In the wake of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, the political landscape has shifted dramatically in the Middle East and the wider Arab world. Many Arab countries — primarily Syria, Libya and Yemen — continue to face civil war, social unrest and governmental disarray. Even Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain still continue to face civil disobedience by organized groups using terror to achieve their objectives. Directly in the midst of this turmoil sits Saudi Arabia, internally immune to such chaos, yet facing a long and developing list of regional issues as it takes up the security mantle of responsibility for an Arab world that is staring into the abyss of war and destruction.
What is needed now is for the kingdom to establish a framework for a new Saudi Defense Doctrine (SDD) to assess how it can best fulfill and sustain its enhanced responsibilities in the coming years. Having recently published such a study through the Defense and Intelligence Projects at Harvard's Kennedy School Belfer Center, I list the primary points of the SDD herein so as to foster a discussion that will no doubt be highly valuable in fine-tuning what should and can only be a long assessment process. The objective is to better understand and assess the kingdom's current and coming predicaments, its present capabilities and its future needs as it sets out to serve as a major stabilizing force working for peace and order in the Middle East and beyond.
The new SDD, as has been conceived, has seven main goals:
- Defend the homeland.
- Succeed in counterterrorism efforts.
- Bolster the defense of partner states.
- Prevail in power-projection missions.
- Deter the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
- Establish two separate commands for cyberspace and space.
- Strengthen interagency partnerships.
The first point speaks for itself. Like any nation, Saudi Arabia must first be able to defend itself from external threats. Such threats can emerge in the form of attacks on sea lanes that prevent precious oil from reaching global markets, incursions via land borders (via Yemen or Iraq, for example) or attacks from the air. The kingdom is already in the process of substantially bolstering its defenses to meet these increasingly complex possibilities.
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