ALL OVER BUT THE DYING:

Saudi Arabia's Big Leap (KENNETH M. POLLACK, 10/16/03, NY Times)

Saudi Arabia's announcement on Monday that within a year it will hold elections for municipal councils could be the first tremor in a slow-moving Middle Eastern earthquake. [...]

In fact, because Saudi Arabia is the most conservative of the Arab states, Riyadh's decision to start a process of democratization, no matter how gradual, is already beginning to force many Arabs to rethink where the tides of Middle Eastern history are headed. As long as the Saudis keep moving down this path, no matter how sluggishly, it will be hard for the other countries of the region not to follow. The other governments will have no answer when their people ask why, if the Saudis can adopt more pluralistic political institutions, can't they as well?

What's more, such reforms are the only way to deal with the two major threats that the United States faces from the dysfunctional Saudi system. The first is that Saudi society has become an important contributor to violent terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden himself is Saudi, and he has found many of his recruits among his disaffected young countrymen. And, knowingly or not, many wealthy Saudis ó including, probably, members of the royal family ó have contributed to Islamic charities that were fronts for terrorist organizations.

The second threat is that much of the anger and frustration that makes Saudi Arabia a fertile recruiting ground for Osama bin Laden have also made Saudi internal politics increasingly volatile, raising the specter of a violent upheaval. As long as Saudi oil production remains a linchpin of the global economy, we cannot afford an Islamic revolution there. Even if civil war or a fanatical new regime did not shut Saudi oil production altogether, either might result in a reversal of the high-production, low-price oil policy that the Saudi royals adhere to. This would set off recessions around the globe.

Both of these threats spring, at least in part, from a common source: more than any other Arab state, Saudi Arabia is in desperate need of comprehensive political, economic, social, legal and educational reform.

History ended last century; it's just taking Africa and the Middle East a bit longer to get the news. But once they start reforming they won't be able to contain it. In the meantime, we just have to protect ourselves while the non-liberal forces within the Islamic world are in their death throes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 16, 2003 8:46 AM