Saudi Arabia and the Security Council

Isolationism, or a strategy for regional meddling?

By Brian Whitaker

"Saudi Arabia was one of the founding members of the United Nations and yet, throughout the organisation's 68-year history, it has never held a seat on the Security Council. Until recently it had also shown no desire to do so.

That changed just over a year ago when the kingdom began lobbying for membership of the Security Council and on Thursday it was duly elected – along with Chad, Chile, Lithuania and Nigeria – for a two-year term starting on January 1 next year.

Abdallah al-Mouallimi, the Saudi ambassador to the UN, hailed this as "a defining moment in the kingdom's history". There was "much to rejoice over", he said, adding that "we welcome the positive shift, as well as the challenges, of being part of the Security Council body."

A few hours later, however, the Saudi foreign ministry issued a statement thanking UN members who had supported its election but announcing that it would not be taking up its seat until the Security Council is reformed.

The statement, posted on the government news agency's website in three parts (here, here and here), continued:

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a founding member of the United Nations, is proud of its full and permanent commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, believing that commitment of all Member States, honestly, truthfully and accurately, as agreed upon and stipulated in the Charter is the real guarantee for world security and peace.

"If the Member States of the United Nations consider winning the membership of UN Security Council, which is, according to the Charter of the Organisation, the sole agency responsible for preserving world peace and security, as a high honour and a great responsibility for participating directly and effectively in the service of international issues, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia believes that the manner, the mechanisms of action and double standards existing in the Security Council prevent it from performing its duties and assuming its responsibilities towards preserving international peace and security as required, leading to the continued disruption of peace and security, the expansion of the injustices against the peoples, the violation of rights and the spread of conflicts and wars around the world.

"In this regard, it is unfortunate that all international efforts that have been exerted in recent years, and in which Saudi Arabia participated very effectively, did not result in reaching reforms required to be made to enable the Security Council to regain its desired role in the serve of the issues of peace and security in the world.

"With the current continuation of the Palestinian cause without a just and lasting solution for 65 years, which resulted in several wars threatened international peace and security is irrefutable evidence and proof of the Security Council's inability to carry out its duties and assume its responsibilities.

"The failure of the Security Council to make the Middle East a free zone of all weapons of mass destruction, whether because of its inability to subdue the nuclear programs of all countries in the region, without exception, to the international control and inspection or to prevent any country in the region from possessing nuclear weapons, is another irrefutable evidence and proof of its inability to carry out its duties and hold its responsibilities.

"Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill and burn its people by the chemical weapons, while the world stands idly, without applying deterrent sanctions against Damascus regime, is also irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out its duties and responsibilities.

"Accordingly, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, based on its historical responsibilities towards its people, Arab and Islamic nations as well as towards the peoples aspiring for peace and stability all over the world, announces its apology for not accepting membership of the Security Council until the Council is reformed and enabled, effectively and practically, to carry out its duties and responsibilities in maintaining international peace and security."

Setting aside the irony of one of the world's most reactionary countries demanding that the UN be reformed, how can we explain this sudden U-turn?

First, spending 12 months or more lobbying for a seat on the Security Council simply in order to refuse it doesn't make sense. If that had been the plan all along, the Saudi ambassador would surely have been aware of it – and clearly he wasn't.

It's also obvious that a decision to boycott the Security Council, because of its far-reaching implications for Saudi foreign policy, must have been approved – if not initiated – by the king himself. In taking this decision he appears to have over-ruled his own foreign ministry (or at least those within it who had been working towards Security Council membership) – indicating, perhaps, that there are substantial policy differences in the upper echelons of the royal family.

It is unlikely that the reasons given in the official statement for boycotting the Security Council – double standards, inaction over Syria, Palestine, etc – are the real ones. They are all well-known arguments which could have been made just as easily a year ago, before the kingdom started campaigning for its Security Council seat.

A more plausible explanation is that with several difficult decisions likely to be presented to the Security Council within the next couple of years – most notably on Syria and Iran – Saudi Arabia prefers to keep a low profile rather than having to make choices that might expose it to criticism.

In a blog post for the Atlantic Council website, Richard LeBaron
writes:

"A place on the Security Council would have provided the Kingdom with a visible platform to continue to press its objectives. Perhaps, at the crucial moment, that was part of the problem. Day-in day-out engagement on the UNSC would expose the Saudis to making choices and casting votes on highly controversial matters. 

"Behind the posturing contained in the Saudi statement could lie a fear of being forced to differ publicly with major powers on a variety of questions, without much positive result. Given their overall conservative approach and general allergy to public discussion of controversial issues, the Saudi leadership may have decided at the last minute that they just did not need the aggravation."

Staying out of the Security Council is more in line with Saudi Arabia's traditional approach to foreign policy than playing an active role within it. But LeBaron goes on to argue that the kingdom's preference for combining political influence with low visibility is becoming unsustainable – which may be why some in the foreign ministry want to pursue a different tack:

"Declining the [Security Council] seat demonstrates ineffective public diplomacy at a time when the Saudis need to focus on how to better tell their story and defend their interests in the public arena. The deep-seated Saudi preference for elite-elite secret diplomacy is not sufficient if they really wish to play a broader role on the international stage. The well-developed links with senior policymakers in the West need to be accompanied by efforts to engage publics outside the Arab world who know little or nothing about the Kingdom. 

"Enormous change is taking place under the surface in Saudi Arabia but it is largely beyond the comprehension of observers outside Saudi Arabia – and even Saudis are having difficulty processing the change that is occurring. The Saudi leadership needs to get comfortable will all the tools of public diplomacy and employ them in a systematic way if they want to gain influence on publics around the world that are suspicious if not hostile to Arabs and Islam.

"According to recent polling, they even have some work to do with their Middle Eastern neighbours. Saudis will not always win over sceptics, but Saudi Arabia will continue to limit its own influence if the country's public diplomacy is confined to awkward, ineffective, and possibly counterproductive symbolic acts."

A somewhat different interpretation comes from Nawaf Obaid (a former adviser to several Saudi princes) who argues that the kingdom's apparent isolationism is actually a step towards "a far more proactive and assertive role" in the world.

Obaid highlights the cancellation of Prince Saud al-Faisal's speech to the UN General Assembly as an example of this:

"What few seem to understand is that such a powerful gesture is not merely symbolic. Rather, it will be accompanied by concrete policy changes and rectifications in the coming months and years that are going to set the tone for a completely transformed Saudi foreign policy."

According to Obaid, this transformation involves "a shift away from western dependency and toward more local (and successful) interventionism" through reforming the Arab League and creating a regional security framework "initially consisting" of the GCC states plus Egypt, Jordan and Morocco.

"Saudi Arabia," Obaid says, "has recently proven its growing political strength in regional affairs, having successfully spearheaded resolution [sic] of the situations in Bahrain and Yemen".

If this is really what King Abdullah has in mind, Arabs should be seriously worried, as Madawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, points out:

"Saudi Arabia boasts about both its successful direct military intervention in Bahrain under a GCC umbrella and fruitful diplomacy in Yemen, but both countries remain volatile up to the present day. Suppressing a true mass movement in one country and replacing one president by his deputy in another are hardly recipes for long-term stability in the Arabian Peninsula …

"The military might that was deployed against peaceful protesters in Bahrain had one objective, namely the preservation of the monarchy at the expense of a truly representative government. Diplomacy in Yemen privileged the preservation of the status quo despite a changing of the guard, thus leaving both countries in prolonged limbo …

"A collective Arab security framework under Saudi Arabia's leadership cannot be built on tear gas and behind-the-scenes meddling in the internal affairs of its neighbours. Saudi Arabia is not a neutral arbiter of internal Arab conflicts. Yes, it has at its disposal incredible wealth, but it remains incapable of playing the leadership role in the region simply because of its own domestic situation.

"Saudi Arabia is not a political model that the Arab masses aspire to emulate, nor do they seek to become its privileged clients. They certainly desire its resources, seek access to its labour market and to grab a share of its investments abroad. Yet, it stands for all the negative political characteristics that they wished to get rid of when they occupied their capitals' squares.

"A collective security framework under Saudi leadership will be a reminder of what many Arabs do not want to return to, mainly repression and security pacts against the people and in favour of autocratic regimes.""