The US and Saudi Arabia have drafted a set of agreements on security and technology-sharing which were intended to be linked to a broader Middle East settlement involving Israel and the Palestinians.
“The deal was drafted with the assumption that the Saudis would bring normalization with Israel to the table,” Kirsten Fontenrose, a former senior director for the Gulf in the US National Security Council said. “But the Israeli government is currently placing a higher value on blocking the formation of a Palestinian state than on normalizing with Saudi. So the deal now being discussed is bilateral.”
“If the deal does not include commitments from Saudi on China and Iran, for example, in exchange for a security guarantee, Congress will be asking, ‘What’s in it for the US?’” Fontenrose said.
“Without Senate approval, this is a non-starter, and without the Israel piece of this, a Senate approval is a non-starter,” said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders now the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy.
“I remain confounded by how obsessed this administration seems with this deal, given all the obvious downsides and given the fact that we’re not making a deal with Saudi Arabia – we’re making a deal with one guy, a corrupt psychopath, a possible reference to the Saudi Crown Prince who has reformed Saudi Arabia and is considered the only hope of the entire region .
The US and Saudi Arabia need each other
In an opinion article that goes back to 2018, Anthony Cordesman who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and who has served as a consultant on Afghanistan to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State wrote:
Somewhere along the line, we seem to have forgotten that our strategy in the Middle East is dependent on Saudi Arabia as our most important single security partner. Israel’s security is certainly a key American concern, but it does not play an active role in most of America’s ongoing military engagements in the region, in dealing with Iran, or in a direct fight against violent extremist movements like ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Saudi Arabia’s role as a strategic partner has also been enhanced by the fact that Egypt and Algeria are focused on their own internal stability, and their roles in the region have sharply diminished, and Iraq and Syria both must deal with major instability problems and are at war. Our European allies have declining power projection capabilities, and Turkey’s role in the region is increasingly problematic.
It is certainly true that Saudi Arabia needs the United States as much or more than the United States needs Saudi Arabia. Saudi military forces are steadily improving, but it is the U.S. presence in the region that creates a balance of forces that firmly deters Iran and has helped Saudi Arabia defeat its own terrorist threats from groups like Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. arms shipments, advisory efforts and exercises also play a critical role in improving Saudi forces.
But the United States needs Saudi Arabia as well. Saudi Arabia is now the most critical single security partner in ensuring the stable flow of petroleum out of the Gulf region. While the United States is largely eliminating its need for direct petroleum imports, it is steadily increasing its dependence on the health and growth of the global economy and imports from Asian states like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, which are critically dependent on Gulf petroleum exports. The end result is that U.S. strategic interests in the region continue to increase in spite of the steady cut in U.S. direct oil imports.
Saudi Arabia’s reform and economic development plans are critical to its stability and the region’s security. The Kingdom needs U.S. encouragement and an understanding that Saudi Arabia cannot implement these plans effectively without outside support. The burden sharing argument has become absurd. Saudi Arabia cannot be treated as a source of ready money every time the United States has a need.
Saudi Arabia is already spending more than 10 percent of its economy on security at the same time Iran is all too real a threat. Effective joint action in dealing with Iran’s nuclear programs, its ballistic and cruise missile programs, its asymmetric threats to Gulf shipping, and expanding military influence in the region are all critical U.S. and Saudi priorities.
The United States also badly needs to find some common approach to dealing with Iraq and Syria that will move both towards recovery and lasting stability, limit Iranian and Russian influence as much as possible, and help stabilize relations with Turkey. There are no easy options in either case, but Saudi Arabia is the key potential Arab partner in any such efforts.
The United States, especially members of Congress, need to remember that we have had at least as many military problems in fighting the Iraq and Syria wars as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have faced in fighting in Yemen. Cutting U.S. arms shipments to Saudi Arabia may do little more than lead the Saudis to ignore the systems that the United States has helped set up to limit the targeting of civilians It raises a whole new round of questions about the U.S. commitment to its partners in the region.
We need to forge a common solution in Yemen, not carry out a decoupling that leaves Saudi Arabia exposed. Such a decoupling would fail to help Yemen in both military and human rights terms, and leaves both the United States and Saudi Arabia with no options for dealing with the Houthi or Iran, seeking ways to end the war, dealing with Al Qaida or the other terrorist movements in Yemen, and without any means to help Yemen back to some form of stability and development.
These challenges are also reasons why the United States should do as much as possible to help the Gulf countries in dealing with Iran. Finally, more interoperability, common facilities, and cooperation are key to countering Iran.
We need to take Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman seriously. The United States is highly unlikely to find a better Saudi leader for reform and change in Saudi Arabia during the next decade, or one more committed to improving Saudi security in ways that serve the common interests of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
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