Saudi Coalition Could Lead To Greater Conflict

A coalition to fight terrorism, led by the custodian of the two most holy sites in Islam, including nations so eye wateringly rich they could buy off most terror groups with pocket change – what’s not to like?

 

At first look, Saudi Arabia’s announcement that there are 34 countries signed up for military action against “terrorism” worldwide, and another 10 waiting in the wings is good news. They’re all culturally Muslim nations. And it’s in Muslim nations that terrorism has been able to grow and where jihadism poses the greatest threat to the status quo.

 

So, clearly, there is every reason why the nations most threatened by extremism should take the lead in dealing with it. There is a geographical imperative here. If so-called Islamic State expands its borders, it will be into Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey long before it poses any kind of a real threat to Europe – much less the US.

 

Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman is in the vanguard of a much more aggressive clutch of Arab monarchs, many of them educated in Western military academies, now fired with martial enthusiasm and a strong sense that the previous generation was sitting on its haunches, counting petrodollars, while the sands of political time shifted beneath them.

 

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