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Saudi foreign policy: interests, options, and strategies
Ist Teil von
Saudi Arabian Foreign Relations, 2016, p.17-80
Ort / Verlag
United Kingdom: Routledge
Erscheinungsjahr
2016
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
In order to understand the reasoning behind Saudi Arabia’s repeated attempts to
mediate in international and intra-national conflicts in the Middle East, one first
needs to study the genesis of Saudi foreign policy decisions and the motivations
and constraints influencing this process. As the Saudi government does not take
its foreign policy decisions in a political vacuum but within the boundaries of
the international system, it is essential to analyze the Kingdom’s actions within
this wider context. In the following, I suggest a theoretical framework that aims
at explaining the nature of international relations and the formation of state
foreign policy decisions in general.1 Hereafter, I am going to apply this theoretical approach to the specific case of Saudi Arabia and explain the Kingdom’s
foreign policy choices at large and its recurrent mediation attempts in particular.2.1 Foreign policy analysis
The different schools of International Relations (IR) theory suggest either twoor three-level analyses of the nature of international relations and the genesis of
foreign policy decisions. The first level of analysis deals with the nature of the
international system itself and the rules and limitations it lays out for the development of international relations and state foreign policy. With regard to the
implications which the nature of the international level has on states’ foreign
policy one could hypothesize: “What you [the state] do depends on what the
system both allows and forces you to do.”
The second level of analysis then studies the relevant state and addresses,
depending on the assumptions drawn from the analysis of the first level, up to
two basic questions: First, in which relation do the individual state’s material
capabilities (characteristics that directly influence international relations, such as
military capabilities) stand to the capabilities of the remaining states? Second,
how is the state’s environment characterized with regard to the quantity and
respective capabilities of other states in geographic proximity? As a result, the
former question is associated with the assertion: “What you do depends on how
powerful you are.” The latter question is grounded on the hypothesis according
to which “where you stand depends on where you sit,” meaning that foreign
policy decisions are formulated with regard to a state’s immediate environment.