US president Barack Obama speaks alongside King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia during meetings in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 29, 2010. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]
If there is a single, over-arching explanation for the very public crack that recently appeared in the US–Saudi relationship, it is the maelstrom surrounding the Saudi Kingdom.
The Middle East, and Arab lands in particular, have never seen such a dangerous tumult as they currently do. Except for a few of their immediate neighbors, all Saudi officials see around them is instability and hostility, with no end to either in sight.
Their main regional rival, Iran, has insinuated itself into Arab affairs in a big way. Iraq has close ties with Iran and is once again riven by sectarian violence. Jordan’s stability is strained by an influx of Syrian refugees. Egypt, in Saudi eyes, is struggling to pull itself out of an abyss. Tunisia and Libya are fraught with internal dissension and violence. Lebanon has a paralyzed government. Then there is Syria, being torn apart by a civil war in which Al Qaeda-like militias that have no love for Saudi Arabia could end up big winners.
It’s this perilous landscape, and the United States’ response to it—which in Riyadh’s view has been disappointingly inadequate and misguided—that has precipitated the latest strain in US–Saudi ties.
In recent days, the media has exhaustively reviewed the most proximate reasons for the Saudi stances. They are discombobulated by the possibility of a meaningful rapprochement between Washington and Tehran because they fear it will be at their expense. They were furious when President Obama backed away from bombing Damascus as punishment for its use of chemical weapons (which they hoped would unseat Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad), and instead agreed to a Moscow-negotiated arrangement under which Syria will give up its entire store of chemical weapons.
However, Saudi disenchantment with US policies in the Middle East is not new and goes back several years. Riyadh was aghast at the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and has been upset ever since at the continuing violence there, as well as Baghdad’s cozy relations with Tehran.
The Saudis have also been distressed by Washington’s response to the Egyptian revolution. “If the United States so easily abandons Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, one of its most loyal, long-time allies,” the Saudis asked themselves, “What will it do if a similar situation arose elsewhere?”
And when the Egyptian military ousted Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Mursi, this past summer, the Saudis and the Americans responded at cross-purposes. Riyadh welcomed the deposing of Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood, offering Cairo billions of dollars in aid. Washington said very little and downgraded its aid relationship to the Egyptian military.
Another source of Saudi discontent has been the dismal failure of the Obama Administration to do anything about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and its lack of enthusiasm for the Saudi proposal to make the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone. In both cases, the United States would have had to pressure Israel to make huge concessions.
Most importantly, perhaps, the Saudis were dismayed by what they saw as the administration’s dilly dallying over the Syrian civil war. US aid for the Syrian rebels, mostly non-lethal equipment, was seen by the Saudis as being as good as nothing.
It is abundantly clear that Washington and Riyadh disagree on how to reach the goal they share, which is regional stability. As a result, both sides will have to reckon with some new realities and adjust their expectations.
The United States will have to more aggressively assuage Saudi fears that its tentative outreach to Iran will harm Saudi interests. While those fears are overwrought, they are a factor in how Saudis assess their position in the region. They will have to be convinced that any opening between Washington and Tehran is in their long-term interest, because the sine qua non of any such rapprochement is that the Iranians will have to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions.
The Americans also need to remind the Saudis that they are the linchpin in an Arab military counterweight to Iran, which will be needed to keep a strategic balance in the Gulf even if the ice between Washington and Tehran thaws. The United States also needs to listen more closely to Saudi advice. If it had heeded Saudi warnings about invading Iraq, there would be far less heartache in thousands of American and Iraqi families than there is today.
As Gulf expert Anthony H. Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington wrote recently, “Strategic partnerships have their price as well as their benefits. You have to treat the countries involved as real partners and consider their interests as well as your own.”
At the same time, the Saudis must also be realistic about what the United States can do in the Middle East, and especially in Syria. Obama is clearly responding to American public opinion, which does not want to get bogged down in another overseas conflict. He is right to do what he can to avoid more armed confrontations in the region by grabbing at the opening offered by Tehran’s new leadership.
It’s probably a good thing for the Saudis to be more independent from their American partners. They would do well to take a more active role in their own backyard, cajoling and reaching out to others to resolve the region’s conflicts and in the process, hopefully, reduce Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian tensions.
The US–Saudi relationship is multifaceted and goes beyond its bedrocks of oil and security. It now involves extensive trade and business dealings, the presence of thousands of Saudi students in the United States, billions of dollars in arms sales, and extensive collaboration in counter-terrorism. It has survived other crises, most notably the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington perpetrated mostly by Saudi nationals.
It will also survive this crisis. However, going forward, the US–Saudi relationship will be more complex, more complicated and require more attention from both sides.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
