Saudi Arabia’s New Strategic Game in South Asia
07/18/14
Daniel Markey
Grand Strategy, Security, Nonproliferation, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, India
"Riyadh’s South Asia play is a high-stakes gambit with direct consequences for Iranian nuclear developments, the war in Syria, Pakistan’s stability and Indo-Pakistani peace."
Motivated
by old and new security anxieties, and above all, by its sectarian
competition with Iran, Saudi Arabia is playing a new game in South Asia.
In a dramatic shift from prior decades, warming ties with India have
already served Riyadh well by steering New Delhi away from a closer
partnership with Tehran. Separately, reenergized links with Pakistan
offer Riyadh even more potent ammunition to counter Iran’s nuclear and
regional ambitions.
Although
Western analysts tend to view Saudi policies through a Middle Eastern
lens, Riyadh’s South Asia play is a high-stakes gambit with direct
consequences for Iranian nuclear developments, the war in Syria,
Pakistan’s stability and Indo-Pakistani peace. Fortunately, if
Washington is clever and a little lucky, many of Riyadh’s moves with
Islamabad and New Delhi can be turned to the U.S. advantage.
Saudi Anxieties, Old and New
Throughout
its modern history, the insular and fabulously wealthy Saudi monarchy
has grappled with domestic and regional security anxieties despite extraordinary military expenditures.
At home, the state’s official sponsorship of the austere Salafi school
of Sunni Islam has created particular problems with the country’s Shia
minority on the one hand, and with radical and violent Islamist groups
such as Al Qaeda, on the other. At the same time, the tradition-bound,
dynastic politics of the Al Saud family poses an obstacle to the sort of
reform that would encourage broad-based economic growth and political
participation.
Given
these domestic political challenges, the events of the 2011 “Arab
Spring” raised new Saudi fears about internal unrest and regional
strife. Saudi leaders have tended to interpret recent political
upheavals in the context of a broader sectarian and strategic
competition with Iran. That rivalry for leadership within the Muslim
world has driven Saudi defense and foreign policy for decades and shows
no serious sign of abating.
Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/saudi-arabia%E2%80%99s-new-strategic-game-south-asia-10909
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