Revisionism and diversification in Saudi’s foreign policy after the Arabian spring

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Department of Law, Faculty of Law, Azad University, Central Tehran branch

Abstract

By the start of the Arabic changes in 2011 known as the Arabic Spring, the fear of people's voice spreading to the Arabic countries, made their political governing systems frightened. Among the reactions, the Saudi regime had the steadiest yet sturdiest reaction to such changes within the region. That reaction included a change of strategy in Saudi's foreign policy. As they witnessed the end of Mubarak and Bin Ali, in Egypt & Tunisia, they realized their solely strategic alliance with the USA is no longer sufficient enough to insure their survival. Hence they decided to make changes to their foreign policy at regional and international levels. Those changes are the title of this article. Therfore we ask this question that: What changes was made by the Saudi government to its foreign policy reflecting the Arabic Spring? In response to the hypothesis we say: at regional level, the Saudi government changed its foreign policy strategy from defensive conservative to defensive revisionism in order to reduce its security reliance on the USA, and at international level, it changed its strategy from positive coalition with the USA to diversification with the great powers following the movements of 2011, known as the Arabic Spring. The method of this article is elucidation-commentary and its approach is analogical benefitting from conceptual framework of Stephen Walt's Threat Balance Theory. In order to organize the material accordingly, we will start with theoretical elucidation first using defensive realism theory.

Keywords

References

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World Politics
Volume 8, Issue 3 - Serial Number 29
February 2020
Pages 55-74

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