What a breath of

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What a breath of fresh air. For some time now I’ve wondered why the US doesn’t pursue what I call an ‘Arabian fringes’ strategy in the Persian Gulf. And now Senator Carl Levin seems to be arguing for something similar.

Here’s the idea.

By now we all know we’ve got serious problems with Saudi Arabia. The question is, do we have any better options?

And the answer, it seems to me, would seem to be a surprisingly clear ‘yes’.

As you can see on this map, the southern and eastern fringes of the Arabian Peninsula are ringed by a series of emirates and sultanates. Some like Oman are actually rather large, while others like Bahrain are tiny little islands in the Persian Gulf.

With the exception of Yemen, though, the one thing that unites pretty much all of them is that they have more progressive political systems than Saudi Arabia and they’re more friendly to the United States and even, in some cases, Israel. Here’s a good, recent article from Slate about how tight we are with the Sultan of Oman. And here’s a transcript of Larry King spending some quality time with the Crown Prince of Bahrain. And that doesn’t even get you to the United Arab Emirates.

So if the Saudis have such a beef with us, why do we need to be there?

It seems to me that our geostrategic needs can be met elsewhere.

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