STRATEGIC STUDIES QUARTERLY
Year:2017 | Volume:20 | Issue:1 (75) |Papers Count:8

This article explores the regional and international factors as the independent variables affecting foreign policy of Saudi Arabia and then it discusses four main features of its political system, namely, kingdom, wahhabism, rentierism and peninsula situation as the intermediate variables – domestic sources. Within this approach, five principles and grand goals of its foreign policy, including peripheral dominance seeking, regional balance, Islamic-Wahhabism centralism, coalition building and anti – democracy actions are analyzed. The main existing issues of Saudi Arabia's foreign policy are to be further explained at different levels as the reference of its constant elements and grand goals.

Due to geopolitical and regional developments and geo-strategic changes of the extra regional powers in the aftermath of the beginning of the 21st century, the regional balance has been changed in favor of Iran and to the detriment of Saudi Arabia. This situation along with the domestic developments of Saudi Arabia including its new leadership have led to the understanding that if Iran's continuous influence would not be contained based on policy of rebuilding a regional balance, the future order of the West Asia should be Iran oriented order. Therefore, Riyadh has adopted an offensive policy and pursues the said policy absorbing three strategies of hardware balance, external balance and internal balance.

The papers discusses first theories of possible analyses of the Saudi Arabia’ s society from a political sociology perspective and then tackles active and inactive gaps in the field of religion and its sectors, tradition and modernism, pros and cons of the government and finally the generations gaps and tribal ones. The main argument of the paper is that due to the lack of proper political, social, cultural and economic bed, and also with the short of a significant external crisis – like oil price drop-the social gaps in Saudi Arabia will not be activated and rather will be in a low profile mode and so the socio-political forces will not be strong enough.

The paper intends to answer this question: given the current facts and realities in Saudi Arabia, which changes are probable in the field of economic development and political stability of the country? The author assumes that the in the short term the current economic situation will go on and the government’ s dependency on oil will not be aborted. The Saudi government enjoys the oil revenues for the public well-being as well as gaining legitimacy and political stability. However, some of its officials are of the view that with should the status quo continue, both the national well-being and political stability will be at risk in the near future. Therefore, it is the time to transiting into a competitive and economy together with a variety.

The Saudi Arabia political and legal system is somehow consistent with the Sharia and tradition and so there is no room for human rights. The individual in this country is within the foundational and comprehensive concepts based in tradition and so human rights cannot challenge the society in future. The same perspective is the case with regards to secular or religious legal system of the country as it is consistent enough with the social and cultural espatial of the Arab peninsula and it doesn’ t need the legislation or legislator. However, the recent regional developments have emerged human rights as a threat against Saudi Arabia; a country in which the rights of its minority Shiite groups along with women’ s and the children right are being raised especially in the war in Yemen.

Although the geopolitical and security concerns have a great importance to diplomatic action and strategic decision making, the Saudi politicians have recently acted in a way that mare than these concerns, it is their cultural norms and identity that affects those decisions and this shapes their strategic culture. Given the importance of the said fact, the paper attempts to provide a clear picture of the Saudis strategic culture and in this way the main question is that what those elements and their influences are in this strategic culture. To answer these questions first a theoretical framework is offered to explain the strategic culture and then the elements and foundation of the Saudi strategic culture are identified and finally their influence on this culture will be discussed.