The Preferred Allies.

Countries that have hitherto been regarded as allies of the US in the cold war continue to be regarded as allies. These include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and others in the GCC. They are the preferred allies, in that Washington would ideally like them to be at the forefront, in the

Middle East, in the war against terror. But the Sept. 11 attacks have had a devastating impact upon these allies of the US. Firstly, it has politically backfired on all their efforts during the 1990s to crush militancy. Regional experts on militancy have no doubt that, with the single act of bringing down the Twin Towers and the strike on the heart of the US military establishment, the Saudi-born Osama Bin Ladin has managed to motivate a new generation of radicals.

This put the allies of the US in the region, i.e. the ruling superstructures in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco etc., in a very difficult position from a domestic political perspective. If they gave open-ended support to Washington, like the Bush administration had demanded, then they would have increased their own alienation from the general public. Hence Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest allies in the Arab World, tempered their backing with cautionary statements and have refused to get directly involved. What this implied is that Washington's preferred allies began to seem, at least in public, like allies of convenience. And this image hit their reputations in American public opinion. The result has been a barrage of media criticism of the way both Saudi Arabia and Egypt responded to US appeals for help in the war against terror.

Now that Phase One of the war has ended more rapidly than anyone expected, these countries will face a tougher test, as the campaign against terror will continue with a focus that will shift to the Arab World. It is this phase that will determine whether they will remain America's preferred allies beyond the war against terror. Depending on the pressures to be applied by the US, privately first and publicly if that fails, one or two of the countries in this group could well move downwards to the status of an ally of convenience.