No “Arab Spring” in the Saudi Kingdom: Riyadh’s Foreign Policy and “The Saudi-Led Counterrevolution” | Global Research

No “Arab Spring” in the Saudi Kingdom: Riyadh’s Foreign Policy and “The Saudi-Led Counterrevolution” | Global Research

Writing in The
Washington Post on February 27, 2011, Rachel Bronson asked: “Could the
next Mideast uprising happen in Saudi Arabia ?” Her answer was: “The
notion of a revolution in the Saudi kingdom seems unthinkable.”

However, On September
30 the next year, the senior foreign policy fellow at the Saban Center
for Middle East Policy Bruce Riedel concluded that the “revolution in
Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable.”

To preempt such a possibility, the kingdom in March 2011, in
a “military” move to curb the tide of the Arab popular uprisings which
raged across the Arab world from sweeping to its doorsteps, the kingdom
sent troops to Bahrain to quell similar popular protests.

That rapid reactive Saudi military move into Bahrain heralded a
series of reactions that analysts describe as an ongoing Saudi-led
counterrevolution.

Amid a continuing succession process in Saudi Arabia, while major
socioeconomic and political challenges loom large regionally, the
kingdom is looking for security as far away as China, but blinded to the
shortest way to its stability in its immediate proximity, where
regional understanding with its geopolitical Arab and Muslim
neighborhood would secure the kingdom and save it a wealth of assets
squandered on unguaranteed guarantees.