What Obama May Find in Arabia Next Week: A Sense of Authority in Crisis by Janet Breslin Smith, Foreign Policy’s Best Defense
Next week, President Obama flies into Riyadh. He will find an unsettling welcome. The mood has darkened since his first trip in 2009.
Bombings in Brussels, Baghdad, Istanbul, and Lahore hang over conversations. Saudis are deeply concerned about falling government revenues, unemployment, and leadership uncertainties. They see war to the south in Yemen, wars to the north in Syria and Iraq, and most troubling, an apparent war within Islam itself. Underlying all of this is a certain helplessness, a sense of entrapment in a world spinning out of control.
The president must be attentive to this helplessness. It has puzzled me ever since I first taught Arab military students at the National War College. During the four years I lived in Riyadh when my husband was U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, it pervaded all conversations. I heard this helpless tone again last month on a return trip to Riyadh. It goes beyond politics to a deeper fear bound within Islam, and is key to understanding the fight against extremism…