Brian M Downing
The decades-old partnership between the US and Saudi Arabia is showing strain. Relations will worsen over US oil exports, human rights concerns, antipathy toward the kingdom, support for Israel, fiscal problems, and changing priorities.
Oil production
The cornerstone of the US-Saudi partnership has long been oil. That’s no longer the case. What little Saudi crude comes to the US is at the behest of Saudi-owned refineries in Texas. The US has surpassed Saudi Arabia in oil production (Russia too) and is expected to be a net exporter of energy ca 2030 – a blink of an eye in geopolitical time.
Over the last half century, oil-producing countries have collaborated to keep prices high. They haven’t always had enduring success but it will be increasingly difficult as US exports rise. The Saudi oil sector is state-owned, as is the case in many Gulf countries and Russia. Governments are able to set quotas and enjoy higher prices. American producers are numerous, independent, fiercely competitive, and unlikely to go along. This sets the stage for competition between US producers and Aramco, perhaps especially in East Asia. Competition will bring conflict.
Support for Israel
The Saudi-Israeli alignment against Iran is an impressive diplomatic feat but it’s unlikely to last. Saudi publics and those throughout the region are aghast at their rulers’ cooperation with a state long deemed evil in official rhetoric and ideology. They are all the more irritated by their rulers’ passivity as West Bank settlements expand and repression of the Palestinians continues.
If successful against Iran, the Riyadh-Jerusalem alignment will make Saudi Arabia more powerful, its crown prince more ambitious, perhaps even reckless. Rising powers upset world order.
The Saudis and their GCC allies may buy billions of dollars of American weaponry but it will not affect support for Israel in the White House or Congress or public.
The Saudis will find eager support from Russia. Moscow presently has important ties with Jerusalem but winning first prize in the Sunni arms bonanza will supersede that. Moscow has long been positioning itself to do just that.
Human rights
Washington’s concern with political reform and human rights in the Gulf varies from one administration to the next. President Trump may have less interest than predecessors but his successor might be more assertive. A generational shift is underway and younger people are more engaged with global humanitarian concerns (and ill-disposed toward fossil fuels).
Congress’s recent effort to end support for the Saudi-coalition in Yemen had surprising bi-partisan support. It was of course vetoed and an override is unlikely. The vote must have dismayed the Gulf princes. The next administration may not be as supportive and that may be less than two years away.
The princes weathered the Arab Spring of 2011 but know another one is inevitable. It may have already begun in the Sudan and Algeria. They further realize that popular protests were put down in Bahrain, Egypt, and especially in Syria with an iron fist. The Saudi rulers know that if they face what Assad did in Syria, the US would support them in words but not deeds.
Russian fighter aircraft could deploy into Saudi bases in short order and pulverize rebel strongholds as pitilessly as they did those in Chechnya and Syria. The grateful princes would reach for their checkbooks.
Reduced globalism
Riyadh may calculate that an American retreat from its present level of international involvement is on the horizon. Given the American public’s ambivalence toward Saudi Arabia and diminishing need for oil, the Persian Gulf might not figure highly in America’s strategic priorities.
The national debt is some $22 trillion dollars, and growing. Neither party has shown concern since the 90s but as interest rates rise, more of the national budget will have to go to paying the debt. Hard decisions on social and defense spending are looming – this at a time when free healthcare and education are being called for.
A consensus based largely on younger voters may call for sharp cuts in military spending, especially in foreign involvements. Trade patterns and shared democratic beliefs could place East Asia well ahead of the Persian Gulf.
Riyadh may calculate that the US political system is deeply polarized along political, racial, and generational lines, and could become paralyzed. Washington may be unable to make hard decisions in the world, especially in regard to supporting monarchies in the Gulf. This bleak scenario may be influenced by Wahhabi and monarchal antipathies toward democracy and pluralism, but it’s not a farfetched one. Better to take steps toward shifting away from Washington and toward Moscow.
© 2019 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.