Saudi Arabia: The Choice the United States Has to Make

FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman talks with Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Dec. 9, 2018. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/
December 16, 2018 Topic: Security Region: Middle East Tags: Saudi ArabiaJamal KhashoggiPoliticsWar

Saudi Arabia: The Choice the United States Has to Make

The simple notion that any enemy of my enemy is my friend is overriding sober calculation of how Saudi Arabia’s conduct does or does not support U.S. interests.

The administration is unlikely to waver. Its anti-Iran focus is so central to its policies in the Middle East that it is even more committed than previous administrations to avoiding serious damage to the U.S.-Saudi relationship. It will keep talking about arms sales, oil and counterterrorism in addition to confronting Iran as rationales for this course.

Such talk obscures who really has leverage over whom, and how Saudi Arabia depends on the United States for its security and economic development much more than the United States depends on the Saudis. The crown prince’s program of economic diversification relies heavily on American management experience and technology. U.S. military power has protected Saudi territory from external threat (as it did most notably in 1990–1991, after Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait), while Saudi power does nothing to protect U.S. territory. The Saudi military would have much difficulty turning away from its existing commitment to U.S. doctrine, training and supply lines.

Trump’s repeated references to a supposed $110 billion in arms sales and some huge number of jobs at stake are misleading factually as well as in terms of where leverage lies. Most of that figure represents not actual sales but only statements of intent, with most of those statements having been made during the Obama presidency. To the extent sales materialize, they often involve assembly overseas, with jobs more likely to go to Saudis than to Americans. It is worth remembering that the joint statements about intended future arms sales were part of what the Obama administration offered as a concession to the Saudis to reassure them as the nuclear agreement with Iran was being negotiated.

Too often overlooked is what the Saudis would be doing anyway for their own interests without any special deference from the United States. Regarding oil, the adage that suppliers cannot drink their own stuff is more applicable than ever, with prior Saudi leverage having been reduced by the fracking revolution, the decrease in U.S. oil imports and overall diversification of the oil market. Regarding terrorism, it wasn’t until after an Islamist attack in Riyadh in 2003 (in which the specific targets were Western military contractors) that the Saudi regime started to become part of the solution and not just a big part of the problem. But even today, any terrorists the United States might want Saudi Arabia to act against would be ones the Saudis would have their own reasons to quash.

As for confrontation with Iran, it is Saudi Arabia, not the United States, that is a Persian Gulf state in a local rivalry with Iran. Rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh, as has happened at times in the four decades since the Iranian revolution, would be in the interests of all concerned and in the interests of peace and stability in the Gulf region. But a new rapprochement is not about to break out—not with MBS likening the Iranian supreme leader to Hitler and talking about taking the battle “inside Iran.” The governments of Saudi Arabia and Israel are not being dragged into confrontation with Iran; they are doing the dragging.

A SOUND U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia would be truly transactional, while stripping away the personal ties, historical baggage and old habits of rigidly dividing the region into good guys and bad. Such a policy would recognize that embroilment in other people’s local rivalries is not in America's interests. It would recognize the U.S.-Saudi relationship as important, but not something that requires special deference in which even major transgressions are excused. It should be a normal relationship, with all the diplomatic engagement normality implies (including conducting business through a U.S. ambassador in Riyadh, a post that Trump only recently filled).

The administration’s confrontation with Iran gets rationalized as opposition to a power doing nefarious, destabilizing things in the region. But Saudi Arabia has dallied with terrorist groups in the course of stoking rebellion in Syria, and it has rolled tanks across the causeway into Bahrain to put down popular protests against an unpopular regime. Under MBS it has prosecuted a hugely devastating war in Yemen, has kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon to try to foment a governmental crisis in his home country and has conducted overseas assassinations as part of its persecution of dissidents. U.S. policy is not sound when, in the name of opposing someone else’s supposedly destabilizing behavior, it gives a pass to behavior that is at least as destabilizing as anything the targeted country is doing.

Khashoggi’s murder provides an occasion for steps that should have been taken earlier in response to the disaster in Yemen. This ought to include ending U.S. logistical and operational support to the Saudi-led air war. It also should include curtailment of current shipments of U.S. munitions, some of which are being used in that war. Taking such steps now, although belated, would send the further message that any behavior comparable to what was done to Khashoggi is unacceptable.

The Trump administration, for the reasons mentioned earlier, is unlikely to make any such major course correction. The current course carries the risk of giving a green light to the Saudi regime to do even more destabilizing things, possibly including the sparking of a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation to divert remaining attention from the Khashoggi matter. The United States also is sending an unhelpful message to others of blatantly applying double standards and of giving higher priority to arms sales than to human rights in Saudi Arabia or even to the most basic norms of international behavior. Over the longer term, placing so many U.S. eggs in the MBS basket carries the risk of that basket proving to be fragile. The young prince’s daring and ruthless power play—abandoning a half century of Saudi policymaking in which consensus within the royal family had been important—is apt to have kingdom-shaking repercussions.

Paul R. Pillar is a contributing editor at the National Interest and the author of Why America Misunderstands the World.

Image: Reuters