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With or without the F-15, the Saudis have no illusions about being able to fight off a serious attack from Israel, to say nothing of a combined assault by hostile neighbors with Soviet backing. Thus the very modest Saudi strategy is to be strong enough to hold out for a mere two or three days until international support could be rallied and a powerful friend — say the U.S. — could rush to its aid.
In political terms Saudi Arabia is an astonishing anachronism in an age dominated by the ideals of democracy and socialism. The country has not a single elected official, no parliament, no political parties. Absolute power is vested in the royal family, the House of Saud, a huge clan whose collective decision making provides stability for the country (see box).
By catapulting their country forward into the most ambitious building program that money can buy, the Saudi rulers also set in motion a kind of social revolution whose long-range effects are not easy to foretell. "We are just about keeping pace with our five-year plan," says Planning Minister Hisham Nazer, "but we still have more money than we can spend." They are building two of the largest and most modern airports in the world for Riyadh and Jidda, to accommodate the armies of migrant workers and businessmen who are coming to seek their fortunes.
The Saudis have bought the best in people too. To make some order out of urban chaos, for example, they brought in Greek City Planner Constantinos Doxiadis. To build up their soccer teams, they hired British Coach Jimmy Hill. To head the new Applied Research Institute at the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, they signed William Pickering, who as head of California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory helped put a man on the moon.
With school enrollment expanding rapidly, the Saudis needed a major school lunch program. No problem; they simply began to fly in 200,000 meals daily from Paris. For a while the country's seaports were jammed.
But then, according to Nazer, "we threw a little money on the problem and solved it." What they threw was $6.6 billion for port expansion. The building program created a tremendous labor shortage; the Saudis solved it by requiring all large foreign contractors to bring their own workers along — and add the cost to the price of the contract.
These migrant workers, who now number almost 1 million, remain outside the main stream of Saudi life, since most leave when their specific job contracts expire. In Al Knobar, shops cater to the thousands of Korean workers with window signs reading KOREAN SPOKEN HERE. Saudis complain that the Egyptian and Pakistani workers are responsible for the increase in burglary in a country that boasts one of the lowest crime rates in the world (in part, because thieves are punished by having their hands cut off). On occasion, Yemenites have gone on slowdown strikes, while Filipinos, Pakistanis and Koreans have demonstrated to protest poor housing or low wages; some have been deported.