Is the US-Saudi alliance crumbling? (ll)

 (Link on Daily Trust)

Crown Prince, Mohammad ibn Salman, President Joe Biden 

Despite President Joe Biden’s pre-election anti-Saudi stance, which he maintained all through his campaign as the then-Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate, many observers were deep down unconvinced that he would pursue measures that may damage the US-Saudi alliance.  

After all, during every pre-election season in the United States, opposition candidates would always accuse the incumbent President of hypocrisy over America's continued alliance with Saudi Arabia despite being, according to US standards, an absolute monarchy that contradicts whatever the US stands for. Yet, hardly anything changes in reality afterwards regardless of who wins the election. Perhaps, former US President, Donald Trump’s dramatic transformation from a relentless anti-Saudi presidential candidate to a Saudi-friendly president immediately afterwards was the most interesting instance in this regard.

However, there has been a departure from that trend in Washington since President Joe Biden’s coming into power. That was first observed shortly after he assumed office. It’s an established tradition in the White House that when the President has settled down within the first few weeks in office, he would phone up leaders of some selected US allies including Saudi Arabia. 

Such a phone call, which was supposed to be between President Biden and the Saudi King, Salman ibn Abdul-Aziz was called off, because Saudi Arabia delegated the Crown Prince Mohammad Ibn Salman to speak with Biden. 

Since his appointment as Crown Prince in 2017, Mohammad ibn Salman has acted as the de facto king of the Kingdom and has been effectively treated as such by leaders around the world. 

However, President Biden turned down the proposal to speak with ibn Salman, arguing that he would only speak with King Salman himself, for he is his counterpart, not ibn Salman. The Saudis insisted on ibn Salman and consequently, the arrangements for the phone call were called off altogether. 

President Biden also embarked on a sustained vilification campaign against the Crown Prince, ibn Salman, capitalizing on his alleged involvement in the murder of a Saudi dissident, Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. And to further spite the Saudis, President Biden delisted the Iranian proxy Houthi militia group in Yemen from the US list of terrorist groups; stopped US intelligence support to the Saudi-led Arab coalition against the militia; suspended arms deals with Saudi Arabia and withdrew the US air defence system in the Kingdom. 

He also embarked on reviving the controversial Obama-engineered Iran nuclear deal, which would have effectively enabled Iran to be a recognised nuclear power after only 10 years had the deal not been rendered ineffective by Trump’s subsequent withdrawal of the US from it. 

Interestingly, Biden rightly realises that Iran’s nuclear ambition never poses any threat to the West or even Israel for that matter, after all. He realises that Iran only pursues nuclear in the context of its pursuit of geopolitical dominance at the expense of, particularly, Saudi Arabia, which is its ultimate target all along. 

Anyway, on its part, Saudi Arabia has quietly maintained its moves in US Congress and the White House to undermine Biden’s increasingly hostile stance against it. Besides, the implications of the Russia-Ukraine war on global crude oil supply have presented the Kingdom with an opportunity to blackmail the US into concessions.   

Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, crude oil prices have gone up, causing persistent rises in energy prices in the United States thereby further worsening its already worst inflation in 40 years. Consequently, public frustration has been rising as prices of gasoline, food, goods and services continue to rise in the country. 

Of course, President Biden and indeed his Democratic Party cannot afford to underestimate the political implications of the persistence of this situation, especially with the approach of midterm elections in November. 

Ordinarily, in a situation like this, the United States would request Saudi Arabia and/or the largely Saudi-influenced OPEC to increase the oil supply to arrest the rising prices. However, the situation this time around persists against the backdrop of strained relations between the two countries. 

The US has, through various channels and at various levels, reached out to the Saudis, requesting them to increase the supply but to no avail as the Saudis have ignored the requests. It got to a point where President Biden himself swallowed his pride and requested to phone up Mohammad ibn Salman who turned down the request. 

Though since the eruption of the Russia-Ukraine war and its attendant surge in oil prices, Saudi Arabia has indeed increased the supply albeit irregularly, its effect on energy prices in the United States has remained insignificant and inconsistent, because the increase has been disproportionately and tactically insignificant. 

While the almost eighty-year-old US-Saudi alliance is steadily crumbling, it may not end up in an open-ended faceoff between the two countries. Obviously, Saudi Arabia wants to keep the US an important but not indispensable ally. That is quite obvious from its increasingly determined pursuit of sustainable industrialization and its growing strategic economic and military ties with China and Russia with its potential to change the geopolitical power equation in the region and beyond.