What’s behind US’ support for Arab dictatorships?

It is an indisputable fact that the US, despite its claim to support human rights and democracy, continues to oppose independent countries where freedom and liberties prevail – such as the Islamic Republic of Iran – and brazenly back dictatorships, especially the repressive regimes of such Arab states, as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt. Here we present you an interesting analysis titled “What’s behind US’ Support for Arab Dictatorships”.

A frequently raised question concerning the US policy is that why Washington puts support of some dictatorships ahead of its so-called democratic slogans. For example when Saudi Arabia launched its aggression on Yemen, the US not only backed the Saudi military campaign but started supplying arms and equipment to the aggressor, in addition to sharing intelligence and sending 45 military and intelligence experts.

All these are done by the US to get Saudi Arabia's approval in some regional cases. In fact, the US, with its unclear reasoning, has chosen to accelerate destruction of the only country of the Arabian Peninsula where the monarchic system does not prevail and where people’s votes count. Moreover, the American foreign policy making community, including the studies institutes, research centers and think tanks have chosen to go silent concerning the case.

But why really the US government and its think tanks show compromises with measures which are against their values and democratic slogans?

In answering this question, we should not ignore the Persian Gulf region's cooperation and dealings which influence heavily the West Asian debate of the US, but we should take into consideration a subtle part of this relation in which money controls the policy-making norms and strengthens biased endorsement. At the same time, huge money injections into the American think-tanks should not be disregarded.

An evident example in this regard is the profligacy of the tiny emirate of Qatar to boost its power for lobbying in the US. Qatar has granted the Brookings Institute $14 million to open an office in its capital Doha. Brookings is perhaps the world's most-referred think tank. In fact, at the time of the Islamic Awakening or the Arab Spring, as the West called the people’s uprisings in North Africa and West Asia, the reactionary Arab regimes tried to refashion the region in a very different way, although their ideological inconsistencies have appeared more explicitly. Witnessing Qatar's money spending in the US, Saudi Arabia and the rest of Arab states came up with the notion that they needed to contain the Qatari influence. Therefore, the Saudi, Bahraini, Emirati and Kuwaiti governments have hired their own lobbyists. Then their money flowed towards the American think-tanks as well as research centers. Actually, ever since the ties of Saudi Arabia and the UAE chilled with Qatar, they have spent huge amounts of money to limit Doha's sway. In comparison to other parts of spending fields, the think-tanks proved more influential.

The lobbying institutes are, in fact, profitable businesses. They try to make the most money from their clients. These institutes do not see themselves or their influence as being put for sale, however, the foreign payers apparently think that it is a dealing process, and they find spending on think-tanks as a convenient investment. Perhaps $ 200,000 is a big money for the research centers but it is a very small amount of money for the oil giants like Saudi Arabia which spends millions of dollar on lobbying. In fact, this is a low-cost but precious business.

In fact, this spending on the think-tanks has come in a time of budget crisis which has started some years ago and affected the universities and study institutions exactly in a time that spending witnessed considerable cuts. The government aids as well as internal donations also saw a large decrease, making these institutes in desperate need of funding. But it was at this time that Saudi money has arrived. In 2014, the Persian Gulf Arab states' money was seen clearly flowing towards the Western institutes.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British research institute, has opened a large new office with a $1 million Emirati funding. In the same year, the New York Times has launched a research on foreign countries' aids to the Western think-tanks. The research found that the funding’s were in a rise. The New York Times findings talk about millions of dollars pouring towards the Washington-based influential studies institutes, which produce political analyses, host forums and send to the US official summaries which are linked to the foreign government agendas. The Times' documents have disclosed that the receivers of the Arab countries' funding had direct hands in provocation of different events.

The funding has resulted in inequality in covering the cases. Sometimes these research centers put heavy strains on some of Middle Eastern governments.

But, these institutes pay a little attention to the anti-democratic measures of Washington’s Persian Gulf allies like suppression of domestic movements and violations of human rights, like those of Saudi Arabia. Sometimes they even entirely ignore these actions.

Another effect of ongoing funding is the think-tanks' self-censoring, because nobody in these research institutes wants the political analyses make the Arab money move away. Perhaps the best example is Michael Daun, a diplomat with 20 years of experience of working in the US government. He was employed in 2011by the Atlantic Council think-tank to direct a new department called Rafiq Hariri Center.

But he was hounded out of job after he chose to move within his own independent pathway. He then joined Carnegie Corporation of New York, a research institute working without Arab funding. In fact, many of the Western studies institutes are in a race for the Arab dollars, and do not want to lose their share of them.

AS/SS