The US-Saudi Arabia Relations
Introduction and Background
This research aims to discuss the enduring, changing relationships between the USA and Saudi Arabia over the years. Specifically, a focus is premised on the USA and Saudi Arabia relationship during the Obama’s and the Trump’s Administrations and the variations between the two eras. Moreover, this research paper traces the historical relationship between the two countries while elucidating on key factors as being the backbone of their relationship.
Saudi Arabia and the United States of America (USA) have been allies since Saudi’s recognition by the USA in 1931. The 1931 recognition paved the way for full diplomatic engagement between the two countries. There is uniqueness attached to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia plays a strategic role in the Islamic and Arab world. This is coupled with the fact that it has the second-largest oil reserves in the world.
Moreover, its strategic and tactical location in the Middle East has created a long-standing bilateral relationship between the Country and the USA. America and Saudi Arabia have the same economic, social, and political goals of preserving and maintaining peace in the Gulf region. The two countries also consult on a wide range of topics of global and regional importance. To achieve a prosperous future between the two countries, the USA and Saudi Arabia partner and cooperate military-wise, in diplomacy, and in finance (U.S. Relations With Saudi Arabia, 2021).
Saudi Arabia prides itself in being a member of multilateral exchange forums in the regional and international spheres. Saudi Arabia’s participation in a plethora of different International Organizations cannot go unnoticed. Saudi Arabia is a United Nations, World Trade Organization, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Saudi Arabia has a place in the Organization of American States but just as an observer (U.S. Relations With Saudi Arabia, 2021).
Regionally, Saudi Arabia is a member of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council, Arab League, Muslim World League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Saudi Arabia is also a founding member of OPEC to stabilize the world’s oil markets. By extension, regulating price increases so that the Western world and the world economies are not on the extreme receiving end of the price rise.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy is predicated on the principles of good neighborhood and non-interference, relationships strengthening with the Gulf States, Arab Peninsula, and Islamic countries. Its policy is also based on establishing relationships with friendly countries internationally and regionally (Organization of American States, 2020).
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is an economic and political organization consisting of six countries, Saudi Arabia included. The GCC was established in 1981 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. As per Article 4 of the GCC Charter, the GCC aims and is to achieve unity, peace, and stability predicated on their unitary objective and analogous Arabic and Islamic cultural and political distinctiveness. GCC Agreements are typically based on security or economic coordination. Among these Agreements is the 1984 GCC Agreement on the establishment of the Peninsula Shield Force, a joint military venture based in Saudi Arabia. There was also the 2004 signing of the intelligence-sharing pact (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2008). The Strategic Position of Saudi Arabia cannot go unnoticed by the USA, which seeks to create inroads and relationships into the Islamic world and the Middle East, to be specific. Saudi Arabia is the more potent channel through which the USA can achieve this.
Other different provinces of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the USA
The two countries further enjoy educational integration. It has been recorded that over 37,000 Saudi Arabia students are taking up educational studies in the USA in colleges and universities, even on cultural and educational exchanges. There are programs in the USA that offer young leaders and talented youths hailing from Saudi Arabia to experience the USA leadership and institutions conduct via different exchange programs and specifically the program dubbed International Visitor Leadership Program.
A time-honored relationship security-wise has also existed between the two countries. Saudi Arabia has over the years been the most prominent foreign customer of military apparatus from the USA with over $100 billion foreign military sales. Through these sales, the USA backs critical security institutions and organizations in Saudi Arabia, including the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defence, and the National Guard. Historically and since the 1950s, the USA Engineering Army Corps has been essential in constructing military and civilian resources in Saudi Arabia (U.S. Relations With Saudi Arabia, 2021).
More programs keep the relationship between the two countries going. The programs enhance educational, cultural, and institutional affiliations between the USA and Saudi Arabia. The antecedent of the relation between the countries has been based on over seven decades of acquaintance, mutual aid, and collaboration. This backdrop has been revitalized and enriched by the mutual benefit and understanding promotion between the two countries.
Economically, the relationship between the USA and Saudi Arabia is phenomenal. The second-largest trading partner for Saudi Arabia is the USA. Conversely and as mentioned above, Saudi Arabia is among the biggest USA trading Partners in the Middle East. In reiterating the oil business relationship between the two countries, Saudi Arabia exports to the USA about half a million oil barrels per day.
The two countries, in their rights, have appended their economic collaboration by signing an Investment Framework Agreement. In April 2016, Saudi Arabia launched programs and measures that would enable the Country to lay out a plan with the aim of diversifying their economy that included a greater than before investment and trade with the USA.
The Relationship and the History between the USA and Saudi Arabia
The USA and Saudi Arabia relationship is historical and strategic and has survived a tumultuous ride over the seventy years of collaboration. The alliance has been predicated upon security and economic ties revolving around the USA’s interest in Saudi Arabia’s massive oil reserves. The relationship has survived defining occurrences, including the oil embargo of 1973; and the 9/11 attacks where fifteen of the hijackers were Saudi Arabian citizens. Over the years, the USA has continued to reiterate Saudi Arabia’s significance in the Middle East (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
The Saudi Arabian Kingdom was founded in 1932, tracing roots to an alliance between Sheikh Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahab and the Saudi Family, thereby cementing Sunni jurisprudence. The alliance has over the years endured and defines the Country’s foreign policy.
The USA first established contact with Saudi Arabia through its oil industry that later paved the way for a relationship between the two governments, initially through King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. The relationship since then has evolved through the King’s successors even though there are unambiguous values and ethic differences between the two countries. The economic relationship had evolved since 1933 when the USA company-Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron) got a sixty-year concession for exploring eastern parts of Saudi Arabia and made its first discovery of oil in the year 1938 (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
The then USA President Franklin D. Roosevelt reiterated the strategic nature of the oil’s discovery. In 1945, the president met with King Abdulaziz to solidify the relationship between the two countries.
In 1936, a partnership was formed between Standard Oil and Texas Oil Companies (Texaco), to birth the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in 1944. The consortium grew and would later be recognized as Mobil and Exxon, helping Saudi Arabia become the world’s largest oil exporter. The Saudi Arabian government bought out foreign shareholders over the years. And by 1980, the Saudi Aramco company was wholly owned by the Saudi Arabian government. The USA companies still have bases in the Saudi Arabian Country with companies that refine oil and businesses on petrochemical ventures (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
Saudi Arabia, as mentioned, has one of the largest oil reserves with a production average of 10.7 million barrels daily, thereby exporting 7.43 million as of 2018 (Joint Organisations Data Initiative, 2021). Saudi Arabia is critical because of its oil production gauge and being one of the founders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The peculiar position gives Saudi Arabia a more significant effect in influencing the oil markets. Saudi Arabia plays a literal role as the global ‘oil central bank’ in adjusting its production of oil to gain oil price stability. For instance in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia used its influence in the OPEC, knocking out competitors from other oil-producing countries, not in the OPEC. Saudi Arabia’s ability to produce oil quickly caused the prices to nose-dive by over sixty percent through a period of six months. This drop crashed the Soviet Union’s revenues of oil preceding its collapse.
Therefore, the protection of Saudi Arabia and other oil producers of the Persian Gulf has been a priority of the USA over the years and this position has helped maintain their relationship (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
Since 1961, OPEC has steered oil markets and has affected USA consumers. In 1973, there was an embargo of oil sales to the USA by the Saudi Arabian government because the USA supported Israel in its war, which was seen as the USA targeting Arabian states.
The providence of security in the Gulf Region was the USA’s priority since the Second World War. This was because USA companies all through the 1970s were responsible for large amounts of oil production in the region. As much as Saudi Arabia nationalized the oil-producing companies, it remained the USA’s ally through the cold war period (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
It has been touted that the USA also depended on the Iranian Shah rule for policy stabilization and balancing of the region as a twin pillar approach. Still, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran overturned the USA’s strategic collaboration approach with Iran, leaving the USA’s relationship with Saudi Arabia as the only viable and potent strategically in the region (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
The military cooperation between the USA and Saudi Arabia was epitomized in 1991 in the first Gulf War. Iraqi forces were dispelled from Kuwait by a USA-led coalition force. More than five hundred thousand American troops were in the region, most of whom were based in Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan, the USA, and Saudi Arabia collectively resisted the Soviet’s Afghanistan occupation from 1979 to 1989. Sunni Muslims were being drawn from the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, to fight for the Afghan Jihad. Cash and Cache of weapons were being supplied to them.
The 9/11 attacks were a trying time for the relationship between the two countries as sentiments from anti-Saudis clouded the USA’s air. This was exacerbated by George W Bush’s administration plucking out twenty-eight pages from the report of the 9/11 commission. The actions were a basis for people to speculate that perhaps Saudi Arabia officials were complicit in the attacks. The USA Congress in 2016 went over Obama’s Veto and passed legislation that allowed the 9/11 victims and families to seek compensation from the Saudi Arabia government as an exception to the sovereign immunity principle of international law (CFR.org Editors, 2018).
President Obama’s Administration
From the preceding historical discussions, the USA and Saudi Arabia have had strategic and historical ties steered by common objectives. There was, however, a divergence between the two countries when it came to the Arab Spring during Obama’s administration. Arab Springs resulted in regime changes in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Tunisia and it caused civil wars and public unrest in the Islamic and Arab world (Pinfari, 2016, p. 4).
Some analysts argue that the Arab springs were a carefully calibrated move by the Obama Administration to restructure the Arab world political arena to be in tandem with the USA’s interest in the region (Gamal M. Selim, 2013, p. 255). The Arab Springs was therefore seen as a vehicle used by the Obama Administration’s since the year 2008 to remove particular Arabian regimes from power through movements (Gamal M. Selim, 2013, p. 255). It is argued that this was an attempt by the Obama administration and the USA to maintain control and not repeat what happened in Iran in 1979. It is argued that the Arab Spring was a sure way to thwart outbreaks of grassroots revolution from the people of those countries by themselves without the USA’s control (Gamal M. Selim, 2013, p. 256). The uprisings were not seen as a popular will of the people but a USA-driven strategy (Gamal M. Selim, 2013, p. 256).
William Engdahl stated that the USA orchestrated the Egyptian regime change and other regime changes during the Arab Spring, which he called a destructive construction to establish a Greater Middle East Project (Engdahl, 2011).
The Arab Spring threatened the influence of Saudi Arabia in the region. After decades of cooperation between the two countries economically and politically, the Arab Spring created vivid tensions between the two countries (Gamal M. Selim, 2013).
For instance, King Abdullah intervened with Obama for the USA to help President Hosni Mubarak remain in power to allow a more dignified way and transition period. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was Saudi Arabia’s ally (Boucek, 2011). The USA subtly turned them down. It was painful for Saudi Arabia and this was one of the instances during the Arab Spring that shook their relationship. Saudi Arabia had previously put the neck out for the USA in trying to accept Israel in the region, but Obama Administration turned them down on Egypt’s situation even though it was apparent the regime was falling apart (Boucek, 2011). The Saudi Arabian government was disheartened by the USA’s lack of support for Egypt’s ousted President Mubarak.
The Arab Spring in Bahrain also stressed the relationship between the USA and Saud Arabia. Initially, the Obama Administration and Saudi Arabia played the sectarian card touting the uprising as a war between Sunni and Shi’a groups rather than being an uprising against an oppressive regime change in trying to crush the uprising. Saudi Arabia used the sectarian claims and that Iran was meddling in the Bahrain affair to send military troops (Roberts, 2011). Saudi Arabia also used GCC Charter’s shared defense clause for intervention in Bahrain. Saudis moved military troops to Bahrain too in 2011 under the Peninsula Shield Force to crush the uprising. The Bahraini government announced a state of emergency followed by violent crackdowns that resulted in injuries and deaths. The Obama Administration later advocated for the improvement of the human rights status in the Country. The move created a dilemma for the Obama Administration that indirectly and subtly criticized the Saudi actions in the region that was in violation of human rights, without directly condemning the Kingdom. The move strained their relationship further (Gause, 2017).
Another province of friction between the Obama Administration and Saudi Arabia was through the Iran nuclear deal. Iran nuclear deal was an agreement that was initially known as a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The plan offered Iran sanction reliefs so that Iran would agree to curtail its nuclear program and ensure that the nuclear program was entirely peaceful. In return, Iran would receive billions of dollars by lifting sanctions that covered technology, trade, finance, and even energy (Gause, 2017).
Saudi Arabia feared the Obama Administration-Iran nuclear deal that geopolitical trends in the Middle East were starting to be restructured against their interests, thereby threatening their stature in the region. Moreover, there was no inclusion of Saudi Arabia in the 2013 Oman secret negotiations between the USA and Iran concerning Iran’s nuclear program.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been on antagonistic paths over the years, and the forging of a relationship with the USA through the Obama Administration was not taken well by the Country. Saudi Arabia saw it as a betrayal by the USA in trying to forge collaborations with its enemy, Iran, and was seen as an encouragement to the Shiite people to reject and overthrow their Sunni leaders. This situation was exacerbated by the fact that previously, the Obama Administration had refused to take action against President Assad of Syria, who was Iran’s closest ally during Syria’s uprising (Gause, 2017).
The Obama Administration saw an opening in Iran by forging the nuclear deals to bring stability to the region. However, Saudi Arabia saw it as a betrayal because they were not at the negotiating table and feared that the USA might cut the nuclear deal in exchange for cementing Iranian hegemony in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf in general. Through the nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia fears that the USA would sell out their interests in the Gulf that for many years has been preventing another dominant power/country from arising (Gause, 2017).
The USA was seen to re-establish its dwindling geopolitical influence in the Middle East through Iran in the deal. This alarmed Saudi Arabia (Pasha, 2016, p. 393). For Saudi Arabia, the nuclear deal was a distraction from what really mattered: the Iranian and Shiite interference in the Sunni and Arab Worlds.
In 2014, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the USA became fragile. The prices of oil plummeted. Instead of ceasing its market share by cutting production of oil so that oil prices could increase, Saudi Arabia decided to keep the production at a stable continuum because low oil prices benefitted them for a more extended period of time since they had one of the world’s largest oil reserves. Saudi Arabia also did this to stop the USA from engaging in the heavily costly oil production process by fracking and horizontal drilling, which was expensive to undertake. It was a price war with the USA Shale Oil producers so that their oil drilling projects become unprofitable, leading to a shutdown (Salameh, 2015).
President Trump’s Administration
During President Trump’s Administration, the relationship between the USA and Iran plummeted. This was good for Saudi Arabia. First, President Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal on 8th May 2018, as Trump termed it a disastrous deal. The Trumps Administration threatened heavy sanctions on Iran. In August 2018, Trump imposed pre-deal sanctions, and in November 2018, he imposed a further sanction, and after that, Trump introduced Maximum Pressure Campaign in April 2019. Trump, in his campaigns, wanted to designate the National Guard as a terrorist group and even Iranian oil blockages. The USA also increased its military personnel in the region by about 20 000 soldiers.
The economic asphyxiation continued while the USA and Iran continue to spit on each other. Iran further reduced its commitment to the nuclear deal while the USA cut the nation from the international banking system. It was alleged that Iran played a role in Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities attack. Iran backed Hezbollah also continued a counter-action against the USA forces in Iraq. Hezbollah’s attack once resulted in an American’s death, which prompted Trump to order an airstrike killing over twenty militias. The USA, during Trump’s administration, assassinated General Soleimani of Iran. The death of Soleimani further worsened the relationship between the USA and Iran. Iran, openly, after a very long period of time, attacked the USA. Iran attacked two USA air bases in Iraq, causing injuries to USA personnel. The continued USA sanctions on Iran continued to damage their economy. The sanctions depressed Iran’s living standards (The Trump-Iran Showdown: A Conflict Resolution Perspective, 2020).
Saudi Arabia, with great contentment, welcomed the decision by Donald Trump pulling out of the nuclear deal. For Saudi Arabia, this was a way of suppressing the rise of Iran, enabling Saudi Arabia to continue exerting its dominance in the region. Saudi Arabia claimed that the Iranian regime continued to engage in activities that destabilized the region after taking advantage of the sanctions lifting through the deal. Saudi Arabia claimed that in taking advantage of the deal, Iran continued to engage in the development and proliferation of ballistic missiles, weapons of mass destruction and even supported terrorist groups in the region, including the Houthi militia and Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia claimed that the groups used military capabilities and apparatus provided by Iran. They then targeted civilians in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and even shipping lanes.
After the fall of the Iran nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its position and its commitment to work with the USA and the international community to achieve the goals announced by the Trump’s Administration and also to curtail Iran’s negative influence and the dangers posed by its policies to the maintenance of international peace and security. Saudi Arabia pronounced that it would take holistic approaches over and above the nuclear program against Iran’s hostile activities that included the Country’s interference in internal affairs of countries within the Middle East, terrorism advancement, and possession of mass destruction weapons (Saudi Arabia Welcomes US Withdrawal from Iran Nuclear Deal, 2018).
Saudi Arabia has been involved in proxy wars with Shi’ite Iran in the Middle East for a long, backing opposing sides in conflicts and political crises in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and even Iraq. Saudi Arabia termed the nuclear deal a flawed agreement. This is one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia welcomed the decision by Trump Administration sabotaging the deal. This decision cemented USA-Saudi Arabia relationship further and brought back the fading hope and friendliness between the two countries, especially since the Obama Administration.
The relationship between the USA and Saudi Arabia was on a rough path after US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination. However, President Trump eased the tensions between them by affirming that he wouldn’t jeopardize the $110 billion arms deal with Riyadh because of Khashoggi’s murder. Trump said that the Saudi Arabian crown prince’s complicity in the assassination would not affect the relationship that the USA had with Saudi Arabia.
Trump reaffirmed that the USA would continue to work with Saudi Arabia, citing, among other things, the importance of keeping and regulating the oil prices at reasonable levels. Trump’s statements came a fortnight after the Saudi-led OPEC met with Russian oligarchs to set the oil’s global policy. It was feared that the oil exporters were gearing towards cutting oil output. Trump urged Saudi Arabia and OPEC not to upsurge oil prices by throttling production. This made it clear that oil was one of the main reasons why Trump supported Saudi Arabia, despite claims of Khashoggi’s assassination (Breuninger, 2018).
He also reiterated the importance of Saudi Arabia importance in the fight against Iran and the USA’s goal of eliminating terrorism. Trump Administration and Trump’s affirmations, unlike the Obama Administration cemented the fact that the USA intended to remain a committed Saudi Arabia partner in ensuring that the interests of America, Israel, and the partners in the region are protected.
Conclusion
After the end of World War II and the start of the cold war, the USA strengthened its relationship with Saudi Arabia that loathed communism. Additionally, the USA knew the importance of oil in an effort to exert global dominance. The economic exchange was simple as the two countries agreed that Saudi Arabia provide the USA access to oil. In turn, the USA strengthened Saudi Arabia’s military efforts and the development of military installations for the two countries’ security goals.
The relationship has been bombarded with tensions over the years, but the parties have managed to pull through. Even during the Iranian 1970 crisis, Saudi Arabia boosted production, ensuring that cheap oil was flowing to the USA. In turn, the USA helped Saudi Arabia maintain its security. One of the parties’ most notable cooperation was during Kuwait’s Iraqi invasion, where they quashed Iraq’s invasion and secured oil fields.
As much as the USA and Saudi Arabia are still allies, their relationship’s circumstances are changing over the years. For instance, the USA’s natural gas and oil production is booming with over 1.5 million oil barrels daily. Canada has over 2 million oil barrels daily. Conversely, Saudi Arabia is developing, on its own, a powerful military enabling the Country to pursue its foreign policy effectively. It is now the fourth largest military budget in the world. And since the USA is becoming less dependent on foreign oil and Saudi Arabia less dependent on foreign protection, there is a need to evaluate the relationship between the two countries.
The two countries, the USA and Saudi Arabia, can continue to profit and benefit from solid ties economically and politically. Premising their relationship on oil and intimate political and strategic relationship is not as effective as was before.
Moving away from the decades-long strategic relationship between the USA and Saudi Arabia, strong bonds economically that hold the two countries together can be the basis of a freshly refocused collaborative relationship. Additionally to mutual investments between them, the two nations can make a fair, well-measured considerable trade in oil and military technology as it has been the heart of their relationship for a long. As both countries seek to accomplish common objectives in the Middle East, a long term strategy should be within their plans. It has been debated that the USA desire to engage in new conflicts after the wars in the middle east is limited because the push has all along been about the 9/11 attacks. Saudi Arabia on the other hand seeks a continuity of exerting its dominance and military might in the region, pressuring the USA to do the same, directly helping Saudi Arabia achieve its goal. The continued use of force by the USA in the middle east, whether pressured by Saudi Arabia or not, will only serve to exhaust the USA in a myriad of never-ending conflicts.
A new relationship would cultivate trade as well as encourage the exchange of ideas between the two countries. For instance, over fifty thousand Saudi students are now studying in the USA, which helps the two nations develop novel and straightforward ideas that might benefit them.
Economic, cultural, and intellectual collaboration between the two countries needs to flourish without political allegiances hanging over the two countries. A redefined relationship would truly mirror the realities and bilateral relationships of the 21st century. A redefined relationship between the two nations would also alleviate the tensions that have clouded the Middle East for long.
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