Playing the Diversity Card: Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy under the Salmans

ABSTRACT

Since the 2003 regime change in Iraq and the 2011 Arab uprisings, the political map of the Middle East has been in flux. Regional actors have taken advantage of emerging windows of opportunity, which have affected the outcome of this process. Saudi Arabia’s role as an aspiring regional hegemon in the region is salient: the country’s assertive course in shaping its neighbourhood coincides with a more independent foreign policy that goes beyond the traditional US alliance and seeks to diversify its international partners. This diversification of Saudi foreign policy since the ascension to the throne of King Salman in 2015 is explained by using the IR concept of hedging.

KEYWORDS:

• Saudi Arabia
• foreign policy
• Arab uprisings
• hedging
• regime survival

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the Congress of the German Political Science Association, GPSA/DVPW (Frankfurt, 2018) and the annual Congress of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, BRISMES (Leeds, 2019).

Notes

¹ Prince Mutaib belongs to the Abdallah branch of the Al Saud family, in contrast to the Salmans, who belong to the influential ‘Sudairi-seven’ of the royal family. Mutaib, reported to be well-connected in the Al Saud family and its different wings, is perceived as a leading prince of the grandsons’ generation, but he has never been a serious threat to the crown prince. However, SANG was run by former King Abdallah and then by his son Mutaib for 51 years, making it a type of family fiefdom of the Abdallah family and thus a possible source of opposition for MBS. Traditionally, top positions in ministries or state institutions were often used for intra-family branch succession. This fertile ground for networks of privilege and patronage is being shattered by the ongoing elevation of the Salman family branch within the Al Sauds and the subsequent monopolisation of decision-making.

² See, for example, the Secretary of State’s editorial in Foreign Affairs arguing that the “future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action” (Clinton 2011).

³ Empirical evidence for this argument is presented in the last part of the article.

⁴ Others do not differentiate between concept and theory, see for example Chaziza: “The concept of strategic hedging is highly underdeveloped, both in international relations theory and in security studies literature. The theory identifies mechanisms in which second-tier states can indirectly challenge the system leader in a manner going beyond soft balancing but without engaging in hard balancing behavior” (Chaziza 2015, 442).

⁵ Following Koga (2017, 9-10) we differentiate six types of hedging: 1) conventional hedging, 2) soft hedging, 3) economic hedging, (4) security hedging, (5) diplomatic hedging and (6) politico-military hedging. Meanwhile ‘strategic hedging’ as an overall category seems to be salient (Tessman and Wolfe 2011; Chaziza 2015).

⁶ Exceptions may be found (Salman et al. 2015), though with a different perspective focusing on US/Chinese hedging behavior vis-à-vis the Gulf with the international system being the primary independent variable. Another proto-exception may be Mason who, without referring to hedging, touches upon some core issues when arguing that “managed multi-dependence is a more complex approach that illustrates the ‘balancing’ and playing-off that occurs between a state and a series of powers” (Mason 2015, 8-9).

⁷ When using the term ‘aspiring hegemon’, I follow Myers’ (1991, 5) line of argument on regional hegemony, having in mind the comprehensive debate on regional powers, regionalism, and first-, second-, third-tier states in IR literature (see, for example, Fürtig 2014).

⁸ With Yemeni Houthi rebels regularly firing rockets at Saudi territory there is an increasingly critical debate (in particular in regional and international media) on the effectiveness of the Patriot missiles that is further boosted by video coverage of failing Patriot systems in various aviation platforms (The Aviationist 2019).

⁹ IAEA guidelines: “The IAEA publishes the INIR mission report on its website 90 days after its delivery to the Member State, unless the State requests in writing that the IAEA not do so” (IAEA 2018; IAEA 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Demmelhuber

Thomas Demmelhuber is Professor of Middle East Politics and Society at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.