Saudi–European relations 1902–2001: a pragmatic quest for relative autonomy

Surprisingly little has been written about the century-long relationship between Saudi Arabia and Europe, beyond snapshots of certain periods or certain aspects. Similarly, very few attempts have been made to seek long-term patterns in Saudi foreign policy. This article aims to fill this double gap. It shows that these patterns link even the earliest days with the present day, that they are inter-twined with the very building, consolidation and survival of the Saudi state and Al-Saud rule, and that they have implications for the future of Saudi-European relations.
The article also aims to draw lessons from the Saudi case for the understanding of the foreign policy of developing/small states more generally. The Saudi-European relationship provides an illustration of the extent to which small/'dependent' actors in the international system can acquire a measure of autonomy. The room for manoeuvre which adept local leaders can turn into relative autonomy at the domestic, regional and international levels emerges from the combination of particular domestic circumstances (the availability of material and political resources) with external ones (including limitations on, and competition between, great powers; and the global scattering of great-power interests, as opposed to local actors' regional concentration). Such relative autonomy for the state at all three levels has allowed the Al-Saud to pursue the survival imperative and other interests through the long-term foreign policy patterns of managed multi-dependence and pragmatism.     

Strukturwandel der Wissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus

National Socialism brought about profound changes for the German academic system. Forced emigration not just sent outstanding scholars into exile, thus closing down promising research venues. In fact, it changed the entire climate of scientific inquiry by removing intellectual outsiders from the scene, whose absence usually precludes any success of innovative research. In most disciplines this led to a dominance of just a few academic ‘schools’ and paradigms, which severely harmed intra‐discipline accountability and innovation. The academic bureaucracy worked more effectively than has been assumed for a long time: practice‐oriented research enjoyed massive state support, and huge research projects outside the universities flourished. At the same time the National Socialists looked ambivalently at the universities themselves. They savored the legitimizing functions of the arts and sciences, and yet they distrusted the professors as exponents of the bourgeois world of old. Contrary to the blooming sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics, the arts and humanities had a hard time demonstrating their practical applicability. In order to prove their worth by means of giving advice to the political sphere, they formed interdisciplinary combines, which were massively funded by the ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’. The ‘Deutsche Wissenschaft’, which has been incorrectly marginalized in numerous accounts, served in part to provide a Weltanschauung justification for these networks. While the German academic community in 1945 tried to pick up the threads of the a‐political self‐ understanding of the 1920s, in fact there were numerous continuities to academic life before and after 1945. Among them were the encompassing loss of international contacts, the strengthening of hierarchical structures, and the importance of feasibility criteria for the culture of innovation. The arts and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) could not regain the lost territory of significance, which they had suffered during the Third Reich. It is mainly their development which showed an amazing persistence of national socialist patterns of view and of concepts of the enemy, which in turn as late as 1968 inspired in part the anti‐bourgeois thrust of the critique of the academic world.     

Liebe Leserin, lieber Leser,

Ohne Zusammenfassung