As successive administrations in Washington have viewed it, discretion has been the better part of valor, even though one of the targets would be the Middle East's other nuclear power, Israel. An article by Richard Russell in the current issue of Survival, the quarterly of the influential International Institute for Strategic Studies, argues that while Saudi Arabia has not yet put nuclear warheads on these rockets it is probably only a matter of time before it does.
Self-serving security issues are more important in such decision-making that "an innate friendship" with the US Although the US more than responded to Iraq's invasion of neighboring Kuwait, would they do so a second or third time? For the desert kingdom with its small population and army but huge territory, nuclear weapons appear a sensible option. At the same time they would make the country less dependent on the stationing of US forces on its soil, which enrages the powerful fundamentalist lobby.
After Washington belatedly discovered the purchase of the CSS-2 from China, 31 Senators called on the Reagan administration to suspend US arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis were not intimidated. Requests by Washington to inspect the missiles have been refused.
As Israel long has, Saudi Arabia will always deny the intention to build a nuclear armory, not least so as not to publicly embarrass Washington. But common sense and much circumstantial evidence suggest that this is the way it will go. It is not the so-called "rogues" who pose the threat of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation; it is some of the Western powers' "nearest and dearest." What is Washington going to do about that?
Jonathan Power is a freelance columnist based in London.
RSS