How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People
Americans have a reputation among others and in their own national literature for being careless and breaking things. Often this is because they are so admirably creative, dynamic and unbound by the past. But over the past two decades, the epicenter of American negligence has been the Middle East, a region of the world that seems to inspire the imagination of all Westerners, but where the real margin of error is small. The result was a series of disasters for the peoples of the region and for American reputation. This week brought what appears to be another unforced policy-making blunder, fueled by hubris, fantasy, airy talk and a refusal to acknowledge reality.
On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby announced that President Joe Biden would reassess America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia after OPEC+ announced the previous week that it would cut oil production. Kirby’s announcement followed a expression by Senator Robert Menendez, DN.J., who claims Saudi Arabia is helping to “sign up to Putin’s war” through OPEC+. “As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Menendez said, “I will not give the green light to any cooperation with Riyadh until the kingdom has reassessed its position on the war in Ukraine.”
As a Saudi, who loves the United States and deeply believes that our two countries need each other, the only word that comes to mind regarding the current “reassessment” of our relationship is: obscene.
It was the Obama administration that decided to get a foothold on Vladimir Putin in the eastern Mediterranean, which she sold to the American people to “de-escalate” the civil war in Syria. When the United States romanticized Putin, offering him Crimea and warm-water ports in Syria in exchange for pulling Iran’s irons out of the fire over the past decade, US allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Israel had no choice , than to deal with it . While Russian-operated Iranian drones and missiles bombed Kyiv last month, Riyadh used its diplomatic pressure to secure the release of American and British prisoners of war held by Putin.
America has imposed the reality of a neighboring country controlled by Iranian troops and the Russian Air Force. Worse, as part of its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration poured tens of billions of dollars into Iran’s coffers – money that was used to destroy Iraq, crush Syria, wreak havoc in Lebanon and Saudi Territory to threaten Yemen. Iranian missile and drone attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia are now routine. In response to missile fire on Saudi infrastructure last year, the Biden administration withdrew US anti-missile batteries from Saudi territory.
After seven years of observing how Russian forces assisted or directly committed atrocities against innocent civilians and facilitated the use of chemical weapons, the Saudi government was quick to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many in the West who expected a brief parade ground war, Riyadh understood very well what Putin was capable of. So does Jerusalem.
Yet even when countries that had survived two decades of American experimentation in our backyards came together to achieve extraordinary levels of political and economic normalization, it was never at America’s expense. We have always sought to recognize America’s role in our defense and as a regional peacemaker and as a place where many of us lived and went to school. That’s why it was so painful and alarming for us when the Biden team took office in January 2021, promising to “recalibrate our relationship with Saudi Arabia” and ” marginalize the crown prince to ease the pressure on the… raise royal family, find a more stable replacement” and “make [the Saudis] Pay the price and actually make them the pariahs they are.” Friends don’t talk that way.
The United States is now claiming it must once again “reassess” its relationship with Saudi Arabia, apparently because OPEC+ has in recent months turned down pleas from the president to support his re-election prospects, which are being hurt by skyrocketing energy prices . As someone who loves Americans and has many dear friends there, I take no joy in the energy inflation that is affecting so many of their livelihoods. But the unstable situation in the Middle East, which America continues to exacerbate by licensing and financing Iranian terror, does not leave Saudi Arabia with enough margin for error that it can make decisions that affect the stability of the global energy market and a party’s success in the midterm elections in America.
In addition to the rhetorical, diplomatic, and security damage the Obama-Biden era inflicted on Saudi Arabia (and Israel), the Biden administration has also chosen to wage war on carbon-based energy sources without realistically considering how an energy works The transition is to be managed. The “Green New Deal” isn’t just a silly fantasy propagated by dubious congressmen who don’t understand how the world or American economies work. It was and is a strategy aimed at handing power over fossil fuels and clean energy technologies to the Russians and Chinese.
It is also about the hypocrisy of the administration. It is one thing to advocate for the elimination of fossil fuels and the exclusion of Putin’s Russia from global energy markets; it is quite another to do this while continuing to buy Russian energy yourself. In April 2020, more than a month into the war and after Western sanctions had already been imposed, the United States imported more Russian oil than in any month on record. Last week the financial times reported that “EU countries have paid Russia more than €100 billion for fossil fuels since invading Ukraine.” All this time, the government has publicly berated Israel, Saudi Arabia and other US Gulf allies for not doing enough against Russia. This performance convinces nobody: not to Jerusalem, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Delhi, Moscow or Kyiv. Judging by certain opinion polls, many American voters are also unconvinced.
Saudi society and governance has only moved further in the direction Americans have advocated for generations.
In the past 80 years, the Saudis have never known a world without a strong relationship with the United States. In exchange for the defense architecture America built to protect itself and its allies, and the weapons and defense systems America sells, Saudi Arabia has kept its end of the bargain by collaborating in global oil markets and making a big and has created eager market for the US defense industry, lending bases to the US military and collaborating on regional intelligence matters important to both countries. Of course, there were some very difficult times in the years leading up to and including the global war on terror. But since then, Saudi society and governance have only moved further in the direction Americans have advocated for generations. Out of self-preservation, but also out of goodwill, the Saudi government asked the Americans not to proceed with the invasion of Iraq, which it knew would be disastrous.
In turn, the United States has either inadvertently (Bush) or intentionally (Obama) backed the regional ambitions of Iran, the existential enemy of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen are now in flames. The Obama administration also sought cooperation with Jerusalem’s and Riyadh’s enemies in Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood) and Gaza (Hamas).
Far from helping Putin, America’s regional partners have watched in horror as the Biden administration has tried to make this whole situation worse by continuing to bless Russia’s lucrative cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program and relying on Russian negotiators for the revived nuclear deal , even as Iran sends drones to Russia that have been used to kill soldiers from NATO countries. Furthermore, it was the Biden government that started the war in Ukraine by advising Volodymyr Zelenskyy not to fight and to leave the country; As the world’s Ukrainians demonstrated their heroism against Russian expansionism, the White House and State Department evacuated American diplomats and urged others to do the same. This had a profound impact on US allies around the world.
The majority of both elite and ordinary Saudis share my affection for America and Americans and wish no harm to either Democrats or Republicans. We need each other now, as we have since 1945, when Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz began the relationship that has marked so many years since. But when a party, any party in power in the United States, not only explicitly threatens Saudi Arabia but carries out many of its threats, Riyadh doesn’t have much choice about how to respond. Like any other country on the planet, it must protect its own people and its own national interests.
American allies in the region are witnessing the dissolution of a post-Soviet world order they helped America build. As the White House amplifies regional and global policies that hasten this dissolution, interest groups around the world are rightly reconsidering their own security interests as America’s partner.