Nov

19

King Abdallah, Religious Harmony, and a Constructive Saudi Arabia

Filed Under MidEast Foreign Policy, Peace Deals, Saudi Arabia, religion 

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdallah is set to lead a religious conference hosted by the U.N today, with the monarch providing the opening address to the event.  While much of the commentary on this story has centered on the dialectical tension between the Saudis and religious tolerance, when viewed within the framework of the Kingdom’s foreign policy initiatives of late it reflects a sustained effort to improve Saudi Arabia’s image internationally, meanwhile solidifying its role as a key player in Middle Eastern affairs.  The King’s visit to the Vatican, the religious summits hosted by the Kingdom which culminated in the Madrid declaration signed in July, and the increased chatter about opening the country’s first Catholic church all serve to obscure the Saudi reality of religious tolerance.

The transgressions on religious freedom in Saudi Arabia are well documented and form a list that would be too tedious to repeat in this space.  The Kingdom’s international role, however, has reached new levels of stature; it has been courted by Western leaders (most notably during a recent visit by British PM Gordon Brown) to play a significant role in the handling of the latest financial crisis (no pledges of Saudi support at the last G-20 summit, but the significance of the enhanced status in the crisis speaks for itself).  The Saudis have also stepped up their roles in regional conflict resolution, exercising clout in the conflicts of Lebanon and Israel-Palestine (Obama will apparently base his MidEast peace efforts on the ‘Abdallah plan’, a road map to peace drafted in 2002.  A careful look at the language of the plan reveals how likely it is to work, but will still serve the Saudi’s well by creating constructive image of the country). (Update: Obama does not support the plan, according to peace-envoy Dennis Ross.)

All of this is to say that Saudi Arabia will likely be called on by the next U.S administration for help in cobbling together some sort of MidEast peace initiative, in large part due to a conscious effort since 2001 to improve the Kingdom’s international image.  How successful will the Saudis be?  If successful peace-talk mediation is going to come from anywhere in the Gulf, it may well be a country with a better recent track-record of MidEast solutions and less conflicting interests.

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