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DIVERSIONARY DISCOURSE: A HISTORICAL COMPARISON OF SAUDI INTERVENTIONS IN YEMEN A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Caroline F. Tynan May 2019 Examining Committee Members: Sean Yom, Advisory Chair, Political Science Roselyn Hsueh, Political Science Samer Abboud, Global Interdisciplinary Studies, Villanova University Sarah Bush, Political Science, Yale University Khalid Blankinship, External Reader, Religion ii ABSTRACT This project seeks to explain the aggressive turn in Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy after 2011, most drastically exemplified through its 2015 military intervention into Yemen. It does so through a two-case historical comparison between the Saudi interventions in Yemen in 1962 and 2015. Additionally, it compares the nature of internal regime survival strategies within the kingdom during these two distinct time periods of regional revolutionary upheaval: the Nasserist period of the late 1950s to 1960s and the time during and after the Arab uprisings in 2011. It makes the argument that, despite comparable internal and external threats in each time period, Saudi foreign policy is more openly aggressive in the contemporary period as a function of the regime’s ontologically weakened ideological legitimation. Whereas the Nasserist period offered an ontologically distinct threat in the form of a rival state ideology (secular Arab nationalism) that could be strategically co-opted and repressed by the Saudi regime, the Arab uprisings embodied a broader threat. This has included movements that have combined variations of both Islamism and liberal constitutionalism to challenge authoritarianism in the region. It has ultimately been threatening in part because of an ontological similarity to the regime’s own historic use of Islamic legitimacy. Thus, unlike the mediated Saudi approach to the Nasserist threat, the Saudi regime today has opportunistically engaged in an exaggerated aggression abroad as well as more deliberate, open displays of domestic repression at home. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the academic and personal support provided by mentors, colleagues, and friends in and outside of Temple University. I am deeply grateful to my advisory committee, each of whom provided me with invaluable guidance in their own ways. Ever since the proposal stage, my advisors Sean Yom and Rosie Hsueh never failed to offer me their reassurance that I would make it through this process when I most needed it. Sarah Bush helped immensely in the early stages of the theory chapter, providing the confidence I needed to repeatedly rework that draft on my own in the final stages. I want to especially thank Samer Abboud, who joined this committee early on as an outsider to Temple University purely out of intellectual commitment to the topic, for which he offered irreplaceable insight. Samer helped to organize the first “Summer Institute on Security Studies in the Arab World” in Lebanon in 2017. As a participant there, I was introduced to non-traditional perspectives of studying the Arab world as well as new conceptualizations of international security. The ability to share and receive feedback with fellow dissertating grad students from around the region and beyond was one of the most meaningful academic exchanges I have had. iv To name just a few friends who provided both academic feedback and emotional support throughout this process: Ian Matthews, David Nunnally, Diana Partridge, Danielle Scherer, Raied Haj Yahya, Nate Grubman, and Tini Eggeling. In addition to my advisors and colleagues in political science, I owe immense gratitude to Temple University’s Digital Scholarship Center. Through a year-long fellowship followed by continued employment at the DSC, I had the opportunity to learn new ways of gathering data, receiving insight from colleagues on my research topic. A special thanks goes to Alex Wermer-Colan and Luling Huang, who both helped continuously as I began to develop skills in collecting data from news and social media online through web scraping. With funds from the DSC as well as a research grant from the Association for the Study from the Middle East and Africa, I was able to travel to London twice for interviews and an archives trip. Above anyone, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Kay and Doug. Without their steadfast support for my pursuit of education throughout my life, I would never have been able to begin this process in the first place. In the most difficult moments, they pushed me to move forward with a sense of purposefulness. The countless political discussions at home with both of them were always dually centered on intellectual curiosity and values of universal humanity. From an early age, my mother instilled in me a strong identification with issues of political and social justice, never failing to question the use of v violence and war. Through his unwavering encouragement, my father helped me to believe in myself more and more over these last few years. I dedicate the efforts of this dissertation to them both. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………....iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES……………………………………………viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW ……………..1 2. SAUDI RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF NASSERISM: STRENGTHENING IDEOLOGY, DEVELOPING DYNASTICISM ………...75 3. SAUDI RESPONSE TO NASSERISM: INDIRECT AGGRESSION BALANCED WITH A REINFORCEMENT OF IDEOLOGY AND FOREIGN SUPPORT………………………………………………………........................112 4. FROM CO-OPTATION TO AGGRESSIVE LEGITIMATION: THE EVOLUTION OF SAUDI REGIME SURVIVAL STRATEGIES SINCE 2011 ……………………………………………………………………………….….155 5. CONSTRUCTING LEGITIMACY THROUGH EXTERNAL THREAT: THE 2015 INTERVENTION IN YEMEN……………………………….... …..206 6. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 252 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 270 APPENDICES ..................................................................................................... 290 A. INTERVIEWS ......................................................................................... 290 B. TWITTER DATA .................................................................................... 296 vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure Page 1. 1960s Case……………………………………………………………………39 2. Arab Spring Case……………………………………………………………...42 Table 1. Twitter data…………………………………………………………………..243 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW On March 26, 2015, a new Saudi defense minister, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, initiated the kingdom’s first full-scale war since its founding in 1932 by launching an intervention into Yemen. Two years later, the same prince replaced his cousin as heir to the throne in the first palace coup since 1964. Both moves were unprecedented in one key respect: they were done without the approval of fellow senior members of the ruling royal family. Although Saudi Arabia has been interfering politically and militarily in Yemen for decades, the 2015 intervention marked a major break with its historical foreign policy of cautious reaction characterized by indirect interventions through checkbook diplomacy and reliance upon the UK and US for external military protection.1 Why would Saudi Arabia change its military approach to Yemen so drastically, when previous responses to external threats involved only indirect force? How might changing domestic threats shape its construction of external threats? Previous theories have connected the inner workings of regimes with proclivity for conflict initiation. Yet, these theories have mixed findings on the role, if any, domestic politics might have in an authoritarian context. As a result, there is little consensus on what mechanisms within a regime might contribute to the use of a diversionary war strategy. 1 Colgan (2013): 225 2 This project seeks to understand the relationship between the foreign policy shift and the monarchy’s evolving strategies of survival at home. It draws from the literatures on diversionary war, authoritarian legitimation, and ontological security. I argue that foreign policy responses to security threats can be a means of consolidating domestic power in formative moments in which internal instability coincides with leadership succession. An incoming leader will use foreign policy as a means to gain support in different ways depending on the nature of the perceived domestic instability and elite audience. In what follows I give a brief description of the Saudi regime as well as definition and clarification of concepts key to the dissertation’s argument. I then provide an overview of the literature on different types of authoritarian regimes and their strategies for survival, and under what conditions this may include diversionary war. After linking regime survival strategies to the literature on ontological security, I go on to show how the case of Saudi Arabia’s turn towards aggressive foreign policy furthers our understanding of the significance of ideology as an authoritarian legitimation strategy. At the same time, the shifting ontological nature of threats helps to explain why foreign policy as part of a legitimation strategy may change over time. From there, I introduce the rationale for my two-case historical comparison of two formative moments in which Saudi Arabia recalibrated its regime survival