Steven Metz
For many decades, shared fears of common enemies—from the Soviets to the Iranians, Saddam Hussein and extremist movements like al-Qaida and the Islamic State—pushed America and Saudi Arabia into an uneasy embrace. But today that calculus is no longer enough to sustain their alliance. For the United States, the strategic costs of the Saudi relationship have come to outweigh the benefits, as the tensions and unnaturalness of the partnership make it increasingly intolerable. The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia can be traced back to the 1930s, when the kingdom first began producing petroleum. By the 1970s, Saudi Arabia was an integral part of a broad American effort to prevent Soviet domination of the Middle East and protect Western access to Gulf oil. The Iranian revolution in 1979 broadened the definition of regional stability for both the United States and Saudi Arabia, adding fear of revolution from within Gulf nations to the external threat from the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, Washington and Riyadh simply shifted their focus to Iran and to Saddam Hussein in Iraq—both opponents of the Saudi-led and American-backed regional order. Along the way, the U.S.-Saudi relationship became primarily a military one, with the United States providing training, logistics and intelligence support, and the Saudis buying significant amounts of American military equipment, thus making the U.S. military and defense industry staunch backers of the partnership.
Ironically, the rise of violent, transnational Islamist extremism, led first by al-Qaida and later by the Islamic State, both solidified the U.S.-Saudi relationship and amplified its fissures. While Riyadh never intended to create revolutionary movements like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, its aggressive efforts to spread its deeply conservative Wahhabist strain of Islam inadvertently set the stage for extremist ideologues like Osama bin Laden. Unlike the Soviet or Iranian threats, violent Islamist extremism emerged from within Saudi Arabia, as demonstrated by the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers and many of the foreign fighters in the Iraqi insurgency were Saudis.
In reality, though, the U.S.-Saudi relationship was always fragile. Unlike the natural partnerships between the United States and fellow democracies, the ties between Washington and Riyadh were a marriage of convenience that discomforted both sides. The only glue was the idea that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
America’s connection with Saudi Arabia hasn’t been with a nation or its people, but with the ruling House of Saud. This brings risk by association. After all, the roots of Iran’s vehement anti-Americanism arose from Washington’s support for the repressive regime of the Shah. While the House of Saud has been more successful at staving off internal dissent than the Shah was—at least so far—there is a chance that its ossification, corruption and repression will bring it down. If so, whatever new regime emerges is likely to be stridently anti-American, if the rhetoric of Wahhabist preachers in Saudi Arabia is any indication. U.S. strategy in the Middle East, then, is no more resilient than the House of Saud. And that’s a frightening position to be in.
The costs and long-term risks of the U.S. partnership with Saudi Arabia now outweigh the benefits.
The risks by association have increased in recent years as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has gained power in the Saudi royal court. He has reportedly pushed repression of dissent to new, more violent levels, authorizing the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of the regime’s critics, most notoriously journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Despite grumblings from Congress, the Trump administration continues its embrace of the crown prince, who has especially close ties with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser.
Saudi Arabia’s increasingly assertive and heavy-handed policy toward its neighbors also puts the United States in a difficult position. Ongoing friction between Saudi Arabia and Qatar threatens to destroy the regional Gulf Cooperation Council, which the United States has long supported. Riyadh continues a military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthis in neighboring Yemen that has created and sustained a horrific humanitarian crisis in the Arab world’s poorest country. Congress is likely to pass a resolution calling for an end to U.S. support for the war in Yemen, but as a Washington Post editorial this week put it, “The resolution is subject to a presidential veto that is unlikely to be overridden. The administration shows no sign of retreating from its fervent embrace of the Saudi regime, despite its reckless and destructive adventurism.”
At this point, the Trump administration remains wedded to old notions underpinning the U.S.-Saudi alliance. The administration’s approach to the Gulf seems to be oriented around two goals: generating American arms sales and doing anything that harms, weakens or vexes Iran. Trump has not offered an overarching vision of a better, more secure Gulf region beyond declarations about defeating the Islamic State and “rolling back” Iranian influence. While administration officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo say that they have raised U.S. concerns about domestic repression and regional strategy with the Saudis, there is little indication that this is having any effect. Clearly, its partnership with the United States no longer moderates Saudi Arabia’s behavior, with a young crown prince pursuing a reckless agenda.
The costs and long-term risks of the U.S. partnership with Saudi Arabia now outweigh the benefits. “Saudi Arabia isn’t our ally, and Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman is a regional menace and a liability,” Daniel Larison wrote recently in The American Conservative. “The sooner that the U.S. cuts off its reckless client, the better it will be for U.S. national interests.”
In the broadest sense, America’s global network of security partnerships is a legacy of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Now decades old, it needs a redesign. The United States must move beyond the notion that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” and emphasize natural security partnerships based on shared values, perspectives and priorities, which are particularly pressing in the Middle East. As Daniel DePetris of Defense Priorities put it, “The time has come for the United States to undergo a strategic re-evaluation of its relationship with Riyadh.”
Steven Metz is the author of “Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.” His WPR column appears every Friday. You can follow him on Twitter@steven_metz.