TWO YOUNG LEADERS, HISTORY, WAR-THREATS AND IMPRECISE SPEECH

NORTH KOREA AND SAUDI ARABIA BOTH THREATEN WORLD PEACE



Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The US is faced with a growing threat of war—in North Korea, with a recalcitrant, young, inexperienced, nuclear-armed leader: Kim Jung Un.  And half way around the globe an even more tense situation is developing in the Middle East.  No, not between the Arabs and Israelis, but between Sunni and Shia  Moslem sects represented by Saudi Arabia and Iran. This other hot spot for war—around the world from North Korea—and with another too young, inexperienced leader is being championed by our government, but is more of a threat to world peace than North Korea. In both cases careless and imprecise speech can tip the balance toward disaster.

Saudi Arabia (SA) is a  nation governed as if it existed in the Middle Ages.  It is a an anachronistic 21st Century absolute monarchy.  There is no constitution, bill of rights, or meaningful representative parliament. The people do not have the right to pick their own leaders.  Political power is transferred not by election, but by fiat and inheritance among the so called “royal” family.  Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest nations in the world due to its production and massive reserves of petroleum. It is also in what seems the absolute control of a young and inexperienced  young leader—Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  A mere four years ago this young man was a wet-behind-the-ears 28 year-old apprentice attorney.  Then his uncle— King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia—died—-bringing Salman’s  aged father to the throne in 2015.

The new king is elderly, weak physically, and reputedly suffering from dementia. He has essentially given the levers of real power to his  young son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.   The young man was swiftly ushered through the Arabian  equivalent of a Roman “cursus honorum”. In short order, Salman was transformed into the most powerful, youngest and most inexperienced head of state in Saudi Arabia’s history.

Prince Salman took over the reins of power at a time when the world is experiencing an oil glut.  SA is no longer flush with petro-dollars thanks to a business down-turn and new US geo-technology (fracking) that has the potential to keep prices low.  In these dire economic circumstances Saudi Arabia, a nation inured to spendthrift  habits,  has quickly  burned through a third of its financial reserves.  But young Salman ignored the need for spending restraint and cut backs.  Instead, he turned to brash and dangerous behaviors at home and abroad to strengthen his position of domestic power and muffle the  hollow sounds from the coffers of the SA treasury.   At home, he ordered the arrest of 11 princes of his own family, and nearly 200 members of the nation’s business and political elite.  He is rumored to have tortured these wealthy elite and stripped them of their wealth. Others are forced to release their assets to him for a pardon, or for better treatment in prison.  His actions frightened the investment community which has reacted by retreat and shunning new SA investment.  He blockaded the tiny nation state of Qatar, threatening them financially and militarily.  He brow beat other Arab Sunni states to do the same.   He intervened militarily in Yemen against the Houthi rebels (a Shia group) who were fighting a civil war against an unpopular and tyrannical Sunni leader.   His US supplied and supported air force has illicitly bombed civilian targets with abandon, killing tens of thousands of civilians and bringing world condemnation.  These actions pushed that desperately poor nation to the edge of a humanitarian health and famine crisis.  The Yemen war is not growing well for SA and the Houthis still control most of the nation and its capital.  He has attempted to destabilize neighboring Lebanon by recalling Saudi associated Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (a Sunni) to SA and placing him in house arrest in Riyadh.  And while there, he had reputedly forced Hariri to resign his political post in Lebanon in an attempt to undermine the Lebanese government. These military and foreign policy adventures have gained him little, and cost a great deal to the treasury and to the reputation of Saudi Arabia.

But most egregiously he seems eager to start a war with Iran a neighbor-state which he sees as a religious and regional competitor.  Saudi Arabia on its own is not a military match for populous,  powerful, technically advanced, Iran, governed by the Shia mullahs.   Such a war would be a world wide  disaster, drawing in the major powers including the USA and Russia.

The danger is that as in North Korea, there is no one counseling restraint to this brash young, inexperienced leader the Prince of Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Trump is preoccupied elsewhere—-with another young and inexperienced despot.  He also seems to be making the same mistake that the Bush (41) foreign policy team made just prior to the First Gulf War.  At that time, again during a period of sagging oil prices, Saddam Hussein had  massed troops on its border, threatening its  neighbor Kuwait.   Saddam claimed Kuwait was cheating Iraq of billions of dollars in oil sales.  It was true.  He was hopping mad because Kuwait was pumping oil in excess of OPEC’s quotas. Pumping quotas were set by OPEC to buoy oil prices. Kuwait ignored the quotas which helped to sustain the oil glut and suppress oil prices—costing Iraq and other producers.    But Kuwait’s excess oil production was in large part produced by secret  “slant drilling”.  Sending their oil pipes under the Iraq border and into Iraq’s own oil reservoir.  So in effect, Kuwait was keeping prices low—harming Iraq’s profits—by pumping and selling off—not its oil,  but Iraq’s oil! Iraq’s anger was justified.

President George Bush (41)  sent Iraqi Ambassador April Gillespie to confront Saddam about the massed troops and saber rattling on 25th of July 1990.  But she seems to have failed to make it clear to the Iraqi despot  that the US would vigorously object to any attack on Kuwait. Transcripts of her conversations seem to indicate that she directed Saddam to “take care of this Arab issue yourself”. In the end Saddam Hussein seems to have concluded that the US objections were only of the vigorously verbal sort.  He assumed Bush would NOT field a US army to save Kuwait from Saddam’s anger.  He was very much mistaken.

In retrospect Bush and Gillespie could have avoided the First Gulf War and perhaps the even more disastrous  aftermath and continuation of that war —Bush junior’s Iraq War and what has been described as “the worst blunder in American foreign policy” — had the first President Bush and his envoy been perfectly clear in their language regarding the consequences of the invasion of  Kuwait with Saddam.  They were not!  Imprecise speech permitted or helped to precipitate a horrible war.

In the present situation, Mr. Trump, who  starts with a handicap since he habitually speaks, loosely and imprecisely in his  easily misinterpreted New York dialect.  He should NOT make the same mistakes of IMPRECISE SPEECH perpetrated by Bush (41) and April Gillespie in 1990 which resulted in disaster.

President Trump on his first foreign trip abroad to Saudi Arabia has already spoken carelessly and unwisely when he made the error of lauding the Saudi monarchy with unnecessary complimentary language, giving the impression (perhaps falsely) that he supported the policies of the Prince.   At a later date he unwisely supported brash young and inexperienced Prince Salman in regard to the  Quatar blockade.  Our US military support of SA in the humanitarian disaster in Yemen continues to this day.  And to make matters worse, our President  continues to verbally attack the Iranian leadership...as he was wont to do during the loose “get me elected” speech of the campaign.  His campaign speech for domestic consumption does not  belong in the sphere of diplomacy,   And now, sadly and with a threat to us all, he seems to be repeating the mistakes of Bush 41 and April Gillespie—by sending the wrong and misleading messages as he cuts the deck bindings of  a loose cannon in the Middle East.  Perhaps President Trump is not aware of how former President Bush stumbled into a disastrous war in 1990 with misleading imprecise language.

It was George Santayana who reminded us that: “Those who do not know the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.”

Let’s hope someone reminds him of Bush 41 and the Gulf War.

Trump must make  it clear to Prince  Mohammed bin Salman that a war with Iran is off the table.