Saudis prepare to buy America's loyalty…again
Biden's visit raises old issues with dangerous new twists
Set on vast acres of reclaimed desert behind high walls of the lavish compound of a Saudi prince, there was a party one evening in January 2002 with a surprise guest of honor who was revealed only at the very last moment—Neil Bush, who happened to be a younger brother of the sitting American president and son of another.
Neil Bush had been invited to speak at the Jeddah Economic Forum—Saudi Arabia's answer to the Davos World Economic Forum. I too had been invited as a member of the delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations. As it happened, Shell Oil was a sponsor of the Saudi party where endless tables were piled high with food from four continents. The Bushes had a very long history of ties both with Big Oil and Saudi Arabia. For generations the Saudis have found it most opportune to court relations with both western powers and western oil—buying their way into favorable treatment, quite profitable in so many ways for both.
Now, another American president, Joe Biden, is en route to the kingdom and meetings with the princes who pull the strings. So, it's worth asking whether Saudi Arabia is poised to buy its way into the favor of another American administration as it did with Donald Trump and the Bushes, as it did as well with France's Emmanuel Macron and any number of his predecessors, not to mention Xi Jinping and a host of others—indeed presidents and rulers back to Franklin D. Roosevelt and before.
All kinds of currencies have been used by Saudi leaders through the years to buy this friendship, even loyalty: dollars and euros, oil and the pace of production, arms supplies, pledges of new diplomatic openings, efforts to reclaim the desert, even build on the vastness of the Empty Quarter. In exchange for the contracts and the friendship, there has long been the willingness of democracies to look away from abuses of the monarchy and its minions.
Not so much has changed today. Now the United States would like to see Saudi Arabia help make up the shortfall of Russian crude oil on world markets and restrain the stratospheric rise in price that's gobsmacking the American economy. At the same time, opening diplomatic relations with Israel—the first stop on Biden's Middle East swing—would be a very nice sweetener indeed. And of course, keeping up the pace of purchases of high-end American munitions would help bolster the U.S. economy and American jobs.
Utterly complicating matters this time was the Kremlin's announcement Tuesday that Vladimir Putin will be paying his own visit to Iran immediately following Biden's swing through the Middle East. Putin will be meeting not only Iranian leaders but also Turkish President Recep Erdogan who's been attempting to play mediator between Russia and Ukraine. The United States has also said that Iran is supplying large numbers of combat drones to Russia for use in the Ukraine war. It's quite clear that the United States very much needs Saudi Arabia as the Middle East chooses up sides in the worst global conflict in decades. At the same time, the Saudis have their own profound issues with Iran for which the United States is deeply sympathetic.
So, what about the other side of the equation? What's the price to paid by the United States for a fully congruent posture by Saudi Arabia on a host of issues? Above all, from what will Joe Biden need to avert his eyes and attention, at least in public?
There were the 81 individuals beheaded on March 12 this year—a single horrific day of executions, most of them members of the nation's minority Shiite religion accused of protests and dissent.
Seven of the executed were Yemenis, linked to the ongoing efforts by Saudi Arabia to bring this beleaguered neighbor into its sway and destroy the Houthi rebels linked to Iran. As the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet observed, the Saudi death sentences, following sham judicial processes that fail to provide "fair trial guarantees,” are prohibited by international human rights and humanitarian law and “may amount to a war crime." The death penalty, she continued, is “incompatible with fundamental tenets of human rights and dignity, the right to life and the prohibition of torture.” There's a tenuous truce in Yemen now set to expire August 2, certainly through this week's Biden visit, but little indication that will be renewed or extended. The Saudis hardly want to see the Houthis and their allies in Iran use any extended pause to prepare for a resumption of brutal fighting.
Of course, there are a host of issues that President Biden should raise in his talks with MBS and any other Saudi leaders he might encounter—especially the seizure, murder and dismemberment in the Saudi embassy in Turkey of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. The CIA has laid this horrific act directly at the feet of Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince known as MBS, who Joe Biden is slated to meet in Riyadh.
The reality is that few visitors ever raise any of these or a myriad of other actions of the Saudi monarchy and its retainers, ranging from the questionable to the horrific. Because the Saudis have been extraordinarily adept at playing to the needs and weaknesses of each of their partners or interlocutors.
When Emmanuel Macron paid a visit to Saudi Arabia late last year, he embraced MBS, then persuaded the Kingdom to underwrite a $3 billion purchase of French weapons and military equipment.by the all-but-bankrupt Lebanese Armed Forces.
This included short-range air defense systems, artillery systems, combat and transport vehicles, Cougar attack helicopters, fast-attack patrol vessels, and surveillance and communications equipment. And then there were the five other contracts Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, signed with French companies. The visit came just three months after the U.S. and Australia had scrubbed a $90 billion contract for a fleet of French submarines. The Saudi deals helped take some of the sting out of that bruising snub.
Which is just how the Saudis roll most of the time. Take China. With its reputation of refusing to interfere in internal affairs of other countries and with equally fungible views on human rights, Beijing has broadened and deepened its ties with Saudi Arabia, far beyond serving as a willing market for its oil, even considering payment in Chinese yuan rather than dollars. Saudi Arabia is also one of the three top markets for Chinese construction projects ranging from the Green Dragon metro line in Mecca to desalinization plants and the extension of the Internet to some of the most remote corners of the Kingdom. In return, Saudi officials have signed a letter to the UN Human Rights Council defending China's actions in Xinjiang, even agreeing to deport several Uighurs back to an uncertain fate in China.
At the same time Sunni-dominant Saudi Arabia does share with both the United States and Israel a deep antipathy to Shiite-dominated Iran and especially its rapid progress toward a nuclear weapon. If Iran does eventually deploy a deliverable nuclear device, Saudi Arabia will no doubt turn to a fellow Islamic nation just across the Arabian Sea. Pakistan has an arsenal of 100 to 120 nuclear weapons. The two nations have rarely been closer. On April 28, Pakistan's new prime minister Shehbaz Shariv paid his first foreign visit since taking office to Saudi Arabia. In the desert south of Riyadh, a Saudi missile factory appears to be an exact copy of a Pakistani facility that's assembling models of China's nuclear-capable M-11 missile. While China has helped the Saudis build a uranium processing plant—ostensibly for use in peaceful nuclear reactors—MBS has said as long ago as 2018, "If Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible." Indeed, one of the Kingdom’s standing "asks" of the Biden administration—as has been the case for a succession of American administrations in the past—is access to "civilian" nuclear technology.
So, what should Joe Biden's answers be this week—or his own asks for that matter? Sadly, it's likely too late to withhold what MBS so deeply desires—a smiling handshake with yet another president of the United States. But in return, there should certainly be some dramatic, or at least tangible, quid pro quos. The list is a long one, but certainly worth enumerating at every opportunity.
The ultimate problem, of course, is that Biden really has no Middle East plan, let alone a vision. Barack Obama had quite an interesting one that he enunciated in a major speech addressed to leaders and populations across the region. It was in an address at the very outset of his presidency he delivered at the American University in Cairo on June 4, 2009.
This was the core of it:
"I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."
It was a message, watched eagerly across the region, unlike any that his predecessors, certainly none of his successors, ever enunciated.
It would have been a new beginning. Only it wasn't.
Rather than follow through on these utterly commendable ideas, he simply let them and the entire region drop. He outsourced foreign policy to his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who in turn outsourced the Middle East to a Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, George Mitchell, with no access and little vision. And there it died.
Sadly, Joe Biden has even less going for him—no clearly enunciated vision, no world view, nothing but urgent needs that few of his interlocutors will have little motivation to satisfy. So, first, Mr. President, you must have a very good sense of where you're going. Only then can you truly begin your journey.
Andelman for Secretary of State!