well as Iran.

SUSRIS: What about Iran? Where do you see the Washington-Riyadh relationship in dealing with Tehran on the nuclear question?

Freeman: Well I think that there certainly is a common objective, which is to have Iran not develop nuclear weapons. This is very much a long-standing Saudi interest and it�s clearly emerged as an important American interest. Where the differences exist is over what appropriate steps to take to prevent it. Here the Saudis are much closer to our European allies and others than they are to us.

I don�t think they consider the use of force against Iran likely to be productive, in fact I think they consider it likely to be disastrous. For their own very solid reasons of national interest, and out of agreement with the fundamental objectives that we have of precluding an emergence of a nuclear Iran, they are very active in a very helpful way and I think that is recognized favorably in Washington.

SUSRIS:  Any last thoughts on the relationship? Where we are? Where we are going?

Freeman: Well I think this relationship really has become bound up in a whole series of broader issues which are certainly beyond the capacity of those dealing with bilateral US-Saudi relations to resolve. Fundamental improvement in the relationship awaits not just arguments by Americans for American interests in an improved relationship which I believe will come in due course but also some alteration in the regional context. That means a resolution of the mess in Iraq and a serious effort to achieve a peace that is agreed and therefore likely to last between the Israelis and the Palestinians. 

The Saudis have made it clear for many years, and most recently in the Beirut Declaration, that if there were a genuine bargain struck between Palestinians and Israelis, one that neither perhaps particularly liked but each found acceptable and in some sense fair, and therefore sustainable, they would do their part. 

We need to see some effort to address the broader context if we are to address the issue of terrorism. We can also hope for a reengagement between Americans and Saudis that will undo some of the very unfortunate shift in image that has affected both sides of the relationship.

SUSRIS:  Thank you, Ambassador Freeman. 

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).  

• Ambassador Freeman Bio

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• Part 4 - Don N. De Marino, Chairman, National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce (as of 4.17)

• Part 5 - William A. Reinsch, President, National Foreign Trade Council (as of 4.18)

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