Saudi Arabia creating political waves

By S P SETH

Saudi Arabia’s young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has created political waves, both at home and abroad, which can easily get out of control and further destabilize and inflame the region. It is a power grab by a single-family line in the country where “power is shared and alternated among seven major families and decisions taken by consensus…” as one analyst has put it. And in the process, he has arrested all his perceived royal rivals, as well as some rich prominent businessmen and owners of three main quasi-independent private television stations on corruption charges, which is rather funny because the entire Saudi state is built on corruption where there is not much to distinguish between public and royal family finances.

And he has simultaneously raised the tempo in the region. Riyadh, for no real reasons, raised the temperature with Qatar, upped the ante with Iran, sought to destabilize Lebanon when its Prime Minister Hariri announced his resignation while in Riyadh, because of Hezbollah and Iran’s meddling in the region. Hariri’s resignation was widely attributed to Saudi pressure but, since then, he has returned to Lebanon after a detour to France where the French President Macron invited him.

One important reason for its timing, both home and abroad is the level of support Riyadh is getting from President Trump. Commenting on the arrests of some of the royals and others, Trump tweeted that: “Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years.” And in the region, Trump has encouraged Saudi Arabia to sharpen its rivalry with Iran and its ally, Hezbollah, for their meddling in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. By refusing to certify the Iran-US nuclear deal, which Riyadh had vehemently opposed, US and Saudi Arabia have forged even closer bonds that had frayed during Obama’s presidency.

Even more importantly and dangerously, Riyadh and Tel Aviv are reportedly seeking to a forge common front against Iran’s influence in the region. If it happens, this move will be a momentous change in regional geopolitics, with unpredictable results. Among other things, it would mean that the Palestinian question would be further relegated to the background. Already, the Trump administration is virtually abandoning any pretense of a two state solution.

At the same time even as the potential for a conflict with North Korea, with a likely nuclear dimension, is very much alive, another hotspot might spring up, with Saudi Arabia and Israel as partners against Iran with the US encouragement. Israel might be tempted to bomb and destroy Iranian nuclear sites.

And at home, even though Crown Prince Salman appears to have established control over all three Saudi security services, an abrupt upending of the old delicate balance of power among branches of the royal family is fraught with danger. Salman fancies himself as a modern ruler with a reform agenda of sorts, though there is no precise blueprint for this. Even moderate social reforms like some rights for women, like the right to drive a car, is likely to put him at odds with the clerical establishment.

Since 1979  when Islamic militants occupied Mecca’s Grand Mosque and were beaten back in a bloody conflict, Saudi monarchy has ruled with a pact of sorts with the country’s clerical establishment to espouse and actively promote Wahhabi version of Islam and to keep the kingdom under wraps from political, social and cultural changes. And in return the royal family had the support of the country’s clerical establishment.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman might be sincere in wanting to make some modest changes across the spectrum of Saudi society to reform and diversify the country’s economy, tone down its religious extremism and so on, but there is no institutional framework to even begin the process by antagonizing a whole lot of established stake holders, even with support from President Trump. And amassing all power in one branch of the royal family is unlikely to accomplish it in any sustained way.

And the task is massive as Thomas L. Friedman pointed out in a recent New York Times column: “Some 70 percent of Saudi Arabia is under age 30, and roughly 25 per cent of them are unemployed. In addition, 200,000 more are studying abroad, and about 35,000 of them—men and women—are coming home every year with degrees, looking for meaningful work, not to mention something fun to do other than going to the mosque or the mall.”

Friedman adds, “The system desperately needs to create more jobs outside the oil sector, where Saudi income is no longer what it once, and the government can’t keep eating its savings to buy stability.

As if this were not a huge challenge by itself, it is compounded with creating more problems in an already inflamed region. Good luck to Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, if he can do all this, with or without support from President Donald Trump!

Note; This article  first appeared in Daily Times.

Flashpoint Korea

S P SETH

The Korean peninsula is once again an active flashpoint. Indeed, 38^th parallel that underpins the 1953 armistice line, which ended hostilities, is not a peace agreement to end the war.

During the 1950-53 war, as the US forces appeared advancing towards China’s border, Beijing rushed its forces to face the challenge. Fortunately, an armistice deal was negotiated dividing Korean peninsula between communist North Korea under Chinese influence/control and South Korea largely under US influence.

By its very nature, the armistice deal is a temporary solution to halt military conflict until the two parts of Korea work towards peaceful reunification. This is proving illusory even after more than half-a-century.

 North Korea has since developed a small nuclear arsenal and is now busy putting together a missile delivery system to threaten its neighbors, South Korea and Japan, and possibly with its reach as far as the United States.

Efforts in the past, including negotiations initiated by China to include US, Russia, North Korea, China and Japan, and South Korea, didn’t make much headway. This was mainly because the US would like North Korea to freeze/dismantle their nuclear program first and then talk about political, economic and security guarantees.  Even the little progress made in the nineties fell through because the Bush regime didn’t trust North Korea carrying its part of the denuclearization deal.

Since then, their respective positions have only hardened. North Korea would only initiate nuclear denuclearization once it was convinced that the US and its allies were not working to overthrow the Kim family regime. In other words, the Kim dynasty is horribly paranoid that the US is working to destabilize and overthrow the regime.

And the proof to them is the annual joint military exercises between the US and South Korea, which Pyongyang regards as rehearsals, if not real military maneuvers, to attack North Korea. And it is about the time of the joint US-South Korea military exercises that Pyongyang goes on high alert with some dramatic nuclear and missile tests, as with recent four missile tests. Which, in turn, further raises temperatures in the US, South Korea and Japan leading to more UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea.

Here is where China’s role becomes critical. Beijing is critical of Pyongyang’s nuclear rattling and this time it has suspended coal imports from North Korea over its recent testing of missiles. It favours negotiations, a possible revival of six-power Beijing diplomatic parleys, which though didn’t work because of the irreconcilable position of both sides with deep-rooted distrust between them.

North Korea strongly believes that without its credible nuclear deterrence, backed by an effective nuclear and missile arsenal, it would have no hope of political survival.

For China, the Korean peninsula is its political and strategic backyard of sorts. During the Korean War, it fought to save North Korea’s communist regime both to ward off a threatened American advance towards its borders as well as to preserve it as a buffer against US control of South Korea.

 North Korea, however, remains a difficult customer even when overwhelmingly dependent on China as an economic lifeline. Even though it might fear the US more, Pyongyang is distrustful of China too lest it create an alternative power centre to the ruling dynasty.

Kim Jong-un, now ruling North Korea, had his uncle executed--supposedly his political mentor after young Kim took power—possibly because he was regarded as close to China.

Recently, his half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, once considered political heir to his father, was poisoned in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when about to take a flight to Macau, China, where he had been living in exile to escape from his brother’s targeting of his life. He apparently thought he would be safe in China, but Pyongyang found his transiting through Malaysia a convenient opportunity to get rid of him, which though has created a political crisis between the two countries. Malaysia is one of the few countries that had maintained diplomatic relations with North Korea.

As for China, if Kim Jong-nam was enjoying their protection it would find it hard to do anything as the murder occurred outside China. In any case, North Korea denies any involvement and indeed if the murdered person was Kim Jung-un’s half-brother. But it underlines the paranoia of the Kim regime that it is distrustful of even China that is its lifeline in so many ways.

All this time, China hasn’t been able to create a decisive political leverage within North Korea to control its erratic and dangerous policies. The murder of Kim Jong-un’s uncle, and recently of his half-brother in Kuala Lumpur, believed to enjoy some level of connections and patronage of the Chinese government would suggest that Beijing’s influence with Pyongyang is rather limited, if not tenuous.

Therefore, it is seeking to carve out a role as an ‘honest’ broker between the two sides urging them to de-escalate and return to diplomacy.  China’s Premier Li Keqiang, said at the close of the recent National People’s Congress session that the situation in Korea had become “quite tense—tension may lead to conflict, which will only bring harm to all the parties involved.”

At the same time, China is also rattled by the imminent prospect of installation of a sophisticated US missile defense system in South Korea at Seoul’s invitation as a defense measure against North Korea’s nuclear threat. China is seriously concerned at, what it perceives, a US-led regional effort (including Japan, which might also seek US THAAD missile defense arrangement) to contain/neutralize its military power.

China possibly can bring to bear more pressure on Pyongyang by further tightening the economic screws, but that has the potential of bringing down the Kim regime. However, in the absence of a carefully controlled political alternative for the Kim regime, which China apparently doesn’t have, Beijing would dread the prospect of chaos on its border with refugees from North Korea making a beeline into China.

It could also open the possibility, at some point, of East German kind reunification of North with South Korea, with the dreaded prospect of enhanced US strategic presence in the region. Considering all this, it is no wonder China wants to play the honest broker. But the problem is how to assuage Pyongyang’s paranoia and its belief that only an enhanced nuclear deterrence will save it from the enemy’s designs.

Against this backdrop, the recent China visit of Rex Tillerson, the new US secretary of state, is unlikely to make much headway.

Netanyahu finds friends in Australia

S P SETH

Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent Australia visit was widely commented here, with the media highlighting again and again its special significance as the first ever by an Israeli prime minister. Australia, in other words, now has a special kinship with Israel, more so with Netanyahu as its prime minister. Australia has always been supportive of Israel, following the US lead in the matter. But something radical happened when the outgoing Obama administration decided to abstain on a recent UN Security Council resolution calling on Israel to halt its illegitimate settlement of Palestinian territory. Till then, Israel had always counted on the US to veto all resolutions critical of Israel. And with US abstaining, the resolution was adopted making Israel an international pariah.

Of course, it doesn’t mean much as Israel has been used to flouting international opinion on this matter. And with the new President Donald Trump welcoming Netanyahu and giving him, more or less, carte blanche to do his own stuff in regard to Palestine, Netanyahu couldn’t have been happier. It was sweet revenge on Obama who was hated for promoting a two state solution and urging a halt to settlement activity in the interim; even though Obama was a great friend of Israel with an open-ended commitment to its security testified by the fact that Israel would receive the largest military aid package under the Obama administration over ten years.

The Obama administration’s promotion of negotiations for a two-state solution was genuinely considered necessary for Israel’s enduring security and regional stability and peace. But Netanyahu and his right wing cabal was not interested. They point out that a sovereign Palestinian state will end up being a terrorist outfit working to destroy Israel and a threat even to other Arab states from regional terrorism. In other words, by standing firm against a sovereign Palestinian state, Israel is not only working to ensure its own security but also helping to stabilize and secure the region.

And when Netanyahu arrived on a state visit to Australia, he was received with great fanfare notwithstanding the international censure over its settlement activities in Palestine, like the Security Council resolution on the subject. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was gushing in his welcome describing Israel as a “truly miraculous nation”, with its “most ancient history” but still at the cutting edge of technology. And he emphasized that: “We have so much in common: shared values, democracy, freedom, rule of law, two great democracies, one small in size one vast.” Really!

While prime minister Turnbull bent over backward to please his visiting Israeli counterpart, some leaders of the opposition Labour Party—two former prime ministers and two foreign ministers---advocated that Australia should follow the example of 130 other countries that now recognize Palestinian statehood. But like it has done with the rest of the world, the Israeli government is simply not interested in listening to any one, however well-meaning and sensible that advise is favouring a peaceful negotiated settlement on the basis of two states.

And why would Netanyahu pay any attention to Labour Party luminaries of a bygone era, when the country’s ruling conservative coalition was fawning over Netanyahu and largely supportive of his position. Indeed, prime minister Turnbull went so far as to pen an article in a national newspaper here taking aim at those who “insisted that the government take the side of those in the international community who seek to chastise– and it alone—for the continuing failure of the peace process.”

And he said emphatically that Australia would have voted against the Security Council resolution, which recently passed through the Council with one abstention by the then Obama administration. Which starkly contrasts with the position that New Zealand, Australia’s closest neighbour, took when it co-sponsored the resolution censuring Israel’s settlement policy.

No wonder then that Netanyahu said that, “There is no better friend [than Australia] for the state of Israel.” Even though Canberra continues to formally support a two state solution “so that Palestinians will have their own state and the people of Israel can be secure within agreed borders”, but the Palestinian entity envisaged by Israel is some sort of a local council under Israeli control and direction.

This is what Netanyahu have in mind. He is quoted as saying, “We have to make sure that Palestinians recognize a Jewish state [and by definition disenfranchise themselves] and we have to ensure that Israel has the overriding security control of the territories.” He added, “Other than that, I want the Palestinians to govern themselves…” with whatever will be left to govern. In other words, an ‘autonomous’ Palestinian entity under Israeli control and direction, if it were ever forced on the Palestinians, will ‘legitimize’ apartheid, probably, worse than the one once practiced in South Africa.

If Israel were ever interested in a negotiated settlement that would meet most of its requirements, the one reportedly worked out by the former US secretary of state, John Kerry, seemed promising. It would have involved Arab countries recognizing Israel with Tel Aviv undertaking to withdraw from much of the occupied Palestinian land. In other words, with Arab countries recognizing Israel it would meet the most substantive of its demand for security in a region that it considers hostile. But this is not the real problem. Israel simply doesn’t want to relinquish its territorial grab, and the rest is all a red herring.

During his recent visit here Netanyahu found a second home, as if. Indeed, Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister, helpfully said that, “I do not believe that there will be a lasing peace if a Palestinian state is unilaterally forced upon Israel.” And since Israel will not relinquish occupied Palestinian land, and countries like Australia are prepared to make excuses for Israel, will that create lasting peace? Very unlikely indeed! It will simply continue to make things worse.

But that is not what Netanyahu’s Australia visit was all about. He wanted to thank Australia that in the midst of so much international censure of its illegal settlement activities, Canberra was understanding and appreciative of Israel’s position and roll out a red carpet for Netanyahu during his 4-day state visit. And the two countries agreed to foster/expand cooperation in defence and cyber-security, combating terrorism, trade expansion and in other areas. At the same time, Netanyahu seemed to be sending a message to New Zealand that a state of war (of sorts) with Auckland will continue as it was now in the enemy camp for co-sponsoring the UN Security Council resolution declaring illegal its settlement activities in occupied Palestine.

Israel remains above law

S P SETH

Israel is one of the few countries in the world that can get away with murder. It has evicted, killed and occupied Palestinian lands and still able to pronounce that they are the real victims. Of course, they (the Jews) have been among the most persecuted people in the world, as evidenced by the holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. But to somehow punish the Palestinian people for something they had nothing to do with—the persecution of Jews--- is twisted history. The argument that the present day Israel and the contiguous Palestinian land is traditional Jewish homeland and the Jews have only returned to what had always belonged to them tends to turn logic upside down. By this logic, the Palestinians and Arabs were occupiers of traditional Jewish homeland and by evicting them from it where they have lived for centuries, Israel was simply righting the wrong done to them. Therefore, Israel is within its right to occupy the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem. Much of the world was not convinced of Israel’s twisted logic, and regarded Israel’s expanded system of settlements on Palestinian territory as illegal. But Israel has got away with it because the US vetoed Security Council resolutions in the past that might have resulted in some concrete international action against Israel, such as sanctions of some sorts.

When Barack Obama came to power, he wanted to improve relations with the Islamic world and made this pitch in his 2009 Cairo speech. And the Obama administration followed it up by seeking to find a solution to the Palestinian issue by pushing the two state formulae, with Israel and Palestine living peacefully along each other. Which required, to begin with, a halt to new Israeli settlements, but the Israeli government responded only with more of the same. Later, when John Kerry, became the US secretary of state under the Obama administration, he worked hard to promote a peaceful settlement based on the two state formulae, with Tel Aviv only hating him for his mission as it exposed its real intention of creeping annexation of the West Bank and Jerusalem to frustrate any hope of statehood for Palestine.

As Bob Carr, a former Australian foreign affairs minister has written in a Sydney Morning Herald article, “…”Thirty-five per cent [of new settlements] are now being approved deep in the territory everyone sees as an ultimate Palestinian state.” At the rate the settlement activity is preceding there will be no scope for a viable Palestinian state. Whatever is left or will be left of Palestine will be covered with more observation posts, checkpoints and periodic army raids to test the effectivenes of occupation—in many ways an apartheid state with Palestinian population held to ransom. The Israeli argument that a Palestinian state will be a security hazard has no validity, first, because Israel is the most powerful state in the region and, second, Palestinians are offering a demilitarized state without an army with western peacekeepers to oversee within their borders. As Carr rightly points out, “It is hard to imagine more explicit security guarantees.”

Israel is mad with the Obama administration for not vetoing the recent Security Council resolution declaring the Israeli settlements illegal and allowing it to be adopted by abstaining on it. Indeed, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that it was done at the behest of the US, regarding it as an act of betrayal. Netanyahu reportedly said at a cabinet meeting that, “From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed.” John Kerry, the US secretary of state denied the Israeli charge of collusion and said that, “The US did not draft or originate this resolution. Nor did we put it forward.” He added, “It was drafted by Egypt… which is one of Israel’s closest friends in the region, in coordination, with the Palestinians and others.” Under pressure from Israel and President-elect Trump, the Egyptians though backed off leaving New Zealand and others to put it up for a vote in the Security Council for adoption. Which was duly done, with the US abstaining. For New Zealand’s principled initiative, Netanyahu threatened Auckland reportedly calling it an act of war. Israel’s arrogance is insufferable, but the international community has lived with it so long and, most likely, will still have to put up with it despite the Security Council resolution.

This is simply because Israel has powerful protectors like the United States. During its eight years, the Obama administration sought to facilitate a diplomatic solution based on a two-state solution. But it didn’t succeed faced with Israel’s intransigence and belligerence and Netanyahu’s open defiance of US efforts, including undisguised contempt for President Obama and secretary of state Kerry. The Obama administration put up with all this because Israel has a powerful political lobby across the board in the US that any administration might cross at its peril. Now that Obama is leaving the presidency, his administration has made a last ditch effort to save Israel from Netanyahu and its ultra right allies. Israel hopes that, over time, their occupation of Palestine will become an accepted and normalized part of international reality.  And they might be right since they are getting away with it so far, though the latest resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal might suggest that it might not be forever.

But Israel is not worried since they have the unstinted support of the incoming President Donald Trump and his key policy advisers. Trump had urged a veto of the Security Council resolution and in the event that it was adopted, he tweeted for Israel to “stay strong” until his inauguration. Indeed, he mocked the UN as “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.” In other words, the incoming Trump administration might take steps to crimp UN’s role by reducing/withholding its funding. Where Israel is concerned, it is above international law going by the Trump administration’s unquestioned support for it. 

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au