L. M. ISAEV

Candidate of Political Sciences

A. V. KOROTAEV

Doctor of Historical Sciences

National Research University "Higher School of Economics"

Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences

Keywords: Saudi Arabia, Iran, SIPRI, "Arab spring", arms import, armed conflicts, Middle East

The Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has published data on military spending for 2015. The ranking is traditionally led by the United States and China, whose military spending totaled $596 and $214 billion, respectively. But for the first time, Saudi Arabia seems to have come out on the 3rd place, having spent $87 billion on military needs last year, and the gap from the fourth-placed Russian Federation was just over $20 billion.¹

As we will see below, in fact, Saudi Arabia surpassed Russia in 2015 only in nominal military spending, while in real military spending, Russia retained its 3rd place in the global military hierarchy.

STATISTICAL FRAUD

Without underestimating the rapidly growing Saudi ambitions in recent years, which have been expressed in sharply increased spending on weapons, the main factor is that Saudi Arabia has replaced the Russian Federation in the top three world leaders in military spending (and at the same time, as we will see below, only in terms of "paper" costs, and not actual ones), was a sharp drop in the ruble exchange rate.

Note that as of 2015, SIPRI published two sets of estimates of military expenditures: nominal (i.e., recalculating military expenditures at the nominal exchange rate, reflecting all speculative fluctuations in the dollar exchange rate) and actual military expenditures (this estimate ignores such speculative fluctuations in exchange rates).

Saudi Arabia has overtaken the Russian Federation only in nominal, but not in actual military spending. Indeed, when recalculating military spending at current speculative exchange rates, it turns out that Saudi military spending between 2014 and 2015 increased from $80.8 to $87.2 billion, while Russian military spending fell from $84.7 to $66.4 billion. But in reality, there was no drastic reduction in military spending in Russia!

We are talking about an elementary financial aberration. The exchange rate of the Russian ruble to the dollar, on average, for 2015 was incomparably lower than the average for 2014. This was, of course, primarily due to the collapse in oil prices (on which the Russian federal budget is extremely dependent), which began in the summer of 2014 and reached its "bottom" in the winter of next year.

But at the same time, the exchange rate of the Saudi rial (pegged to the dollar) did not collapse, but the exchange rate of the Russian ruble collapsed more than the currency of any other oil-exporting country by almost as much as the oil prices themselves collapsed. This became possible due to the fact that the Russian administration deliberately linked the exchange rate of the Russian ruble to oil prices.

The calculation (to a noticeable extent justified) was made here for the following. By the time of the beginning of the collapse in oil prices, various types of oil revenues (MET, customs taxes) were generated.

The research was carried out within the framework of the HSE Basic Research Program in 2016 with the support of the Russian Science Foundation project " Russian Policy in the Middle East: Prospects and Limits of Cooperation with the countries of the region "(N 14 - 18 - 03615).

Table

Military expenditures per capita ($)

Source: SIPRI Database.

duties on oil exports, etc.) accounted for more than half of the federal budget revenue. Under such conditions, the Russian administration's de facto binding of the ruble exchange rate to the oil price allowed it to fulfill its social obligations (denominated, of course, in rubles) for a considerable time (until oil prices fell below a critical level) without significantly spending the gold and foreign exchange reserves (gold reserves) accumulated during the period of high oil prices. prices.

But at the same time, Russia also spent its military expenditures almost exclusively in rubles. Therefore, the significant increase in Russian military expenditures observed in 2015 is beyond doubt, and the illusion of their reduction is obtained only by using the nominal exchange rate artificially lowered by the Russian administration to solve its fiscal problems.

So, behind the reports of some media outlets about the exit of Saudi Arabia in 2015 to the 3rd place in the world in terms of military spending, there is a kind of "double reality". On the one hand, Saudi Arabia's actual military spending in 2015 was not circumvented by the Russian Federation. But still, there was some reality behind these messages.

Indeed, after the beginning of the "Arab spring", Saudi Arabia tried to enter the role of an unambiguous leader of the Arab world, including by increasing its military power; the struggle for this role led to the kingdom's involvement in direct and indirect military conflicts (the most expensive of which was the Yemeni conflict), and therefore to the creation of a new state of affairs. an additional increase in military spending.

As a result, Saudi military spending increased enormously in 2011-2015. Russian military spending also grew very rapidly at this time, but not at such a fantastic pace as was observed in Saudi Arabia.

ENEMIES ARE EVERYWHERE

In any case, this information once again confirmed Saudi Arabia's status as the most militarized country in the world in terms of military spending per capita, which is one and a half times higher than even the level of the United States (see Table).

The first thing to note is that Saudi military spending in 2015 was largely increased by $6.4 billion, the price that the kingdom had to pay for its military campaign in Yemen. Similar data is provided by the Minister of Economy and Planning of Saudi Arabia Adel bin Mohammed Faqih. He estimated that $5.3 billion of Saudi spending in 2015 was spent specifically on Operations Storm of Resolve and Rebirth of Hope.²

At first glance, there is nothing surprising about Saudi militarization, since in recent years the kingdom has been actively involved - both directly and indirectly - in military operations in the Middle East, which forces Riyadh to pay more and more attention to military needs. According to the World Bank, after 2011, the share of military spending in the country's GDP almost doubled - from 7.2% to 13.7% ³-in 2015. At the same time, at the time of the beginning of the "Arab Spring", this indicator reached the Saudi historical minimum, which, in general, corresponded, in general, to a very calm situation in the region (of course, by Arab standards).

The Arab Spring exposed a crisis of trust between the countries of the region and the United States. American policy in the Middle East was becoming less and less clear to the Arabs themselves, causing more and more questions and complaints. Dosta-

just recall the confusion in a number of Arab capitals caused by the rapprochement of the US administration with Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. As a result, the view has been reinforced that the Obama administration does not have a clear strategic goal in the region, nor does it have the political will to pursue its own interests. This idea was especially reinforced by the contrast with the active Middle East policy pursued by Obama's predecessors in the presidency, especially the two George W. Bushs1.

The United States ' indecisiveness during the anti-government demonstrations against the allied regimes of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine al-Abidine ben Ali in Tunisia, and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen was interpreted, at best, as a betrayal. And at worst, as a deliberate policy of Washington to redraw the entire Middle East and North Africa. Although, for the sake of justice, it should be noted that even in the camp of opponents of the overthrown regimes, American policy also did not find proper support, and American neutrality was interpreted not in their favor.

The United States ' Arab allies were even more shocked by Washington's inaction on the Syrian front in August-September 2013, when information appeared about the alleged use of sarin nerve gas by the Syrian army near Damascus. The use of chemical weapons was clearly regarded by regional opponents of the Bashar al-Assad regime as a" red line " drawn by Washington in politics and crossed by the Syrian president, which would inevitably lead to direct US intervention in the Syrian conflict.

However, this did not happen, and the subsequent statements by Barack Obama that he was "proud" of the diplomatic settlement of the situation once again made his allies think about what American security guarantees are like under the current leadership.

The balance of power in the region was disrupted after the Arab Spring, when the most militarily and geopolitically powerful countries had to fight for their own survival. We are talking, first of all, about Egypt, where the state power was almost completely paralyzed in order to conduct an active foreign policy immediately during the January 25 revolution. After that, the Egyptian administration was completely preoccupied with internal problems and, above all, with the problems of its own survival. It did not have the strength and resources to maintain its status as the region's geopolitical leader.

A special role was played by the financial problems of post-revolutionary Egypt. As a result of the revolution, the government was forced to take on a lot of new financial obligations (for example, by increasing salaries and allowances for various categories of the population that demanded it). Expenses have increased very noticeably. And any reduction of them was met with an explosion of indignation ("What were you fighting for?!"We will defend the gains of the Revolution!!!"). At the same time, revenues collapsed (at least due to a sharp reduction in the tourist flow and capital flight).

The result was a rapid decline in the country's gold and foreign exchange reserves, and the prospect of financial bankruptcy loomed more and more clearly ahead of the recently quite prosperous country4. This caused Egypt to become financially dependent, first on Qatar (under the Muslim Brotherhood), and then on Saudi Arabia (immediately after their overthrow).⁵, and Egypt has lost its role as a regional leader.

As a result, new players began to claim the leading positions - Turkey, Iran, even a tiny (but exceptionally rich)one Qatar - including, of course, Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Saudi Arabia decided to back up its leadership claims with a significant increase in its military power. And the unpredictability of Arab politics after 2011 required Riyadh to immediately respond to increasingly acute and sudden challenges, which further pushed Saudi Arabia to assume a new geopolitical role (and therefore increase its military potential).

The situation was further complicated by the fact that the close ties between Saudi Arabia and the United States, the foundations of which were laid back in 1945 at the meeting of President Franklin Roosevelt with King Abdulaziz on the USS Quincy after the Yalta Conference, began to weaken. Since the arrival of the Obama administration, the United States has not only lacked a clearly defined strategic goal in the region, but also the political will to pursue its own interests.

The United States ' indecisiveness was evident during mass protests against authoritarian regimes in Arab countries. "Longtime American allies like Hosni Mubarak, Zine al-Abidine ben Ali, and Ali Abdullah Saleh felt betrayed by the Obama administration," writes Polur Kumaras, director emeritus of the Middle East Institute in Delhi-

you-and the protesters were disappointed with the weak support of the Democrats. Riyadh was even more perplexed by the US administration's rapprochement with Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. " ⁶

On the other hand, the Saudi elite began to build its foreign policy, increasingly responding to the steps and initiatives of Iran. It is the Arab-Iranian (or, more broadly, Sunni-Shiite) confrontation that has become the core around which the entire foreign policy strategy of the Saudi rulers has been built in recent years.

Iran in the eyes of Riyadh is a fundamental enemy - the main threat not only to the Saudi leadership in the Middle East, but also to the very existence of the kingdom. "Justifiably or not, Saudi Arabia feels surrounded by enemies subordinate to Iran: in Bahrain, in Syria, in Yemen and in Iraq," German expert Sebastian Zons7 notes in ^this regard. As a result, the entire policy of the kingdom is built as a reaction to the actions of Iran.

For Barack Obama, the strategic link in Middle East policy is not the containment of the "Iranian threat", but the fight against the"Islamic State". And in this case, Iran can hypothetically be considered a potential ally in the fight against the growing terrorist threat, which causes jealousy in Riyadh. The signing of the Vienna Agreements on Iran's nuclear program in the summer of 2015 gave a fundamentally new context to relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which was perceived in the kingdom as an attempt by Washington to diversify its ties in the Middle East.

TO ARMS

The crisis of trust and transparency in US-Saudi relations is pushing Riyadh to pursue a more independent policy in the Middle East, and in solving its foreign policy tasks, Saudi Arabia has increasingly resorted to methods previously used by the United States. Moreover, this independence has its own characteristics, which lead to an increase in conflict in the region.

Among them, first of all, three stand out: a pronounced personality color, lack of sufficient experience and responsibility for their policies, and a tendency to solve problems in the most radical way. Therefore, if the operation "Peninsula Shield" to save the ruling al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain can still be attributed to an attempt to ensure their own security in the conditions of chaos and uncertainty characteristic of the beginning of 2011, then the war in Yemen, the support of the Egyptian military led by al-Sisi in the summer of 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood."and active participation in the Syrian conflict is an example of how Riyadh solves the problems of undesirable regimes in an American way without regard for Washington in the context of the crisis in US-Saudi relations.

As a result, the Saudi Kingdom is firmly in the 3rd place in the world in terms of the share of military expenditures in GDP, second only to Oman, which traditionally spent at least 10% of GDP on defense and increased this figure to 16.2% in 2015 (see graph 1).

A similar increase since 2011 has been demonstrated by Riyadh's overall spending on the military sector: in the years following the Arab Spring, an increase in the Saudi military budget was recorded.-

Graph 1. Share of military expenditures in GDP (%).

Source: World Bank database.

Figure 2. Expenditures on arms imports (in $ billion).

Source: SIPRI Database.

The number of tokens was between 16 and 20% compared to the previous period, which is one of the highest rates in the world. Although this trend began to decline in 2015, when the budget deficit reached a record $98 billion, which reflected a very modest, by Arabian standards, growth rate of military spending, amounting to only 7% compared to 2014, in total, over the past five years, the Saudi defense budget has increased by 80%.

Another obvious trend that has characterized the Middle East and North Africa region since the Arab Spring is a sharp increase in arms imports (see chart 2). In 2015, arms imports in Arab countries reached $9.3 billion, which is a third of the global figure. At the same time, the increase in arms imports to the Arab world, compared to the level of 2010, was 34%. While for the five-year period preceding the "Arab Spring" (from 2005 to 2010), the increase in the cost of purchasing weapons was only 13%.

The leading role in these processes was played by Saudi Arabia, whose spending on arms imports in 2015 reached $3.2 billion, or a third of all Arab imports and a tenth of the global total.

And for Saudi Arabia, this trend especially intensified after 2011: then the kingdom's costs for the purchase of weapons were three times lower. If in 2005 the share of Saudi Arabia in the total Arab arms import was 4.5%, then by 2010 the share of Saudi Arabia in the total Arab arms import was 4.5%. it has already increased to 20%, and five years later it reached 34%.

Saudi interest in arms imports is also largely due to the increased level of instability in the region and, accordingly, the geopolitical ambitions of regional actors, primarily from Iran and Qatar, which contributed to the kingdom's permanent involvement in regional conflicts from 2011 to the present day.

But if before the beginning of the Arab Spring, Egypt remained the main regional guarantor of security and the preservation of the status quo in the Middle East, which also did not have relations with the Iranian authorities, then after the revolution of "January 25, 2011" and the subsequent events of "July 3, 2013", the country of the pharaohs almost completely plunged into solving its internal problems This left Riyadh alone with the threats that are on the regional agenda.

However, the Iranian military threat to Saudi Arabia remains nothing more than a myth. Far from being a hegemon State capable of ordering and subjugating its regional adversaries with impunity, Iran maintains its position in the region, but not at the expense of its military might. While its regional competitors continue to buy the latest weapons systems.

Figure 3. Share of military expenditures in total government expenditures (%).

Source: SIPRI Database.

Sober assessments-both quantitative and qualitative-show that the countries of the Arabian Peninsula are well positioned not only to resist the rising Iran, but also to compete with it. According to the CSIS report, it can be concluded that the countries of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Persian Gulf (GCC) have an overwhelming advantage over Iran both in terms of spending on weapons and in terms of access to the latest military models.

In terms of quantity, Iran's military spending is much lower than that of its Arabian competitors (see chart 3). According to SIPRI, in 2015, more than 27% of all Saudi government spending was spent on building up its military capabilities. In Oman and the United Arab Emirates, these figures were 28% and 17%, respectively. In total, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates spent about $120 billion on military needs in 2015, which is 3/4 of the defense spending of all countries in the Middle East (see figure 4). For comparison, Iran's military spending in 2015. They accounted for about $10 billion, or 10% of the total military spending in the Middle East, 11% of Saudi and half of Emirati spending.

At the same time, the existing imbalance in military spending between the Arab countries and Iran is by no means a phenomenon of recent years. According to SIPRI, a similar situation persisted before the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Iran. As can be seen in Graph 4, Saudi Arabia consistently spent an order of magnitude more on weapons in the twenty-first century than its Persian neighbor.

Qualitatively, the situation looks similar. The GCC countries have acquired and are acquiring the latest and most advanced weapons. While Iran is still forced to live "in the past", often relying on outdated samples purchased before the 1979 revolution.

As the experts of the National Iranian-American Council, Trita Parsi and Tyler Cullis, note, " the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf are armed with modern American weapons.-

Graph 4. Military expenditures, in current $ (million).

Source: SIPRI Database.

Soviet military equipment, such as Boeing fighter jets, Lockheed Martin aircraft, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, Apache attack helicopters, Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as the latest stocks of missiles and other weapons.

Iran, on the other hand, still has outdated weapons systems from the time of the Shah, and, unable to find a reliable partner abroad to purchase weapons, Tehran was forced to rely on its own industry in order to maintain its ability to produce military protection equipment."⁸

Egypt's military spending remains relatively low compared to the GCC countries, although it spends more than $5 billion after the overthrow of Morsi. However, it is aimed primarily at maintaining its own stability, rather than building up its geopolitical ambitions. "The increase in the country's military spending is reflected in the ongoing modernization of weapons aimed at countering terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, normalizing relations with Ethiopia, stabilizing political protest and ensuring security in the Suez Canal zone," Business Monitor International⁹.

At the same time, the Egyptian military budget has traditionally been largely dependent on annual aid from the United States, whose relations since the late 1970s have been built on long-term military cooperation aimed at maintaining the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Since March 2015, Washington has resumed providing $1.3 billion in aid to Cairo, suspended after the 2013 coup10, 85% of which was directed to military needs, and only ¹⁵% to economic development. At the same time, about 60% of US military aid was spent on paying for the military, and the remaining funds were spent on purchasing weapons.

* * *

The peculiarity of modern conflicts in the Middle East is that they quickly transform from local to regional, and sometimes even international, drawing in more and more new players. Relations between Riyadh and Tehran, as well as the situation in the region as a whole, may escalate in the near future. Accordingly, the further aggravation of relations between the two countries makes any hopes for a diplomatic resolution of the old Middle East conflicts that marked the Iran-Saudi confrontation illusory.

"Both in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, the Kingdom of Arabia and the Islamic Republic are ready to do anything to prevent a competitor from strengthening its influence,"he said.¹¹. Both countries are in a fierce confrontation over regional leadership.

The militarization of one of the world's most unstable regions is primarily due to the "phobias" of the leading regional players, who are faced with the need to survive in the face of a revision of the "rules of the game"that have existed over the past decades.

The American Middle East policy of the Obama era, which served as one of the sources of these" phobias", did not gain not only support, but also understanding from the majority of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which, ultimately, pushed the latter to pursue a more independent policy in the region, predetermining a high level of economic growth in the region. the level of conflict in the Middle East.

¹ SIPRI Database - http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database

² Yemen War Cost Saudi $5.3 bn: Minister // PressTV, December 29, 2015 - http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/12/29/443712/Saudi-Arabia-economy-minister-Yemen-war -budget/

³ World Bank database - http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS/countries/SA-OM-QA-KW-US-1 A?display=graph

^{Isaev L. M., Korotaev A.V.} 4 The Egyptian Coup of 2013: the experience of econometric analysis / / Asia and Africa today. 2014. N 2) (Isaev L.M., Korotaev A.V. 2014. Egipetskii perevorot 2013 goda: opyt econometricheskogo analiza. N 2) (in Russian)

⁵ Korotaev A.V., Isaev L. M. Anatomiya egyp'skoy kontrrevolyutsii [Anatomy of the Egyptian counterrevolution]. 2014. N 8 (Korotaev A.V., Isaev L.M. 2014. Anatomiya egipetskoi kontrrevolutsii. N 8) (in Russian)

^{Coomaraswamy P. R.} 6 Saudi Arabia: Imperial Overstretch? // Russia in Global Politics. 2016. N2.

⁷ Conflict of Iran and Saudi Arabia: Causes and Concequnces // Deutsche Welle. 11.01.2016 -http://www.dw.com/ru/конфликт-ирана-и-саудовской-аравии-причины-и-последствия/а - 18968051

^{Parsi T., Cullis T.} 8 The Myth of the Iranian Military Giant // Foreign Policy, 10.07.2015 - http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/10/the-myth-of-the-iranian-military-giant/

⁹ Egypt - Military Budget - http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/egypt/budget.htm

¹⁰ Obama Ends Freeze on US Military Aid to Egypt // Reuters, March 31, 2015 - http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-egypt-military-idUSKBN0MR2GR20150401

^{Isaev L. M.} 11 "Please them with a painful punishment": the geopolitical rivalry of Saudi Arabia and Iran // An inviolable supply. 2016. N 2. (Issaev L.M. 2016. "Obradui zhe ikh nakazaniem muchitelnym": geopoliticheskoe sopernichestvo Saydovskoi Aravii i Irana // Neprikosnovennyi zapas. N 2) (in Russian)

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