The House of Putin vs.
the House of Saud
An oil-rich regional power, feeling threatened by an armed coup near its border as well as the appearance of a rival in its historical sphere of influence, reacts quickly and decisively. This regional power amasses more than 100,000 troops and intervenes militarily in a nation without formal support from the UN or any other international security body. This same regional power attempts to restore the deposed leader of the armed coup, again without international support. As a result, a localized civil war threatens to become a regional war and the basis for a global proxy war that could last decades.
The describes the recent Saudi military intervention in Yemen against Iranian-backed proxies, but it could just as easily describe Russia’s intervention in Ukraine against what it perceives to be NATO and U.S.-backed proxies.
And that’s a problem.
In one case, Saudi Arabia is a long-time partner of the United States and essentially gets a “pass” to do whatever needs to be done, no questions asked. In the other case, Russia is a long-time rival of the United States and gets a firm economic shakedown for its efforts to assert order and stability in Ukraine.
No wonder Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were so distressed by what they saw as America’s “double standards” for the House of Putin and the House of Saud. As Foreign Minister Lavrov pointed out on March 27, “I have no choice but to use this hackneyed cliche: obvious double standards have been applied. Certainly, we did not want the events that are happening today in Ukraine and Yemen.”
But this is more than just the classic case of “Whataboutism” involving Russia that we’ve seen time and time again. Russia can talk endlessly about the unification of West and East Germany, Argentina’s rights to the Falklands, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo or Chechnya’s right to arm Mexico — and nobody is going to listen much. Nobody much takes seriously any argument that starts “What about…”
But the case of the House of Saud and the House of Putin shows better than any previous example the “double standard” at play in the global order.
If tensions in the Arabian Peninsula persist, they could lead to a re-thinking of the global security order. Nobody much believes in a Fukuyama-like “End of History” thesis anymore, in which liberal capitalist democracies reign supreme in the world, and now it’s time to find a new thesis. And this new thesis has got to include the legitimate interests of the world’s growing economic powers — including Russia — as well as serious thinking of how to deal with changing world order where trade blocs are shifting, globalization is halting, and signs of a New Cold War are all around us.
Where all this could play out first is in the Middle East, where the House of Putin and the House of Saud are already showing signs of a massive falling-out. As if Saudi Arabia’s refusal to cut back oil production at OPEC in 2014 wasn’t enough to get Russia’s attention, there’s now the delicate matter of what Saudi Arabia thinks about Russia’s growing influence in Iran, Syria and Egypt. This all came to a head in late March, in the form of a Saudi rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him and Russia of “hypocrisy” for their role in Syria.
But if the global order is indeed changing, and Saudi Arabia feels confident in its role as the regional hegemon, then the old days of the Western petrodollar system propping up a conservative (even authoritarian) regime in Saudi Arabia could be coming to an end. While the West is standing by for now in Yemen, careful not to disrupt global oil supplies in the region, there is a growing feeling in foreign policy circles that the drama of the West’s “double standards” with Saudi Arabia is coming to a decisive denouement. And, going forward, that could have a huge impact on not just how the West interacts with the House of Saud, but also how it interacts with the House of Putin.
