Saudi Arabia: The Arab face of the US/Zionist colonial structure

Of the members of the US/Zionist colonial structure: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait and others whose colonial status is necessary for Zionist Israel to avoid the fate of Apartheid South Africa, possibly the most important and currently the most active in advancing the US/Zionist agenda is Saudi Arabia.

As of today there are four things Saudi Arabia is actively doing as part of its accepted responsibility to maintain the US/Zionist colonial structure: 1) supporting Barack Obama's vanity civil war in Libya, 2) enforcing Israel's interest in maintaining Palestinian leadership selected by Israel, 3) financing what it hopes may develop into a civil war in Syria, 4) directly propping up colonial leaderships in crisis in Yemen and Bahrain.

Barack Obama's vanity civil war in Libya

Libya in January 2011 was not a firm member of the US/Zionist colonial structure like Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt or Jordan, but it was not hostile as Syria, Lebanon, Gaza or Iran either. The US had and has no strategic interest in removing Gaddafi, who was freely trading with the West, from power but there is no way to remove him without significant loss of Libyan life and huge disruption of the normal functioning of society.

I have not seen a better explanation for Obama's eagerness to remove Gaddafi from power than that embarrassed over the fall of Mubarak, the US wanted to seem active and potent again. Seeming active and potent is a horrible rationale for policies that predictably would cause large numbers of people to lose their lives, but the US has no hopes of gaining any advantage greater than that from this episode.

Civil wars kill more people than government repression of protesters. If 15,000 lives have been lost in Libya since February, that is likely more than all of the government repressions of protesters elsewhere put together. The NATO Libyan intervention was not in any sense a humanitarian intervention. The intervention is more likely to have been US and European officials sacrificing Libyan lives to personally feel more virile.

Saudi Arabia, after consultations with US officials, organized Arab expressions of support for this sacrifice of Arab lives.

Palestinian leadership selected by Israel

The US threatens to freeze funding for the Palestinian authority if it does not meet certain conditions. One condition is that Salam Fayyad or someone like him remain in the position of Prime Minister. Part of this threat is that the US will convince Arab members of the US/Zionist colonial structure to participate in its boycott.

It is interesting to think of what would happen if the Palestinians tried to call this bluff. What Saudi King Abdullah does, what his job is and why he rules what we call Saudi Arabia and not a direct US or British governor, is that he puts an Arab face on US policies. The population under his rule would be greatly more likely to revolt against a direct US governorship. But it would be difficult to put an Arab face on openly freezing Palestinian funds on behalf of the United States.

Abdullah has frozen Saudi contributions to Hamas directly at the request of the US. Possibly he would rationalize participating in a US freeze against the Palestinian authority with reference to some Sunni/Shiite conflict which the Saudis have recently begun promoting, or he could repeat the same rationalization the US gives. More likely he would do it quietly.

Abbas is lobbying to keep Fayyad because he is convinced, probably rightly, that the Arab members of the US/Zionist colonial structure would follow US orders to freeze his funding if those orders were issued.

Civil war in Syria

There has never been a Syrian Tahrir Square, there have never been massive peaceful demonstrations in Demascus or Syria's major cities that demonstrated that a large majority of the population opposed the regime. (The same actually also holds for Libya.) What the Syrian protests had from almost the very beginning was forces organized and armed enough to conduct ambushes on the Syrian military.

The US Council on Foreign Relations' Ray Takeyh recently expressed hope that Saudi funds would result in a post-Assad regime in Syria that is oriented toward the West and against Iran. Saudi money has a very poor track record in electoral contests against anti-Western parties. It was useless in Iraq and in Palestine's 2006 elections. The Saudis were able to get a parliamentary majority in Lebanon because of Lebanon's skewed electoral system, but the anti-US/Zionist faction got substantially more popular votes even there.

It is very unlikely that the Syrian people will ever vote for parties that support the US/Zionist colonial structure, but an outcome that is more likely and strategically useful for the US and Israel would be for Syria to become embroiled in internal fighting as Iraq was in 2005, then to emerge, like Iraq, even if still opposed to the US/Zionist colonial structure, weakened and less able to actively oppose that structure.

Reports that Saudi funding is available to factions willing to prosecute a Syrian civil war are probably true.

Colonial leaderships in crisis in Yemen and Bahrain

Saudi Arabia is open in its efforts to ensure that other members of the US/Zionist colonial structure defeat oppositions that have demonstrated the ability to produce mass public peaceful demonstrations.

With Egypt possibly voting itself out of the US/Zionist colonial structure later this year, Saudi Arabia will be the most critical remaining member. The fall of Saudi Arabia will be no more predictable than Mubarak's fall was in December, but after it happens, governments accountable to their own people rather than to the people of the United States and Israel will be much more possible throughout the region.