199democracy had one unintended consequence and harmful effect for the
Kingdom, namely, it transformed Iraq into a Shia Arab country. Though
demography was in their favour, for decades, the Shias of Iraq were mar-
ginalized and deprived of their due share of political power. Operation
Iraqi Freedom empowered the Iraqi Shias and in the process spurred a
Sunni backlash which first manifested as sectarian violence but eventually
culminated in the emergence of ISIS (Gerges 2017 ).
Three, the poorly planned American military campaign in Iraq and
Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks exposed the policy
paralysis in Washington. At one level, the Bush Administration sought to
‘respond’ to the largest terror attacks on its soil by launching two costly
wars. These attacks against al-Qaida positions in remote Afghan moun-
tains brought little strategic let alone political dividends and resulted in
Saddam Hussein being falsely accused of possessing and developing
‘weapons of mass destruction.’ He was even blamed for perpetuating the
September 11 attacks. Intelligence reports were substantially tweaked
under the pressures from the Bush Administration and the US commit-
ted a sizeable military force overseas without clearly defined political
goals, operational plans or even an honourable exit strategy. After an esti-
mated death of over 250,000 persons, including 4500 US military per-
sonnel (and 32,000 wounded) (“Iraq Body Count” n.d.), and spending
about US$1.7 trillion in that country, the US pulled out its combat forces
from Iraq in 2011 without accomplishing any tangible military, political
or diplomatic gains. This US misadventure in Iraq conveyed two critical
messages to Saudi Arabia and other regional players; one, Washington
would be unable to provide a clear-headed leadership towards a major
international crisis and that it lacked the political will and economic
power to pursue a sustained military campaign; and two, the ill-planned
US strategy would be a recipe for regional disorder.
Four, even before the Iraqi catastrophe could be digested, the region
witnessed popular protests in different Arab capitals and the US once
again failed to provide a leadership role. Saudi Arabia and other Arab
monarchies felt let down by President Barrack Obama’s somewhat late
decision to ‘abandon’ Hosni Mubarak, who had furthered the American
interests in the region for three decades. Erstwhile American policy rever-
sals over Taiwan and the Shah of Iran reverberated in public memory.
Obama’s subsequent decision to swiftly embrace Mohammed Morsi’s
election in 2012 also did not go down well in Riyadh (Gause III 2011 ,
2014 ). Likewise, the American policy vis-à-vis the Syrian crisis proved to
be directionless as well as ineffective (Humud et al. 2018 ).
INTERNATIONAL FACTORS