Stardate 20020127.1811

(On Screen): Is there a growing schism between the government of Saudi Arabia and that of the US? It's hard to say. There are certainly deep disagreements between the two.

The Saudi Government has always had an anomalous attitude towards the events of September 11. There was the fact that nearly all the attackers were Saudis, for instance. Initially they refused to admit that, and tried to claim that American identification of the attackers was mistaken and that a lot of the men we claimed were involved actually were still alive and had had their identities stolen by the real attackers who had come from elsewhere.

Of course, that story didn't fly and they let it rest right where it landed. Now their official press says that those who attacked were Saudis but were deeply deceived; thus they too were victims and in any case the nation from which they came can't be implicated. And though neither nation officially said that there was anything except the deepest of cooperation between them in investigating the hijackers, the unofficial word is that the Saudi authorities did their best to impede the investigation. Not that it did them any good.

There was also the statement from someone in Saudi Arabia that the US would be forced to remove its troops; this was quickly denied. And, of course, the Saudis forbade use of their air fields by the US in its war in Afghanistan. Not, again, that it did any good.

So there seems to be a schism. But there also seems to be cooperation. The FBI just helped the Saudis break an al Qaeda cell, for example. Of course, this is more for the benefit of Saudi Arabia than it is for us, because among the other things that it is, al Qaeda is also a revolutionary movement inside Saudi Arabia. (One of its stated philosophies is that the holy ground of Saudi Arabia is being polluted by infidels, and bin Laden has been less than complimentary about the current Saudi government.)

So there does still seem to be some cooperation between the two governments. Still, it's becoming clear that there is no friendship here; it's more like a convenient partnership. The extent to which each nation feels any commitment to the other on the basis of actual affection and loyalty appears to be nil; where cooperation happens, it's because of enlightened self interest.

The key is oil: they've got it, we want it, and they want and need our money. But in no other regard is the relationship equal. And they distinctly have the shorter end of the stick. There's been speculation in various fora about how powerful the US military is, especially after the tour de force in Afghanistan. Let's not get overconfident here; we're good but we're not omnipotent. For instance, I've seen speculation that the US is capable of conquering the world. Not correct, unless we are willing to flatten most of it with nuclear warheads first and to accept that most of our own cities would also get plastered.

That said, our military (especially the Navy) is very powerful, and it is definitely within our capability to capture and hold the Saudi oil fields. And they know it.

Saudi Arabia has spent an enormous amount of money on western military equipment, especially from the US. They fly F-15's and F-16's, but they are not the same versions that we fly. The export versions of those jets are deliberately down-tuned, and they do not have a full set of avionics. Still, they are not to be sneered at.

On the other hand, the real edge in a military is the men who run the equipment, and in that regard there is no reason to believe that the Saudi military stacks up. They probably have some good pilots, but overall they are not going to be able to stand up to our air capability, and their ground forces will be far worse than ours.

And the joker in the deck is spare parts. If we end up opposing them, it won't take long for their air force (and their mechanized ground forces using western equipment) to grind to a halt. Modern jets, in particular, chew up replacement parts at a ferocious rate when they are being flown regularly, and even more so in combat when the jets are being stressed. (It is no accident that Ollie North et. al. sold a plane load of replacement parts to Iran when they needed money for the Contras; Iran's force of American jets had been grounded for a long time for lack of parts.)

So it might cost us, but there is no question that we could capture and hold their oil fields. As a result, their goverment knows that there are limits to what we will stand for, and that all friendship ceases if the oil taps are turned off. What's not known is what else might cause friendship to cease.

So what appears to be happening so far as I can tell, is that the Saudis are attempting to test our tolerance to see how much they can get away with. For internal consumption, they must appear to be something other than American lackeys, and nowhere more so than in regards to perceived American interference in Arab affairs. (The "get your military out of our nation" trial balloon, for example, definitely was over the line and they immediately pulled it back.)

They are trying to deal with the fact that bin Laden seems to have struck a note with young Saudis. It develops that the vast majority of them sympathize with him and his goals,