US, Saudi trapped in a bad marriage
What do you do when it's increasingly clear that one of your longtime Middle East partners doesn't share either your values or many of your interests?
This is only one of the troubling questions that President Obama confronted this week as he sat with Saudi King Salman to discuss the state of the region and the US-Saudi relationship. The Saudis sent a lower-level official to greet Obama and Saudi state television didn't even bother covering the President's arrival.
So to paraphrase Hamlet, clearly something is rotten in the state of the US-Saudi relationship.
And regardless of how this week's meetings conclude the Saudi-American enterprise will remain a delicate and fraught affair. The answers to the following five questions tell you why.
Do US-Saudi interests fundamentally diverge?
On a number of issues, they do. Over the past two decades, the two sides' interests have simply diverged in fundamental ways. The broad trade-off between access to Saudi oil in exchange for a US commitment to its security from external threats has broken down, and even though the Obama administration has sold almost $95 billion in arms to the Saudis, on core issues such as Syria, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Egypt and democratization in the region, there are major differences. The perception that the United States is withdrawing from the region, the Iranian nuclear deal and what must appear to the Saudis as US acquiescence in a rising Iran have combined to create a foundation of suspicion and mistrust.
Is Saudi Arabia headed for instability or collapse?
Not really. The Saudis have many serious problems. The transition to a new King and his young, inexperienced and risk-ready son have created some turmoil within the royal family and could pose problems during the succession after Salman. Falling oil prices have created budgetary deficits and spending restrictions; the Saudis are trapped in a costly war in Yemen and pressed by a rising Iran. But the kingdom weathered the Arab spring and regional turbulence with little difficulty and remains a stable and highly functional state, with the world's largest oil reserves, low debt and high cash reserves.
Is the US-Saudi relationship too big to fail?
Probably for now. However imperfect Saudi policies, the United States still requires local friends in the region to help stabilize matters and pursue American interests. The US may increasingly be weaning itself off Arab hydrocarbons, but the rest of the world isn't. And since oil still trades in a single market, a disruption in supply will impact the economies and markets around the world, including the United States. So, stability in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf is still a vital American interest. Moreover, Wahhabis or not, Washington still needs the Saudis for intelligence sharing and operations against IS and al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and requires Riyadh's cooperation in trying to manage the Syrian problem.
The painful fact is that the United States is stuck in a bad marriage with Saudi Arabia, where neither divorce nor reconciliation is likely. The same Middle East mess that estranged the two sides will likely also force them to cooperate. Indeed, despite what divides them it's more than likely that for the foreseeable future the United States and Saudi Arabia will find a way to muddle through -- cooperating where they can and agreeing to disagree where they must.
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