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As the Saudis' financing of terror becomes increasingly more evident, the question of what policy the U.S. should adopt toward the House of Saud grows in vital importance. A U.S. government report on 9/11 that will be released in two weeks is said to contain “explosive” information confirming, among other things, Saudi ties to the 9/11 terrorists and Saudi funding of terrorists in general. It now appears more urgent than ever to ask: what policy should Washington pursue toward Saudi Arabia? Are we at a landmark watershed? Should the U.S. "punish" the Saudis? To discuss these and other issues connected to U.S.-Saudi relations, Frontpage Symposium is honored to welcome: Daniel Pipes, (www.DanielPipes.org), director of the Middle East Forum, columnist for the New York Post and Jerusalem Post, and author of Militant Islam Reaches America (W.W. Norton); Alex Alexiev, a former senior analyst at the RAND Corporation who is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Wash. D.C; Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst who is now a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute. His book on Saudi Arabia, "Taking Saudi out of Arabia," will appear in October 2003 in Paris; and Daniel Brumberg, an Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran. Interlocutor: Gentlemen, welcome to Frontpage Symposium. Let's begin with this question: are US relations with Saudi Arabia different from those with any other government? If so, how? Brumberg: Well, our relationship with the Saudis is different in several ways. The relationship is conditioned, first and foremost, on an economic interest: oil. It is inconceivable that we would have the kind of relationship we have with the Saudis if they didn't hold the world's largest oil reserves. Obviously, ideology, values etc...play little role in this relationship. Now, this is hardly the first time the US has maintained a relationship with regimes whose values and political systems we are not in favor of. Consider all the relationships with right wing regimes the US maintained prior to the Cold War. But the Gulf here (excuse the term), is very wide indeed. Moreover, the nature of the Saudi political system adds an additional feature that complicates and distinguishes the relationship. The Saudi state -- the only state in the world named after a family, by the way-- exists because of a rather difficult and potentially contradictory relationship between a family (the Saudis), and a clerical establishment whose job it is to sustain the Wahhabi tradition and ethos, an ethos which is, in its most orthodox version, is not only hostile to Western values such as pluralism, but is not keen to back the kinds of international alliances and every day policies as modern state must undertake. So the Saudi state has always had to pursue certain policies -- internal and external -- that by their very nature are not welcomed by some key actors within the ruling alliance that makes the Saudi state work. This contradiction has bedevilled the Saudi states for decades, it is not new. The Western press has focused on one aspect of the problem -- the anti-Western, anti-Israel, and sometimes anti-Semitic sermons of some Saudi clerics. But that is part of a bigger problem that goes to the very nature of the state itself. It presents a problem for the US, but also for Saudi reformists in the government and the press. There are Saudi reformists who have tried to make their voices heard. There are also institutions of consultation that give the Saudi ruling family some way to cope with dissatisfaction. But there are limits as to how much change is possible, and how far Saudi leaders can go on the domestic and international levels without doing harm to the very alliance that makes the state work. This is the factor that most distinguishes Saudi Arabia and our relationship with that state. Pipes: Yes, Jamie, US relations with Saudi Arabia are different. No other government engages in a systematic attempt to bribe the executive branch by hiring ex-officials and otherwise rewarding them for past and present services. The U.S. system is unprepared to deal with this and so it works dismayingly well. Murawiec: U.S. relations with the Arab world in general, Saudi Arabia in particular, have been characterized by us exonerating them from any code of conduct, any democratization, any respect for either us or the West in general. Whereas other parts of the world have to some degree or other been brought to sharing in modernity, the Rule of Law, etc., neither the Arab world nor Saudi Arabia, Arabia's rich uncle as it were, have been held to any such standard. Saudi Arabia has remained the "gas station." As far as they are concerned, anything goes. That's special indeed. Alexiev: I certainly agree with the other panelists that relations with Riyadh are significantly different than U.S. ties with other countries, though they are not totally unique. We have indeed cultivated other unsavory regimes (Franko, Salazar, Greek colonels etc.) for perceived geopolitical (enemy of my enemy) reasons. What's different about the Saudis is the additional presence of oil as a powerful economic factor of strategic import. This actually worked quite well for three decades after we replaced the British as Saud's patron in the early 1940s and Riyadh was quite useful in checking Soviet proxies such as Nasser and the Baathists in Syria and Iraq in the region. There didn't seem to be a significant downside to the relationship at least until the Saudis began aggressively exporting Wahhabi ideology in the 1970s. The problem, in my view, lies in the fact that Washington failed to realize the subversive nature of their ideology for a long time after that. Unfortunately, at some level this "see no evil" attitude continues to this day. Interlocutor: Fair enough, so with these facts in mind, are US-Saudi relations going to continue more or less as before or are we at a significant turning point? Pipes: It is striking to compare today's ferment in US-Saudi relations with 1973-74, when Saudi Arabia was even more at the center of American foreign policy concerns than now; yet then there was no momentum for a re-appraisal and today it is considerable. I am not convinced yet that it is enough to lead to a significant turning point, but there is a reasonable likelihood of this. Murawiec: Secretary Rumsfeld's trip to Riyadh and announcement that the U.S. forces are being pulled out of Saudi Arabia concludes a period of eighteen months, post 9/11, marked by a steady deterioration of relations: the Saudi regime continued to play a double game, Washington has been less and less tolerant of it - with the exception of the State Department, which always explains away and justifies everything provided it's royal and Saudi. Riyadh's failure to cooperate in the war on terrorism, as in the war on Iraq, has a price. It will continue to be paid. Brumberg: I can't imagine Saudi-US Relations continuing as they have been, especially in light of the recent terrorist attacks. The Saudi know that the attack was directed as much at the regime as the US, and today's arrests as well demonstrate that there is some learning in the ruling establishment. But I think it is misleading to believe that there can be some kind of dramatic redefinition of either Saudi's internal politics, or its foreign relations. We may be at something of a turning point, if that the Saudi government will have to take its internal threat much more seriously. Moreover, the kind of hate language promoted by some clerics simply cannot be tolerated. But we are not at a sharp turn, but rather a slow, experimental turn that will take months if not longer to complete, and where it is going is far from clear. As I hinted above, a sharp turn could bring the entire system into crisis, perhaps even threaten it, and I don't think this is in our interest. Alexiev: US relations with Riyadh are certain to change significantly in the near future and change they must since it is now becoming evident on a daily basis that they were based in large part on incompatible interests. While Washington valued the putative contribution of the Saudis to stability in the energy markets and the Middle East (and our Cold War agenda before that) it is abundantly clear that this has come at a tremendous cost to U.S. security. It is becoming difficult for even the most ardent Saudi apologist to deny that the House of Saud for over a quarter of a century has been the chief financial and ideological enabler of Islamic extremism and that we're now footing the huge bill for their duplicitous agenda. In my view, it is also clear that it will be difficult if not impossible to win the war on terror unless we are able to dismantle the worldwide edifice of extremism Saudi money and Wahhabi zealotry have built. Last Thursday's hearings on Wahhabism at the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security at which a top Treasury official called the kingdom the "epicenter of financing terrorism," or something to that effect, may be the beginning of the end of our tolerance of Riyadh's egregious behavior. Interlocutor: Mr. Brumberg, you say that: "we are not at a sharp turn, but rather a slow, experimental turn that will take months if not longer to complete, and where it is going is far from clear. . . .a sharp turn could bring the entire system into crisis, perhaps even threaten it, and I don't think this is in our interest." But the bottom line is that the Saudis are at the root of funding our enemies in the War on Terror. This is a reality, and since it is a reality, I think our worries about bringing some kind of “entire system into crisis” by making some kind of “sharp turn” is delusionary self-destructive wishful thinking. Look, we know who the financers of terrorism are: the House of Saud. Isn't it time to make them pay a heavy price? Shouldn't there be a sharp change in American policy by simply making a decapitation of that regime an American priority, just like we did in Iraq? Or this too simplistic? And, in this case, is there a chance that the evil we know is better than the evil we do not know, in terms of who might end up replacing the present Saudi rulers? Brumberg: What does "decapitation of the regime" mean, and how are we going to accomplish this? It seems to me that any effort to bring the House of Saud tumbling down, whether by force of arms or undermining it from within, is not only foolish wishful thinking, but dangerous thinking, the consequences of which could produce a regime far worse than we have now. There is much dissatisfaction with the Arab world in Washington these days, but the answer is not some headlong dash into a policy of "decapitation." Look at Iraq, where such a policy has opened the door to Shiite fundamentalism. Be careful what you wish for. Pipes: I agree with Mr. Brumberg. The danger in Arabia is that an even more fanatical version of the Wahhabi ideology will take over, that one associated with the Ikhwan of the 1920s, the mosque seizure of 1979, the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal Europe in May, "however unattractive, the Saudi monarchy is preferable to the yet worse Ikhwan alternative. This implies a two-step approach: help the monarchy defeat its Ikhwan-inspired enemy and put serious pressure on the kingdom to reform everything from its school system to its sponsorship of Wahhabi organizations abroad." Murawiec: We're always told to appease Hitler because Himmler would be wrong, and it would not be in our interest to precipitate a crisis. Stalin, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Khatami, whoever, whatever. It's always wrong because it never proceeds an active sense of U.S. policy. We're not victims, we're not passive, we're not hostages. It's precisely because we have taken this "evolutionary" view that we're run into trouble: had we been proactive in '73 at the time of the oil crisis... Alexiev: I don't think that we should "decapitate" the regime, i.e. try to surgically remove it, but I totally disagree with Mr. Brumberg's premise that we should somehow do nothing because what comes next would be worse and I also believe that his analogy with Iraq and Shia "fundamentalism" is way off the mark. The incontrovertible fact is that the entire worldwide edifice of Islamic extremism which breeds and nurtures the likes of Al Qaeda is sponsored financially and indeed ideologically by the Saudi/Wahhabi state. To continue to do nothing about that is unconscionable and will guarantee us a never-ending, never quite successful war on terror. What we need to do is put the Saudis on notice that we'll no longer tolerate their subversive antics and will take unilateral measures to make sure that they're stopped. There are a number of ways to do that. We have never done that and that's why they continue to believe that they can have their cake and eat it too. Yet even the threat of losing their American patron is likely to have a very sobering effect and may force them to change their ways since the House of Saud knows well that they're doomed without American support. You'll recall that Saud had no compunction about calling on the British infidels to destroy his Ikhwan/Wahhabi storm troopers in 1930, when they threatened his own survival. As for the conventional wisdom argument that a post-Saud regime would be worse for the U.S., it is much more conventional than wise. First, I don't think the situation could get much worse than it already is. Let's think this through. Saud goes and an Osama bin Laden type takes over, which is indeed likely. What are they going to do? Stop selling their oil? Given the economic predicament of Riyadh today, any serious decline in oil revenues flow would lead to their collapse and in a very short order at that. Our downside? Paying $2 per galon of gas until Iraqi/Russian/Caspian production is ramped up. Not a serious political argument. Subsidizing jihadis all over the map? They're already doing that. Start acquiring/producing WMD? They'll be put on notice that we'll not tolerate that and go in and take them out if need be. In short, the transformation of Saudi Arabia into an openly hostile state, as opposed to a stealth enemy today, is nothing to be paranoid about. In fact, in my view, it will be the beginning of the victorious end to the war on terror. Brumberg: Who said "do nothing?" Just because I am against "decapitation" (the likelyhood of which is next to zero in Saudi Arabia anyway), doesn't mean that I believe the US should sit idly by and just except the status quo. There are lots of things we should do. We should use quiet diplomacy, and public diplomacy when necessary, to push the Saudi leaders to end the kinds of hate speech they have at times tolerated and even promoted in their schools, mosques and media. We should encourage more tolerance of Saudi reformists, especially in the press, who are ready to take on the fundamentalists, (and where such reformists are fired from their jobs, as was the case recently for Al Watan editor Jamal Khashoggi, we should make our displeasure known. We should push very hard to end the flow of money to terrorists and to Saudi backed schools that promote hate thinking in far away places such as Indonesia. We should push the Saudis to take stronger measures against their own terrorists, as they may now be doing, finally...But knocking the heads off governments, while it offer a sense of emotional release, is not usually the best policy, especially in the Middle East, where a legacy of autocracy has left aspiring hundreds autocrats in its wake, and far fewer, if aspiring, democrats exposed to the former. Alexiev: I certainly agree than knocking heads of governments is generally not a productive policy and I'm certainly not advocating it. But the record so far shows that "quiet diplomacy" with the Saudis does not work either. In fact, they appear to be dismissive of our efforts to the point of ridicule. Last year, Washington announced with great fanfare two cases of joint action with the Saudis against suspected terrorist involvement (the Bosnia and Somalia offices of Al Haramain and putting Wael Jalaidan, a purported Al Qaeda co-founder on the terrorist list). In both cases, the foundation itself and Saudi officials as high as interior minister Naef, denied U.S. claims as fiction. I'm very sceptical that much has changed despite some arrests after the Riyadh bombings. The reason for that is very simple. Any honest attempt to go after the charities and their doings will expose the Saudi government itself and the house of Saud at the highest levels in direct complicity with terrorism. Brumberg: Unfortunately, in the Middle East we are often presented with lots of bad choices. And yes, sometimes conventional wisdom suggests which choice is worse. As unhappy as we may be with the possible complicity of some members of the House of Saud in funding terrorists, the notion that a campaign to bring down the ruling establishment will resolve this problem is naive. We have limited options, and thus while quiet diplmacy, combined with some occasional and very public diplomacy and pressure is far from satisfactory, it is and will be the preferable path for the coming years. Ultimately, the only solution is to create cost effective alternatives to dependency on Middle East oil, and oil itself. But we are a long way away from that. Pipes: There is plenty of room for a policy toward Saudi Arabia more assertive than the existing one and less drastic than regime change. It starts with a careful inventory of U.S. interests and where the kingdom fits into these; followed by an assessment of our humanitarian goals. I am confident that we can develop a tough-minded policy toward Riyadh that leaves the monarchy in place but aspires - and achieves - real improvements in its behavior. Brumberg: Well, overall I think Daniel Pipes strikes the right balance here. Carrots and sticks are available, and both have their place. The fortuitous fact that Saudi Arabia has all that oil--as Pipes noted in his first book some years ago, is an imposing reality whose political implications can't be wished away by simplistic solutions. Interlocutor: Gentlemen, one second, I just want to get back to something for a moment. Mr. Brumberg, are you, overall, implying that it was wrong for the Americans to liberate Iraq? Brumberg: Why is this relevant? And who is proposing a similar war in Saudi Arabia? The issue is whether US interests will be better served by pushing for feasible reform in Saudi Arabia, versus attempting to bring down the regime, which I do not think is wise. Interlocutor: Maybe it is not directly relevant, and maybe noone is proposing a similar war in Saudi Arabia. But the liberation of Iraq was surely a very significant sign of the mentality of the Bush administration and its disposition toward solving a "problem" in the Middle East. And that disposition is, obviously, very different from that of the previous administration. I am just gauging your view on Bush's overall approach to the Middle East because, yes, it does affect, in one way or another, how we will ultimately deal with the Saudis if they continue to be financiers of terror. So can you just answer the question: do you think Bush's decision to liberate Iraq was legitimate or illegitimate? Did you support it or oppose it? Brumberg: Jamie, I do think that the overall approach of the Bush administration is relevant to our discussion, but I don't think the war in Iraq clearly demonstrates what that overall approach is. In some ways, the Iraq war was a one time event dressed up in a doctrine. The administration may have placed Iraq Iran and North Korea in one "axis of evil" basket, but it is unlikely to actively apply the doctrine of military preemption to the latter two cases, a point that Paul Wolfowitz himself recently made when he has noted that each country is unique and must be treated as so. So if military preemption is not much of a guide, what then is the administration's overall approach? Perhaps it might be summed up as "democratic preemption", starting with Iraq, and then spreading out, not so much through military intervention, as by dint of Iraq's own assumed demonstration effect on the Middle East. Iraq is to supposed become a kind of light onto other nations, first in Iran, and then elsewhere. Now, I find the thesis very dubious. I don't think that it will be easy promoting democracy in Iraq. Moreover, because politics in the Arab world is largely a local affair, positive demonstration effects -- if we are lucky enough to get them in Iraq-- will not have the democratizing echo that the administration hopes for (although negative demonstration effects always have an echo!). As for our intervention in Iraq, as a general rule I don't believe that intervening to change governments is a wise policy, unless there is clear and compelling evidence that a government is about to commit genocide against its own people, or is really about to attack the US. That said, I do believe that the threat of the use of force to get compliance from Iraq on the question of WMD WAS legitimate. I believe in coercive diplomacy, and that means one has to be ready to pull the trigger if all else fails. But to make a threat compelling we had to get international support and unity. And that required signaling to all the concerned parties that the US was willing to live with a disarmed Saddam Hussein regime. Powell and Bush both said that they could so in October, 2002; they said so loudly and clearly (in a Clinton like phrase, Powell said that once disarmed, a Saddam Hussein regime would be a different kind of regime). But the administration position later, in effect insisting that regime change was the real and ultimate strategic goal-- not disarmament. Under those conditions, getting the international community to sign on was strategically impossible. So we went in, without international support, (in "alliance" with the United Kingdom, England, and Britain), and thus we were forced to fight a "us versus them" war. I thought that was a mistake, and events so far have (unfortunately) reinforced my concerns about the dangers of a unilateral war and unilateral occupation. After all, we now find ourselves engaged in what many Sunnis, and not a few Shiites, view as a war of occupation. Had the administration played its cards differently, we might not find ourselves in this difficult and even impossible situation. From the vantage point of the neo-conservatives in the administration, this is a very unfortunate situation, since so much of their democratic preemption doctrine rides on a systematic vision of change, i.e. on creating democracy in Iraq, and on the notion that Iran will be the next regime to fall. For the neo-cons, this is a package deal, everything works together or falls apart together. That accounts for the endless media lobbying (often posing as "analysis" --see Michael Ledeen's recent appearance on Night Line for example) for an attack on Iran -- and for the associated calls for "decapitation" in Saudi Arabia. What is left for the neo-cons if everything grinds to a slow halt, of if the region returns to the slow, contradictory pattern of change and stagnation, one step forward, two back, that is typical of the region? Yes, en entire political doctrine is now on the line, and so we are getting a lot of special pleading. Heads must fall abroad, if not they may fall at home. Alexiev: I don't want to discuss the Iraq issue at any length here because it does get us off the main topic, but I would like to make three quick points. First, Mr. Brumberg's assertion that there's not likely to be a democratizing echo if we're successful in establishing a decent regime in Baghdad is premature to say the least. The overthrow of Saddam, in my view, has already had a sobering effect on Syria and will speed up the implosion of the ayatollah regime in Iran. What the impact on the Saudi Shiites is or will be we can only guess but it will not help strengthen the autocratic regime for sure. And wait until the oil starts flowing and the Iraqi people and those around them see that oil riches can actually benefit common folk and that you don't need to spend 20-25% of your money on the military to prop up obnoxious regimes. I also think that the new status quo would sooner rather than later move the Israeli-Palestinian issue out of the dead end street. Last but most, it will gradually undermine those that think that the Arab world should live in the 7th century. Secondly, to imply that what's going on in Iraq today is an "occupation war" and a "difficult or even impossible situation" is more in line with the "quagmire" punditry we heard two days into the military campaign than with the reality on the ground. War against occupiers is something that indicates massive popular resistance; what we have in Iraq are isolated attacks by (mostly Sunni) former regime supporters that have everything to lose. A majority of the Iraqis, as the first opinion poll just told us, are happy to have us there. There is one other category of people that are causing trouble and that brings us back to our topic. Evidence exists that the Wahhabi/Saudi contingent is already out in force all over Iraq spending money and inciting terrorist attacks against U.S. troops. The Wahhabi-controlled Al Azhar has issued a fatwa that it is o.k. to conduct martyr operations against U.S. troops and dozens of Wahhabi-controlled mosques in the Kurdish areas (39 according to WAMY) are busy subverting our efforts. This, more than any imaginary "occupation war" is what needs immediate attention. Brumberg: My sense, as I have already indicated in the most summer edition of Foreign Policy, is that success in Iraq, by which I mean a reasonably stable pluralistic government that has the support of all three populations, Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, will encourage political liberalization It is much too early to tell if that will produce democracy, which is not the same thing. Political liberalization is used in the Arab world to open up the system just short of democracy. (see my recent Carnegie Working Paper, "Liberalization Versus Democracy, Understanding Arab Political Reform"). I think we may see more of such liberalization strategies if we have some success in Iraq. If, on the other hand, things go badly, this will have a reverse effect, encouraging regimes to deliberalize. But the notion of some kind of democracy tsunami is a fantasy, more ideological than factual, more an aspiration (however admirable) than a reflection of realities on the ground. Arab politics is still mostly a local affair, molded by local dynamics and logics, and this will remain the case for a long time. On the specific effects in Syria and Iran, neither regime will collapse. The first might toy with liberalization, but I don't think it will go very far. Young Assad is far to weak, but the regime itself is strong. As for Iran, those in the neo-conservative camp who keep predicting some kind of people's revolution have no idea how the Iranian system works. Most of these predictions come from people who haven't stepped foot in Iran. The best we can hope for in Iran is a slow, fitful liberalization of the system, but the clerical establishment will hold on to power. I don't like that either, but I don't think confusing advocacy with analysis is wise, or leads to good analysis. On Iraq, yes Wahhabi forces are meddling, so are Hizbollah forces and supporters linked to Lebanon, Iranian operatives (the U.S. has recently blocked the return some tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees from Iran to Iraq, fearing how many Iranian operatives might be there). So, I wouldn't reduce the problem to meddling Wahhabis. The problem is the collapse of the state, and the fact that it is now on US shoulders to reconstitute that state's security, economy, etc... We are alone, and there are many trouble makers from many quarters who are eager to portray our liberation as a occupation. I hope they fail, but the capacity of small groups to make their influence felt is a fact of life in politics, and a fact of life when it comes to self styled "resistance" leaders. For this reason I also think it very likely that the Shi'ite agenda will be dominated by the radical, anti American Sadr and Hakim groups, precisely because they are well organized. The task for the US is to help organize other forces that can give voice to the silent plurality (or perhaps majority) in the Shi'ite camp. We also must find a way to integrate the Sunnis rather than signal that they will get the short end of the stick in any pluralistic system. All of this will be difficult because these burdens are on US shoulders, and because everything in Iraq is, as Alexiev must know, unpredictable. Finally, I should add that for readers looking for good analysis of the Arab world rather than ideology or advocacy, take a look at Carnegie's Arab Reform Bulletin, a monthly Web page. Interlocutor: So gentlemen, tomorrow President Bush phones you and says that whatever you recommend will become the new official American policy toward Saudi Arabia. He wants to know what you think the short-term and long-term objectives should be. What do you say to the President? Brumberg: Our long term objectives should be to promote a process of political liberalization that gives Saudi reformists --i.e., those who oppose the dominant role of the Wahhabi clergy-- a real voice in the system. We should also push for a reform of the educational system that remove also traces of hate speech (anti Semitism, anti Israeli propaganda, anti-Christian propaganda) from the system. We should get serious about an energy policy that creates cost effective alternatives to fossil fuels. (This does not require a heavy handed interventionist policy but rather the creation of market oriented incentives that encourage consumption of energy efficient alternatives, such as hybrid cars, which are already on the market). Declining demand for oil, if it is sustained, will break the backs of the cartel (or any cartel, for that matter), thus undermining Saudi leverage. In the short term, we have to use a combination of carrots and sticks to push the Saudi government to crack down on hate speech and the purveyors of hate speech, and to go after the money supply that backs terrorists. We also have to push the Saudis to back the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, which means ceasing all support of Hamas/Islamic Jihad, and to give their support for the hard compromises that both Israeli and Palestinians leaders will have to make (lack of Saudi support certainly encouraged Arafat to walk away from Camp David). But dramatic short term changes in Saudi Arabia, the likes of which some hard-liners in Washington are now proposing, are unlikely to get anywhere. The nature of the problem we face is in the nature of the Saudi system, a system that cannot and should not be turned upside-down overnight (or over a few weeks, months or probably even years). Murawiec: In the short term, we need to coerce the Saudi leadership into complying with our detailed demands, while leaving the door open to an -extremely unlikely - "Gorbachev"-style reformer to emerge from the depths of the royal family. Squeeze them hard nonetheless: these demands are critical to erasing terror and stabilizing the Middle East. In the long run, the oil must be removed from the exclusive possession of the Saudi usurpers. I propose we offer all Middle East Countries a formula whereby the "Saudi" Eastern Provinces (Hajar) oil proceeds should be 75% redistributed to them (25% to the local Shiites), prorated by population, inverse to own oil resources. Pipes: The short term objective should be cutting the intellectual and financial support for militant Islamic groups worldwide - note, I said militant Islamic, not terrorist. The terrorist groups are but a subset of this larger set of institutions of militant Islam - mosques, schools, youth groups, imam organizations. Oh, and while we're at it: I'd also want a cut-off of funds going to the American shills for the kingdom. Long term, Washington should prod the monarchy to make serious, structural reforms in its ideology and its manner of governing, to bring it at least to the level of the other conservative Gulf states like Kuwait or Qatar. Interlocutor: Mr. Alexiev, Mr. Pipes, Mr. Pipes and Mr. Brumberg, thank you, we are out of time. It was a pleasure to have you here on Frontpage Symposium. We'll see you again soon.PREVIOUS SYMPOSIUMS Bush’s Decision to Go to War. Was it Justified? Guests: Victor Hanson, Cliff May, Stanley Aronowitz and Peter Kirstein. Whither Iran? Guests: Dariush Homayoun, Kaveh Ehsani, Reza Bayegan, Daniel Brumberg and Jacob Heilbrunn. The Future of U.S.-Russian Relations. Guests: Richard Pipes, Vladimir Bukovsky, Jacob Heilbrunn and Yuri Yarim-Agaev. The Death of France? Guests: Jean-François Revel, Charles Kupchan, Guy Milliere Alain Madelin, Toni Kamins and Yves Roucaute.
Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of the new book The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
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