Biden needs to change the way the US deals with Saudi Arabia

• President Joe Biden’s recalibration of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia is long overdue.
• Exploding the relationship would not be wise, but the United States needs to stop treating Saudi Arabia as if it were still the 20th century, writes Daniel DePetris, a Defense Priorities colleague.
• Visit the Business section of the Insider for more stories.

The United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia is in a state of turmoil.

Persistent drone and missile strikes by the Houthis, including a March 7 attack on a major Saudi oil export facility in Ras Tanura, prompted Washington to reiterate its “unshakable“commitment to defense.

However, at the same time, the United States intelligence community’s assessment that Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of Washington Post collaborator Jamal Khashoggi underscores how urgent a recalibration of US-US relations really is. Saudi Arabia.

The Biden government has endeavored to draw the line between responsibility for the murder of a journalist and a permanent resident in the United States and the need to maintain a constructive relationship with the kingdom. In general, this is the correct approach. As despicable as Bin Salman’s behavior has been since he went from being an obscure prince to a day-to-day ruler, the United States to blow up the whole relationship would not be wise.

This, however, does not mean that the relationship does not need serious work. The United States has often based its engagement in Saudi Arabia as if the world were still in the 20th century.

President Joe Biden needs to redefine terms on an institutional level, running away from an oil security paradigm that is no longer as durable today as it was 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. Instituting a travel ban on troubled Saudis, imposing financial sanctions on certain Saudi entities and cutting Prince Mohammed de Biden are superficial gestures. What Washington needs is real reform.

Washington and Riyadh established their strategic relationship at the end of World War II, when US President Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud signed a transactional agreement that would come to be known colloquially as an oil security scheme.

In exchange for the Saudis opening their taps and providing a reliable supply of crude oil to the market, the United States would provide the kingdom with the defense items and military training necessary to protect itself from external threats. The understanding proved to be pragmatic and quite effective for both countries, both distrustful of the Soviet Union and concerned with what Soviet expansionism in the Middle East would mean for the world’s most valuable energy source.

For American officials at the time, having one of the largest oil producers in the world in the corner of Washington was simply common sense.

Times, however, have changed. The Soviet Union, America’s opponent for more than 45 years, has been in the history books for almost three decades. While fossil fuels remain vital to the global economy, the enormous progress being made in green energy is giving the world, including the United States, an opportunity to diversify its energy sources and thus lessen its dependence on crude oil.

As a consequence, Riyadh lost some of its influence on geopolitics. In 1991, the United States imported 1.8 million barrels of Saudi oil a day. According to data from the Energy Information Agency itself, that number has dropped to 530,000 barrels per day – the lowest since 1985.

Just because the United States is importing less Saudi oil, of course, does not mean that the kingdom’s oil reserves are unimportant. But what that means is that the old security oil model that dominated bilateral relations for so long is less relevant in 2021 than during the Cold War.

At that time, a rival superpower dictating oil prices in the Persian Gulf was at least a plausible scenario for US policymakers and defense planners. No one can seriously argue today – Iran and Russia are too weak militarily and economically to achieve hegemonic status, and China does not seem particularly interested in getting bogged down in the Middle East.

The recalibration of US-Saudi relations by the Biden government is long overdue.

The president’s decision last month to end US offensive military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen was a big step in the right direction, distancing Washington from Riyadh’s reckless air campaign and sending King Salman and his favorite son a message of that the USA won’t automatically be at the disposal of the kingdom – especially when the kingdom’s own actions are a big part of the problem.

But a recalibration will be halted if the Biden government finds that all it needs to do is rebuke Crown Prince Mohammed and put the impetuous heir in his place. And it will have no success if Washington neglects three critical points: 1) Saudi Arabia is not a formal ally of the US treaty, 2) US and Saudi Arabian interests are more likely to diverge than to come together, and 3 ) What is good for the kingdom in the Middle East necessarily correlates with what is good for the United States.

Biden has a golden opportunity to rewrite the old 75-year contract that governs the US-Saudi Arabia relationship, in which the United States approaches the kingdom like any authoritarian state with a terrible human rights record: skeptical and at a distance, but that’s it. do business when the national security interests of the United States so require.

Daniel R. DePetris is a researcher at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist at Newsweek.