Prince Turki Al Faisal holds no official position in the Saudi government. But as ex-intelligence chief, former ambassador to Washington and London, and the foreign minister's brother, he commands influence. When he speaks, people listen. Recently, Turki let go a cannon blast at US policies in the region before an audience of diplomats and high-powered Saudis. An “inept” US administration is messing up in Afghanistan, he said. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's “confusing signals” on nuclear non-proliferation in the Middle East are “unacceptable.” Washington should recognize a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state if current talks don't produce a breakthrough by the fall. And by the way, the prince scolded, the US has lost its moral authority because of “negligence, ignorance and arrogance.”
The all-encompassing, public litany of complaints was not unusual for Turki, who has never been shy about criticizing US foreign policies. But some might wonder: was he talking about a close ally that Riyadh has had a so-called “special relationship” with for years? Or was he talking about a country that Saudi Arabia views as a problem to be managed? The answer seems to be both. And Turki's remarks attest to just how much US-Saudi bilateral relations have changed in the last two decades due to shifts in the stature of both countries amid a changing global environment.
Washington's financial woes and soaring debt have cratered its economic influence around the world. And its often ill-advised reactions to the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington—the occupation of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the detention camp at Guantanamo, the use of torture, and the mishandling of Afghanistan—all have cost the United States dearly in diplomatic prestige.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's position has been enhanced with its entry into the World Trade Organization and G-20 club of economically significant countries. The world's largest petroleum producer also rests on a solid economic base, thanks to several years of high oil prices and conservative fiscal policies. And despite its own societal challenges, Riyadh has successfully suppressed a violent domestic insurgency, and designed a rehabilitation program for jailed extremists that has drawn international praise.
The result is a more mature, independent Saudi Arabia that is no longer a quiet, compliant junior partner of Washington, making its points only in private and walking lock-step with the United States on controversial issues. President Barack Obama discovered this first-hand during his initial encounter with King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz a year ago, when the Saudi monarch rebuffed Obama's request for a Saudi gesture of goodwill to Israel even before Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. The decades-old formula of oil-for-security no longer adequately describes US-Saudi bilateral ties. Of course, these still remain important. But as the Saudi share of US oil imports has shrunk, and as Riyadh makes a concerted effort to both diversify its bilateral relationships and boost the independence of its defense forces, these foundations have weakened.
Once giant anchors at both ends of a bridge, oil and security now are more like cornerstones in a multi-layered edifice still under construction. The two nations are bound by a set of shared concerns and goals. But their partnership is often plagued by disagreements on how to reach those goals. Shall we put a parapet here? Or would a dormer window be just as good?
David Ottaway, author of The King’s Messenger: Prince Bandar bin Sultan and America’s Tangled Relationship with Saudi Arabia, has observed that the two countries “speak of a ‘strategic dialogue,’ a diplomatic term of art that obscures whether the two governments think of themselves as friends or foes.” Perhaps the “special relationship” is now more “normal” than “special.” It is worth recalling how this came about.
From the Gulf War to 9/11: a not so special relationship
In the early 1990s, the Saudis were recovering from two big shocks. One was the betrayal of Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and subsequent menacing of the Saudi kingdom was regarded by Riyadh as an unfitting response to years of Saudi financial support to Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. The second shock was having to rely on foreigners for military assistance. The Americans came to help do the job and demanded to be reimbursed for their costs. In a difficult post-war financial environment, the Saudis struggled to pay the $16 billion they owed the Americans, much less their total war bill of about $60 billion.
Meanwhile, the common cause that had bound Riyadh and Washington for decades, drawing them into jihad in Afghanistan, had evaporated: The Soviet Union's implosion made the communist threat a memory. The bilateral warmth of the Desert Storm years under President George H.W. Bush was followed by drift during two-term President Bill Clinton. “By the end of the 1990s, the relationship was sort of on auto-pilot. There wasn't that much going on,” said Tom Lippman, author of Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia. But signs of trouble were brewing.
In the second half of the 1900s, Crown Prince Abdullah, who assumed the country’s foreign files due to King Fahd’s long illness, was disturbed by US inaction on the Saudis' top regional priority: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clinton's failure to address this issue until too late in his presidency, followed by President George W. Bush's pro-Israeli stance, brought relations to a low point. But the lowest was still to come.
The discovery that 15 of the 19 terrorist hijackers on September 11, 2001 were Saudi nationals—and the Saudi public refusal to formally acknowledge this for almost a year—sent the bilateral relationship into a nosedive. Hostility to everything Saudi became rampant among Americans and the US media. US visas that had been easy to get now required months-long, pain-staking procedures. Saudis were often mistreated by immigration officials at US airports. Saudi businessmen, students and tourists shifted to Europe and Asia.
“A lot of people thought Saudis had become the new terrorists on the block,” said Saleh Al Mani, who holds the King Faisal Chair for International Studies at King Saud University. The attacks “turned out to be a real turning point in the relationship,” said Ottaway. “Americans had never really focused on Saudi Arabia except as our gas tank and it was the first time that they said 'What's going in this society that's producing hijackers who are coming after America?'”
The Saudis were equally shocked to find Americans turning against them. But it was not until they had their own 9/11, when terrorist bombings in Riyadh and Dammam killed scores of civilians in 2003 and 2004, that the Saudi society began a serious debate about domestic causes of radicalization. This was also accompanied by accelerated Saudi cooperation with US counter-terrorism efforts and the bilateral relationship began to regain its balance. “We also became victimized by terrorism [and] somehow this realization sets in that there was a common enemy of the two countries,” said Al Mani. But another breech was forming.
From the kingdom's perspective, Washington's misguided and mangled occupation of Iraq, which Riyadh had strenuously opposed, and which King Abdullah once described as “illegal,” had disastrous consequences. Namely, a distracted United States failed to finish its job in Afghanistan, allowed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to fester, gave Iran a foothold in Iraq, and generated an historic shift in Sunni-Shiite political competition that has fueled sectarian conflict. The Bush administration's post-invasion calls for democratic change in the Middle East increased Saudi discomfort.
Awadh al Badi, a scholar at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, recalled that the US occupation of Iraq undercut Saudi perceptions of the United States as “an ideal and principled country.” For many, it was no longer “necessarily [true] that all that comes from the United States is good … That everything the United States wants from you is with a warm and good heart.”
Recovering from 9/11 and its aftermath
Today, the US-Saudi relationship is recovering from its post-9/11 crash. One indication is the shorter lines outside the US Embassy in Riyadh because Washington has improved its visa delivery system. The long waits that Saudis used to have are mostly over, and US ambassador James B. Smith predicts that at current rates, a record number of Saudis will get US visas this year. Students are setting another record. Thanks to King Abdullah's scholarship program, about 25,000 Saudis are pursuing degrees in the United States. This is an all-time high, and well above the 3,000 during the years right after 9/11.
There has also been progress on counter-terrorism cooperation. A minority of the Saudi population still expresses support for extremist ideas, and it took the kingdom's most senior religious body until May of this year to declare terror financing a violation of Islamic law. Nevertheless, intelligence officials on both sides now routinely share information. In addition, the Saudi government has put controls in place to stop the unfettered flow of financial support to extremist groups from Saudi individuals and charities.
On a recent visit here, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told local reporters that Saudi Arabia has “worked tirelessly to fight terrorism and extremism on the international level” and has “very effective programs in this regard.” “There’s no doubt the atmospherics are better under Obama than they were under Bush,” observed Lippman.
Despite the improvements, however, the bilateral relationship is decidedly different than in the past. For one, the United States now consistently buys more oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela than from Saudi Arabia, and in 2009, imports from the kingdom were about 989,000 barrels a day as opposed to 1.5 million barrels a day in 2008. This was due in large part to the economic downturn, but also to an important shift in Saudi sales: increasingly, it sees China and India as its growth markets.
The second pillar of the former US-Saudi relationship has also changed. The US military runs training programs for the Saudi National Guard, and the Ministry of Interior’s new 35,000-member force to protect oil installations. But their overall presence in the kingdom is greatly reduced and much less high-profile than in the past, partly to avoid appearances that the kingdom is dependent for security on the United States. It was noteworthy that there appeared to be little or no overt US assistance to Saudi defense forces during last year’s campaign to oust Yemeni rebels from Saudi territory. In addition, there are no announced major US military sales in the works. The Saudis are buying their newest fighter jets from the Europeans. There have been persistent reports of negotiations with the Russians to purchase tanks, helicopters and missile defense systems. And a multimillion dollar security fence on the Iraqi border is being built by a European firm.
Diversification is also the watchword in diplomatic and trade ties. King Abdullah “has always been concerned about putting all the eggs in the American basket,” said Rachel Bronson, author of Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia, and a vice president at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “He found that very unhealthy and I think he was probably right about that.” As a result, Saudi Arabia is nurturing bilateral ties with such countries as Turkey, India, Russia and China. This has led to a more competitive business environment within the kingdom in which the United States has lost market share. Back in 2000, US exports to the kingdom made up 19.7 percent of total Saudi imports. By 2007, they were down to 13.5 percent.
Despite this slump, Saudi and American business communities remain bullish on each other judging from the recent, first-ever US-Saudi Business Opportunities Forum in Chicago, which drew more attendees than anticipated. And trade is only a part of the economic equation between the two countries. The kingdom, a long-time moderate voice within OPEC, has put a large share of its revenue surplus into US Treasury bonds. And it has shored up the US dollar in these difficult economic times by keeping the Saudi riyal pegged to the US currency. As a result, the two countries more than ever have a common interest in seeing the US economy regain its footing.
A brighter future based on shared interests?
Looking ahead, Professor Al Mani sees Saudi-US bilateral ties a decade from now resting on a much broader base. “The relationship of the past was based mainly on oil,” he said. “I think the relationship in the future will have to be based on knowledge, on investments, on trade, on human interaction.” His vision, however, raises the question of whether the two peoples want to have as close ties with each other as their governments do. It is a question that policy-makers need to explore.
Meanwhile, their major task will be to find common ground for cooperation in order to resolve some of the huge problems of the region. These include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, creating stable regimes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, as well as dealing with Iran's pursuit of a nuclear-weapons capability. On all these matters, Washington and Riyadh have similar, though not exactly the same views. The disagreements that ensue will require adroit management by both sides. For example, the Saudis would be happy to see tough economic sanctions on Iran but don't believe that will stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. That event is the Saudi top concern, for it would not only boost Tehran’s hegemonic ambitions in the Gulf, but also force Riyadh to make tough choices: do we get our own matching bomb or not?
Likewise, a military strike by the US or Israel on Iran would surely provoke Iranian retaliation on the kingdom and a likely war in Gulf. This would frustrate attempts by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to reduce their dependence on the U.S. security umbrella. That also would frustrate the GCC countries’ attempts to reduce its dependence on the US security umbrella. Because of these dire possibilities, Washington and Riyadh should give priority to “forging a common policy on Iran,” said Lippman. “On the day that the Iranians announce they've tested [a weapon] then who does what? Who is responsible for what after that? Finding an answer to that question is the biggest challenge.”
Caryle Murphy – an independent journalist based in Riyadh and Pulitzer Prize Winner in Journalism in 1991. She is the author of “Passion for Islam.”
