Saudi Arabia, a semicolonial country of 23 million inhabitants, is at the center of the sharpening conflicts and volatility in the region. Dominated economically and politically by U.S. imperialism, Saudi Arabia was used by the U.S. military as a staging ground for its 1990–91 assault on Iraq. Since then, Washington has continued to use the country’s Prince Sultan air force base for bombing sorties over the imperialist-imposed "no-fly" zone in southern Iraq.

The political weakness of the Saudi ruling class and the exhaustion of its ability to use oil wealth to stave off economic crisis have bred growing social instability. Fearing popular anger at the trampling of Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty, the regime in Riyadh has placed some limits on Washington’s use of military facilities on Saudi territory. The dependency of the Saudi royal family on U.S. imperialism and the social crisis have also led to bourgeois currents using anti-American rhetoric to gain a broader hearing.

The Saudi rulers find themselves buffeted between the pressures of imperialism and the growing discontent among working people, sometimes putting them at odds with Washington.

Following a 1996 bombing that killed 19 U.S. soldiers at the Khobar Towers apartment complex, Saudi authorities, who conducted the investigation, did not accept the U.S. demand that the FBI be part of the interrogation of witnesses. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the regime balked at the demand that the FBI have free rein to round up, interrogate, and take away any Saudi resident it deemed a "terrorist suspect."

As Washington has pressed ahead with steps toward launching a bombing campaign and ground invasion of Iraq, Riyadh has softened its public stance of barring use of its soil for a U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Nonetheless, Washington has built or expanded military facilities in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates as possible alternatives to its bases in Saudi Arabia. Today U.S. bases and battleships ring the Arabian Peninsula.

In another example of the worsening relations between Washington and Riyadh, capitalist politicians in the United States have highlighted the report that 15 of the 19 alleged September 11 hijackers were Saudis, arguing that the Saudi regime is not "cooperating" with Washington and should be brought to heel.

Some in U.S. ruling circles have argued for taking a more aggressive stance toward Saudi Arabia, including the possibility of grabbing its oil resources.

A briefing given to a Pentagon advisory board in July, for example, described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of Washington and proposed giving the government of that country an ultimatum to "stop backing terrorism" and to crack down on "fundamentalist" Muslims or face seizure of their oilfields and financial assets invested in the United States. The Defense Policy Board, a group of former senior officials who advise the Pentagon on military policy, endorsed the report from the Rand Corporation.

The report claimed that "the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader.... the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East. It concluded that "once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West. That oil would diminish U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so, in this view, permit the U.S. government to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism," the Washington Post reported.

"The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad," a Bush administration official told the Post. Once Washington puts in place a government that will do its bidding in Iraq, "there are a lot of possibilities."

Columnist William Safire wrote September 12 that rifts within the ruling Saud family posed the question of who Washington should back in a possible power struggle between factions headed by the de facto monarch, Crown Prince Abdullah, and the defense minister, Prince Sultan. Safire stated that Prince Sultan takes a stand less favorable to the U.S. government so Abdullah should be supported. One of the options being discussed in big-business circles is Washington fomenting a palace coup in Saudi Arabia to usher in a more reliable pro-U.S. government.

In October 2001 the Wall Street Journal said a Saudi regime that is overtly hostile to Washington would "force a decision on whether to take over the Saudi oilfields, which would put an end to OPEC."

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a pact by 11 oil-producing semicolonial countries offering a measure of protection from imperialism by setting production quotas and prices for the sale of oil on the world market. The imperialist powers view OPEC as an obstacle that cuts into their profits. U.S. control over the oil and natural gas reserves in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with a combined total of 36 percent of the world’s reserves, would deal a death blow to OPEC.  
 
Regime faces sharpening economic crisis
Saudi Arabia is being shaken by the world capitalist economic crisis, and is more unstable and dependent than ever on Washington. This crisis was accelerated by the monarchy’s expensively purchased victory in the Gulf War against Iraq, in which Saudi Arabia was used as the main staging ground for 650,000 imperialist troops. With rising unemployment and a steep drop in per-capita income, the Saudi monarchy faces increased internal opposition.

Like Kuwait and the other kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula--the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain--Saudi Arabia rests on a narrow social base of a parasitic merchant, banking, and oil-rentier ruling class. The royal family has fostered little industrial development.

Today 18 million people in Saudi Arabia are citizens and more than 5 million--some 20 percent--are foreign-born workers. Unemployment among male nationals is estimated at 30 percent. Per-capita income for citizens has dropped from a peak of $19,000 in 1981 to $7,300 in 1997, measured in 1997 dollars.

The kingdom depends on imported wage workers who toil under contract-labor conditions and who, no matter how long they have lived and worked in the country, are denied the most basic rights of citizenship.

Immigrants produce most of the wealth, provide the services, staff the professions, refine and transport the oil and care for the children of the rich and the middle class. In response to the growing economic crisis, the government has stepped up its "Saudization" drive with the aim of replacing 60 percent of the foreign-born workers with Saudis by 2005. But relatively few Saudis have taken these jobs with their low pay and often brutal working conditions.  
 
Imperialist carve-up of Mideast
Saudi Arabia was created as a by-product of the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, which in World War I fought on the losing side headed by German imperialism. The former Ottoman Empire was balkanized into spheres of British and French military occupation, at the expense of the Arab masses, who had supported those imperialist powers in the war because of promises by London of independence after victory. In the shakeout, Ibn Saud, head of the House of Saud family, consolidated power over most of the Arab peninsula by 1932, and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed.

In the 1930s, the U.S. oil giants began to push aside British and French companies, which had dominated the region. In 1936 oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia by the U.S.-owned Arabian Standard Oil Company. Oil was also struck by U.S. companies in the sheikdoms of Bahrain and Qatar, both under British colonial domination. But it took World War II, where Washington consolidated its place at the top of the imperialist food chain, for U.S. firms to gain hegemony over Saudi oil.

A handful of imperialist monopolies--historically known as the Seven Sisters--have long dominated world oil production and refinery.

In 1974 the government of Saudi Arabia reached a deal with Aramco, a conglomerate of several U.S. oil giants, whereby the government took 60 percent of the company’s ownership. By the early 1980s, Riyadh gained full ownership of its oil reserves. Formal Saudi ownership, however, masks reality--foreign oil companies have billions of dollars in investments and joint venture deals tying them into the largest source of the world’s crude. ExxonMobil, for example, has more than $5 billion invested in the country. And the imperialist oil monopolies dominate the world oil market and prices.

In 2001 the Saudi rulers announced they would negotiate with eight U.S., British, and French oil companies to open the country’s natural gas reserves to foreign ownership for the first time since 1975. These companies are ExxonMobil, Phillips, Marathon, Conoco, and Occidental, as well as Royal Dutch/Shell, British Petroleum, and France’s TotalFinaElf.

According to the Washington Post, the ruling family was divided over whether the gas deals should be followed up by opening the country to foreign exploitation of oil. The Saudi foreign minister, who allies himself with Abdullah, rejected allowing foreign companies back into the oil fields and take away profits from the state-run Aramco.In September of this year, the much-touted $25 billion natural gas plan was scuttled without warning by the Saudi government.  
 
 
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