NEWS ANALYSIS : Saudi Move a Triumph for Bush--but Full of Perils

WASHINGTON —  Saudi Arabia’s agreement to allow the deployment of U.S. troops and warplanes in the vast desert kingdom represents a historic breakthrough for American foreign policy and a triumph for President Bush’s personal approach to diplomacy.

But the dramatic decision is also fraught with perils that extend beyond the possibility of armed confrontation with Iraq amid the richest oil reserves in the world. Without the most careful maneuvering--and a lot of good luck--the Administration’s immediate triumph could end up weakening the very government it is designed to save.

The extent of Bush’s diplomatic accomplishment is plain to see.

All past attempts to win agreement for either short- or long-term use of Saudi bases by American forces have been rebuffed, most recently during the 1987-88 Iran-Iraq War crisis, in which U.S. warships protected Kuwaiti and Western shipping interests.

Indeed, in the 60 years since King Abdulaziz ibn Saud’s army swept through the Arabian peninsula to conquer rival tribes and forge the present Saudi state, the diplomatic style of the House of Saud has been to place its faith not in military force but in patient, even wary, negotiation and in “checkbook diplomacy”--using its vast oil wealth to buy off opposition.

As a result, the Bush Administration can take credit for winning a major concession from King Fahd. “This is an important precedent that has implications not just for the crisis over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait,” one senior Administration official said.

“This is very uncharacteristic of Saudi Arabia,” added a leading Arab ambassador in Washington. “They must feel very threatened.”

But the Saudis have been threatened before. The dangers over the past decade from the other regional power, Iran, never led King Fahd to succumb. During the eight-year Persian Gulf war, Riyadh was repeatedly endangered, directly and indirectly. Even a dogfight between Saudi and Iranian fighter planes did not make the Saudis shift their policy against outside intervention.

Administration officials credit President Bush’s methodical strategy of bringing together unprecedented international support for an economic and political siege of Baghdad and his personal networking with the Saudi royal family for the dramatic policy shift.

Many U.S. analysts believe that the Administration’s boldest political ploy to date will work. “Saddam Hussein’s finished,” said Geoffrey Kemp, National Security Council staff director for Near East affairs during the Reagan Administration. “The issue now is whether he retires or drops down dead.”

“Hussein thought he’d get away with it. Now he’s not only not getting away with it, the whole world is coming down on his head. He’s going to be like a cornered rat,” declared Augustus Richard Norton, Middle East specialist at the U.S. Military Academy.

Yet both U.S. officials and private analysts concede that there is a wild card in the high-stakes global poker game: the eventual reaction of the Arab world as a whole.

Although many Westerners regard Hussein, the Iraqi president, as an unprincipled and bloodthirsty tyrant, he is widely viewed in the Arab world as a hero bent on rescuing Arab glory and independence from outside intervention.

A source close to the Saudi government acknowledged that having U.S troops in Saudi Arabia is “going to go down real rough in the Middle East, because you have to remember that Saddam (as he is popularly known in the region) is as much a hero to the rank and file in the Arab world as he is a villain to the United States.”

As a result, the Saudi decision to accept up to 90,000 American troops in the region, over the longer term, could undermine the legitimacy of the Saudi government that Bush seeks to prop up--much as the dispatch of the U.S. Marines to Lebanon eventually tipped the balance against Western interests in Beirut.

Saudi Arabia has a rocky record of internal support. The rapid growth of Islamic fundamentalism was felt at home during the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque by Sunni fanatics and during 1980 riots by Shiite Muslim zealots in oil-rich Hasa province. The Saudi government has also had to repress leftist radicals repeatedly.

The Bush Administration’s decision is designed to prevent the Iraqi leader from being able to dictate policy--on everything from oil prices to political direction--in the oil-rich but vulnerable gulf sheikdoms. For many Arabs, however, the United States may be seen as attempting to do the same thing.

“We are concerned about the internal repercussions, in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Arab world,” a ranking U.S. official said.

“(Hussein) appeals to those who are restless or angry about Arab political impotence. But our first focus must clearly be on (Hussein’s) thuggish behavior rather than on his pretentions of being an Arab nationalist,” the official said.

“Our policy is centered around trying to bring together the broadest possible moderate Arab and international consensus, which holds that kind of behavior will not be tolerated,” he added.

“If the Administration can be reined in to walk briskly, not run when others are walking, then we’ll be fine,” said one Mideast expert.

But resistance to American hegemony in the Middle East has been a constant feature of Arab internal politics for more than a decade, most visibly in the 1979 ouster of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran.

In 1982, the international community supported the deployment of a multinational force, or MNF--led by the United States but including contingents from France, Britain and Italy--in Beirut after Israel’s invasion. But within 18 months, both the MNF and U.S. diplomatic installations were under regular attack.

In Beirut, two U.S. embassies and the Marine compound were hit by suicide bombers in 1982 and 1983; 241 military personnel died in the 1983 bombing. The U.S. forces eventually crawled out of Lebanon, leaving it more chaotic than when they arrived.

Since his invasion of Kuwait last week, the Iraqi leader has won support even in traditionally pro-Western nations like Jordan, where he has been compared with Saladdin, the medieval Muslim warrior who repelled European Crusaders to reconquer Jerusalem.

Of immediate concern in Saudi Arabia, a source close to the Riyadh government added, is whether sending U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia “checkmates the Iraqis or prods them to attack.”

In light of the blustery rhetoric out of Baghdad on Tuesday, U.S. analysts conceded that they are concerned about the danger of an impulsive military response from Hussein.

“Unfortunately, we’ve always underestimated him--on invading Iran, on using chemical weapons and on attacking Kuwait,” said a senior U.S. analyst. “There’s literally no way to predict what he’ll do now.”

Hussein may be counting on combining his strategy of daring military surprises with the nascent signs of support for him elsewhere in the Arab world. He may hope that a bold move against American forces on the pretext of keeping the Arab world free for Arabs will rally further backing and undermine those governments that support the U.S.-orchestrated siege of his nation.

“We’re aware of the pitfalls, at least some of them,” a U.S. defense analyst said. “But I think we can’t worry about the man on the street. The regimes in the gulf were already endangered, and there are a lot bigger issues at stake that involved the whole world.

“The game was over unless we acted.”