Author: HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal

HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal is chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and a co-founder of the King Faisal Foundation. He served as ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States from September 13, 2005 until February 2, 2007. He also serves as a member of the board of trustees of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and has been co-chair of the C100 Group, an affiliate of the World Economic Forum, since 2003. Prince Turki was appointed an advisor in the Royal Court in 1973. From 1977 to 2001, he served as director general of the General Intelligence Directorate, the Kingdom’s main foreign intelligence service. In 2002, he was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

Keynote Remarks to the 31st Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference

Keynote speech by HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud delivered at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 31st Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference on November 3, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

The esteemed Foreign Affairs Magazine has accurately described our time in its special centennial issue of September/October 2022 by: ” The age of Uncertainty”. Indeed, our world is in a state of uncertainty and therefore in a state of strategic vacuum and strategic confusion. Such international strategic confusion is caused by the conduct, policies, and hypocrisy of great powers at the helm of the supposedly Rule-Based International Order. The relative world peace and security that the world “enjoyed” since the end of the second World War, multilateralism, interdependent world economy, globalism, and human achievements during peace time are all seriously threatened by this state of uncertainty. Our world is by its nature a multipolar world as reflected in structuring the UN Security Council veto power. However, bipolar and unipolar worlds were reflections of the balance of power in all aspects of power at the time. Our world today is not the world of 1945, therefore, thinking of a new approach, free of the mentality of the Cold War, is needed to manage our transforming multipolar world in an orderly and peaceful fashion to escape what Graham Allison calls: “Thucydides’s Trap” in his book: “Destined for War” discussing the future of America and China relations.

I, as many in this world, have been, for many years, calling for the need to reform the UN System, particularly, restructuring the UN Security council to reflect the aspirations of the world community and to express the structural changes transforming our world. Many reform initiatives were presented and all calls for reforming the UN Security council to be fair, inclusive, and equitable fell on deaf ears of the five permanent members. For the first time, many world leaders, including President Biden in his latest speech at the UN General Assembly called for such reform. This call does reflect a change in mind by the United States to save what is regarded as a liberal rule-based international order. This “Liberal Order” cannot be sustained as liberal if it is not fair, inclusive, equitable and reflective of our international reality. Continued uncertainty is leading to uncertain behavior by irresponsible powers and leaders that may lead to catastrophic consequences.

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The Middle East Today: Where To?

Keynote speech by HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal delivered at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 26th Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference on October 19, 2017, in Washington, D.C.

The Middle East today is in a state of turmoil as never before. I will limit my talk to issues causing disorder and anarchy and on my hopes for a peaceful, secure, and stable region.

Looking into today’s prevailing conditions and state of affairs in the Middle East, particularly, the Arab region, we find no credible signs that call for much optimism: strategically, it is vulnerable on all fronts and is widely exposed to all possibilities. This strategic vulnerability is as old as the establishment of the nation-state order following World War I. However, catastrophic events during the past decades such as the recurring Arab-Israeli wars and conflicts, the Lebanese civil war, the Iraq-Iran prolonged war, the invasion of Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq, and constant foreign interventions have contributed greatly to this vulnerability. Coupled with this is the failure of many of our states in facing the shared and constantly looming threats to our existence and to our people. Poor social, economic, educational, and cultural policies, and the selfishness that characterized some Arab leaders’ foreign and domestic policies for decades are causes of this mess.

All of what we witness nowadays unfolding and that was exposed by what is called the “Arab Spring” is but an indictment of these policies and natural results of it. In Iraq it has led it to becoming a failed state with a collapsing society; the cause of Syria’s free falling into a swamp of blood, destruction, desolation, terrorism, conspiracies and foreign interventions; the cause of the sinking of Yemen into an inferno of conflict and civil war; the cause of the failure of the Libyan state; the unrest in other Arab countries; the cause of the spread of the transnational phenomenon of terrorism within many of our states; the cause of the spread of armed militias that are not under the control of nation states; and the spread of appalling sectarianism and other negative development. All that is a condensed representation of our deplorable state of affairs.

Our unenviable present was the future of our recent past, and the way we deal with our present is the future awaiting us. It is imperative that we must consciously learn from the pitfalls of the past. We must plan our future wisely and be alert at all times if we want to avoid a catastrophic future. We must courageously face the challenges that threaten our existence and attain a visionary approach to the future, if we wish to attain a decent place on the world stage.

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Saudi Foreign Policy: Unity, Stability, and Responsibility

When the Arab uprisings began in 2010, the future of the Middle East looked more uncertain than usual. In the midst of the turmoil, Saudi Arabia was forced to strengthen and clarify its foreign policy. Since then, the Kingdom has structured its foreign policy leadership and its vision for its future around unity, stability, and responsibility.

Unity

The unity that Saudi Arabia advocates, and the vision it promotes, is the unity of the Arab Gulf. In the past few years, the Kingdom has made great efforts to prioritize the oneness of the Gulf’s Arab countries and their shared interests over small and transient differences. In the struggle to restore the legitimate government to power in Yemen, the Kingdom has forged a coalition of the GCC countries and likeminded Arab and non-Arab countries to achieve that aim. The purpose has been to prevent the usurpers of power, the Houthis and the forces of the deposed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, from forcing themselves on the Yemeni people.

As sectarian violence deepens rifts and breaks apart homes and communities across the Arab world, Saudi Arabia’s call for unity has become more urgent than ever. Iraq and Syria are among the countries following the same heartbreaking narrative: citizens with the same shared history, religion, and homeland continue to be torn apart by radical groups exploiting sectarian religious and ethnic divisions for their own gain. Groups like ISIS, the Shi‘i militias in Syria and Iraq, Hezbollah, and the Houthis use religious extremism in order to gain loyalty by providing the young a militant identity, a sense of belonging, and a vision for which to fight. But the unity of radicalism is an illusion; it cannot exist without an enemy. It reaches not toward harmony but toward domination and control. ISIS is a symptom of the disease of anarchy in Syria and Iraq.

But the unity of radicalism is an illusion; it cannot exist without an enemy. It reaches not toward harmony but toward domination and control.

Russia has now added to this bloody scene air strikes aimed at Syria’s moderate opposition, which is fighting ISIS and Bashar al-Assad alike. This is a most unwelcome addition to an already combustible situation. Russian representatives state they are there to fight the terrorists. Alas, together with the United States Moscow is ignoring the father of all terrorists in Syria – Assad. In Baghdad, the legacy of Nuri al-Maliki’s sectarian rule disenfranchised the Sunni Iraqis and allowed ISIS to take advantage of the resultant vacuum to establish rule in Mosul and other parts of Iraq. Fix Damascus and Baghdad, and ISIS will wither away.

Fighting sectarianism is far from easy. Sectarianism thrives on the enmity of others. The kingdom asked fellow Islamic countries in 2012 to build a center that will research and help dismantle sectarian ideologies while promoting intersectarian dialogue. But there is only so much that can be done for countries like Iraq and Syria, where sectarianism has become and remains a valuable political currency. The desire for unity cannot come from the outside alone; it must also come from within.

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