PERSPECTIVE ON THE PERSIAN GULF : The Saudi monarchy’s paranoia rules out development of a national army capable of defending the country. : The Billion-Dollar Two-Bit Army

Along with the daunting problems of logistics and desert heat, the American military command now on the ground in Saudi Arabia must also face the grim realities of its new partner--the Saudi army.

Since 1974, Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars building a defense Establishment, while knowing that it could never fight a war. The backbone of the kingdom’s defense strategy lay in reliance on the American commitment to the survival of an independent Saudi Arabia. With a relatively small population of men eligible for military service, the kingdom must defend 872,722 square miles, three coastlines and a northern border void of any natural defenses that stretches the width of the Arabian peninsula. But Saudi Arabia’s defense problems go even deeper, into the very nature of its society and political system.

More than a nation, Saudi Arabia is a fragile collection of fiercely independent individuals who resist incorporation into institutions. Culturally, Saudis are deeply marked by the Bedouin ethos, which holds that a man bows to no master, not even his government. The Saudis have lived within a state only since 1924, when the Bedouin army of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud finally subdued Mecca and the Western coastal plain and declared the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With no fiscal resources with which to build a nation, Abdul Aziz brought the Bedouins of the desert and the merchants of the towns together through a series of loose alliances built on religious orthodoxy and the monarch’s own 300 marriages into the kingdom’s major families. Relationships with the ruler were personal, not institutional. Loyalty of the highly independent Saudis resided within their individual families. And identity remained with a specific region of this vast and vacant county.

For the House of Saud, the system worked. The king ruled by drawing the people into the political system through their tribal chieftains and religious leaders. With the 1973 oil embargo, Saudi Arabia transformed economically but not politically. Rather than modernizing the political system through power sharing, the House of Saud simply turned its network of alliances into a golden pipeline through which the largess of the oil bonanza flowed to the citizenry. Dispensing electricity, water wells, housing, education, health care, grants and loans, the House of Saud held power unto itself.

In order to insure its survival, the House of Saud fine-tuned its unique military structure. The military is constituted of two distinct parts: the regular forces--army, navy and air--whose mission is to defend the country against foreign threats, and the national guard, armed with sophisticated weapons and trained largely by former U.S. military men, which is charged with protecting the House of Saud against coups originating within the regular armed forces. The 25,000-man guard is drawn from the descendants of those who fought in Abdul Aziz’s Bedouin army. Their loyalty lays within the old tribal alliances through which the first Saud ruled.

The regular military, perhaps 50,000 men, is drawn out of the urban classes and from those with ambition but no family ties to the House of Saud. With attractive salaries and special privileges, the military forms one of Saudi Arabia’s new elite. But beneath the uniforms and outside the plush officers’ clubs, the defense Establishment lives under the cloud of the ruling family’s paranoia.The top positions are held by members of the royal family. Non-royal brigade commanders and wing commanders are constantly shuffled to prevent the development of personal attachments between officers and men. For non-royals, initiative or efficiency elicits attention and arouses suspicion of clandestine motives, blocking the way to further promotion. Thus an armed force equipped with the best from the world’s arms manufacturers atrophies as an organization.

The rivalry between the guard and the regular force can be crippling in a crisis. When they were called into action in 1979 to dislodge religious fanatics who had seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca, competition among units paralyzed operations against the rebels. Order was restored only after the royal minister of defense arrived on the scene to personally take command.

The House of Saud always understood the Saudis’ fundamental resistance to the organization and discipline required by a national army. It also understood the weakness of its military structure, but was unwilling to sacrifice its own security to build as effective a defense force as its limited population could create. Instead, Saudi Arabia’s rulers adopted in 1974 what remains its basic plan of defense: Rush all available manpower to a handful of fortified locations and hold on until the Americans arrive.

The Americans have now arrived. In this joint operation with incalculable risks, they will have to work with the Saudi defense force as it is.