EDITORIAL

Security and Saudi Arabia

Sunday, January 20, 2002; Page B06

FOR SOME time, military and political leaders in both Saudi Arabia and the United States have been quietly debating the value of a continuing U.S. military presence in the kingdom. Some on the American side argue that restrictions on U.S. activities and frictions with the Saudi government outweigh the advantages of basing planes, command and control systems and some 5,000 troops on Saudi soil; others say it would be far more difficult for the United States to defend the Persian Gulf, or mount a new campaign against Iraq, without the deployments. Now the Saudi leadership around Crown Prince Abdullah has let it be known that it may seek to phase out the U.S. presence once the Afghan campaign is over. The damage such a move would do to the U.S. military posture in the region, as the debate suggests, is open to question. But whether or not it goes forward, Prince Abdullah's initiative clarifies what is happening to the political relationship between the two countries in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Though Saudi Arabia may be a U.S. ally in police action against some terrorists, it is rapidly becoming an obstacle, and risks evolving into an adversary, in the broader struggle against Islamic extremism.

There's no question that Prince Abdullah and the Saudi ruling family abhor Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization, which is dedicated to their overthrow. But by initiating the departure of U.S. troops, Prince Abdullah would grant one of Osama bin Laden's central political demands and vindicate the militant Islamic clerics both in and outside Saudi Arabia who have been insisting that the presence of U.S. forces in the kingdom is a religious abomination. For some time, Prince Abdullah has been moving to appease the conservative Saudi clergy by distancing himself publicly from the United States and blaming the Bush administration for the worsening Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now he would effectively ratify the central message of the extremists -- that Western governments and Western troops are corrupting and repressing Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. He would do so even while fully expecting that, were Saudi Arabia again to be threatened by Iraq or Iran, the United States would rush to its defense.

For the Saudi rulers, this move may be seen as a shrewd way to neutralize the single strongest rallying point of opposition to the regime. Prince Abdullah probably calculates, too, that a Bush administration concerned with oil supplies and Iraq may be inclined to absorb the damage and move on. In the short term, at least, the United States does not have easy alternatives to cooperating on energy and security matters with the Saudi royal family. Nevertheless, the administration must now recognize that Saudi political policies have become not just an unpleasant sideshow but a genuine menace to the United States -- because the roots of Islamic extremism and terrorism lie in the intolerant ideology that Prince Abdullah bows to. The United States now must fashion a more complex policy toward Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries, balancing the need for some engagement with the necessity of countering that hostile ideology. In the end, the departure of U.S. forces might just make that balance easier to strike.