A US Trump Card in Gulf Geopolitics: Capacity-Enhancing Security Cooperation
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If played well, security is the United States trump card in stabilizing relations with its Gulf partners and competing with China for regional influence.
In a just-released report, Middle East scholar and former Pentagon official Bilal Y. Saab argued that security entails far more than arms sales and defining the parameters of US security guarantees.
Perhaps, first and foremost, at this stage of the game, it involves reform of the Saudi military and assisting the kingdom in developing the structures and management needed, in Mr. Saab's words, "to manage, employ, and sustain" sophisticated weaponry and associated strategies and doctrines.
Mr. Saab’s proposition strokes with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans to transform the kingdom’s military.
Mr. Saab asserted four years into Mr. Bin Salman’s military reforms that “Saudi Arabia still struggles with providing sound strategic, operational, and tactical guidance for its armed forces” and has “difficulty engaging in systematic defence analysis and strategic planning.”
Moreover, according to the former official, the Saudi defense ministry has “little ability to effectively identify, train, deploy and retain a technically capable force. Human resource management policies, functions, and strategies that allow for the recruitment, training, promotion, assignment, and retirement of military personnel are seldom applied… Military academies neither educate nor produce capable Saudi leaders…”
Mr. Saab said, "this means that they (the Saudis) don’t properly prioritise either missions or capabilities and don’t know to properly identify their military requirements.”
Mr. Saab suggested that Saudi Arabia will be in a position to jointly with the United States develop unified defense plans and joint concepts of warfare once it overcomes these hurdles, whether or not with US assistance.
Indications are it will be with US assistance.
The US military is working with Saudi Arabia to develop its first-ever long-term national security vision that would codify “the kingdom’s strategic vision for national security and regional security,” according to Gen. Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla, the top commander of US forces in the Middle East.
