The late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
By now you've doubtless heard that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is dead. I would be tempted to offer my sincerest condolences to the Bush family, but snark aside, his death is not a good thing. For most Americans, the response is to shrug. For others, it's to remind us that the majority of 9/11 attackers were Saudi and good riddance to the king!
For a small handful, they know that King Abdullah dying might be very, very bad news for the West. But first, as usual, is some history.
Much of the Middle East has an early 20th century history of relatively progressive governments (compared to today) gradually opening up to Western culture and values. However, a series of fairly ham-handed, short-term responses by Western governments (particularly the US, the UK, and France) have done a great job of alienating the Middle East and pushing them further towards radicalism.
The Saudi monarchy under King Faisal was somewhat progressive in the 60s and 70s, but detested Israel, as did many of the regional governments. The 1973, Saudi Arabia participated in the oil embargo in retaliation for US support of Israel during the Yom Kippur war. However, it was 1979 which permanently changed things.
Prior to that year the Saudi monarchy tried a balancing act between enacting reforms and keeping the Muslim hardliners happy, but two things destroyed that. Most of you probably know about the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. However, shortly thereafter militant Islamists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and hundreds of pilgrims died in the ensuing fighting to reclaim the Mosque.
This was the turning point for Saudi Arabia. The royal family was known for its debauchery and un-Islamic lifestyle and many people inside of Saudi Arabia were very conservative Muslims. Iran showed Muslims that there was another way to be an Islamic state and the takeover of the Grand Mosque during the Hajj shocked the royal family into realizing just how vulnerable they were.
The result was the monarchy giving in to some of the demands of the conservative clerics, restricting women's rights further, and generally cracking down on un-Islamic behavior (outside of the royal family, of course). This compromise helped to stabilize their hold on power at the cost of giving the hard-liners more power and making the Saudi public even more sympathetic to extremist Islamic views.
So the monarchy had stabilized their hold on power but had more militants in the population who were hostile to the monarchy. What to do?
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a gift to the Saudi monarchy. They not only heavily supported the Afghans in their war against the "atheist" Soviets, but they were also were happy to see many militant Saudis, including Osama bin Laden, leave Saudi Arabia to help in the struggle in Afghanistan. This helped ease internal tensions (war is always a great distraction), but when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the monarchy should have taken better care of the situation. Instead, they made a mistake that might ultimately prove fatal.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the Saudi government was convinced to participate in the liberation of Kuwait in part due to the threat of a quarter million Iraqi troops on the Saudi border, potentially read to invade. However, those troops never existed. It appears that the US manipulated Saudi Arabia into letting the US base troops on Saudi soil.
For many Muslims, allowing infidels to be stationed on holy soil was an abomination. That's why Osama bin Laden labeled the Saudi government as an enemy on par with the US and many Muslims agreed with him.
Today, the Saudi government is struggling to contain their own people and stabilize the region. This includes repeatedly trying to normalize relations with Israel. It also helps that they might gain Israel as an ally against extremist Muslims. King Abdullah appears to have been willing to modernize the nation, but his hands were tied due to the threat of constant revolt.
The new king, King Salman, is 79 years old and is apparently in very poor health. He may have cancer and he certainly won't reign long. There's certainly political jockeying amongst the crown princes and if King Salman dies (and quite possibly not by natural causes), civil war is not out of the question. If so, a new, openly hostile government could arise in Saudi Arabia: a government that has significant control over world oil reserves and quite capable of bankrolling more hostilities in the Middle East and against the West.