On October 8, 2023, Joe Biden announced “unconditional American support” for Israel in light of the recent Hamas attacks, apparently firmly entrenching the allegiances of the United States in the region regardless of the escalation of any ensuing conflict. That being said, maintaining strong relations with the political stalwarts of the region is a matter of not only protecting American interests but also preventing the expansion of oppositional spheres of influence. 

Since its unification in 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s history derives from a battle between the maintenance of Islamic national identity and transcultural survival, maintaining its position as the foremost power in the Middle East through a careful combination of regional cultural hegemony and international availability, primarily facilitated through its historic domination of the oil market. Western interests in the Middle East are well-known to derive primarily from a desire to preserve long-term access to petroleum, and these stances have only slightly softened over time with an increased political trend towards energy independence, especially in the United States - but when Saudi Arabia has recently proven itself as primarily concerned with the advancement of Saudi interests, lacking any sort of diplomatic inclination towards an American presence relative to a Russian or Chinese one, a crucial re-evaluation of the US-Saudi relationship is imperative to developing a sustainable American presence in the Middle East. 

The precedent for US-Saudi cooperation is one of mutually beneficial provisions, wherein the United States has received an unmolested and consistent supply of oil (typically estimated at around half a million barrels of oil a day, as of 2023) while the United States provides a relatively consistent source of security, facilitated through both a direct military presence and through sweeping arms deals that make Saudi Arabia the United States’ largest arms partner. 

However, due largely to the Iranian Revolution, American policy in the region evolved to the “Carter Doctrine”, providing that military force would be used in instances where American interests in the Persian Gulf were tested - this was best displayed during the 1991 Gulf War, with the deployment of 500,000 American troops in order to defend US-Saudi interests. 

Today, the Embassy of Saudi Arabia describes the US-Saudi relationship as “better than ever”, largely due to the 2017 US-Saudi arms deal, which provided letters of intent on over $350 billion in arms sales between the two powers through 2027. Many internationally saw the agreement as a revival of a defensive relationship between the two powers that had stagnated since its 1991 peak, while others condemned it as a strategic counterweight to the proliferation of Iranian influence in the Arabian Peninsula. 

Yet even during these key moments of alignment during the US-Saudi relationship, never was a formal defense agreement codified - because fundamentally, there will never be a situation that can justify an American defensive alliance with a culture so inherently different from that of the United States. Saudi Arabia’s spotty human rights record emphasizes the ideological differences between the two states, while residual cultural outrage and resentment still linger from the 2018 murder of Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the unclear association between the Saudi government and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Such challenges in cross-cultural diplomacy between Americans and Saudis are only exacerbated by the expanding relationship between Saudi Arabia and China, which is rapidly attempting to establish itself as the successor to the United States’ regional hegemony in influencing Middle Eastern policy. China was responsible for facilitating a beginning of normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a move that has only been strengthened through the mutual interest of the two powers in ensuring that the recent Israel-Hamas War is prevented from escalating. When considered in corroboration with the United States’ firm military support for Israel, seen by many as the sole reason preventing a larger Arab coalition from intervening on behalf of Palestine, the extension of any form of exclusive relationship with the United States becomes an increasingly unsavory prospect for both the Saudi government and people, the latter of which rates the United States as the marginally-lowest priority ally among China and Russia. 

Even more damning as to the state of US-Saudi relations is the choice of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman not to increase oil production in January 2022 as a means of countering the Russian war effort in Ukraine, indicating that the US-Saudi relationship holds no diplomatic precedence over that of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Unexpectedly, Russia and China have also extended an invitation of membership to Saudi Arabia for their flagship economic forum BRICS set to open in 2024, signaling an even greater increase in relations between the powers in the near future. 

News broke throughout 2023 that the United States and Saudi Arabia were in the early stages of pursuing a diplomatic agreement that would involve the re-normalization of Saudi relations with Israel in exchange for a variety of US concessions to Saudi Arabia, the most notable of which was a defense pact that would require immediate American intervention in the case of any future attacks on Saudi oil facilities. Considering both that the United States and Saudi Arabia failed to reach anything resembling a defense pact even at the peak of the Gulf War when national interests were far more closely aligned and that the Israel-Hamas War has functionally nullified any possibility of completing such a deal in the near future, there is no potential benefit for the United States to continue pursuing a defensive alliance with Saudi Arabia. The thinly veiled impetus behind US-Saudi relations is American foreign energy dependence, of which a major priority of the Trump administration was reversing this trend by promoting American domestic production and trade with more consistent partners such as Canada - while these efforts were generally successful, the United States still imports 12% of its oil from the Persian Gulf and 7% of it from Saudi Arabia, although this number will likely only decline in the future. The United States must recognize its growing incompatibility in diplomacy in the Middle East as the future of international relations moves away from a petroleum-driven political economy and towards a world of innovation and investment, one that China has had a remarkable head start on the United States in spearheading. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly shown itself not to have the best interests of the United States at heart, and is apparently unwilling to reform their human rights or military policy to better integrate with American models of global democracy, both before and during the reign of Crown Prince MBS. While such contingencies are not entirely necessary in the foundation of a strong diplomatic relationship, they are certainly strong considerations before advancing into a larger defense pact. 

Furthermore, the United States’ dedicated interest in protecting Israel is one of its most sacred covenants in foreign policy and will continue to draw anti-American ire from the Arab powers of the region as long as it continues. Sweeping reforms in regional diplomacy through defense pacts are optimistic, but selling out American armed forces to serve as functional bodyguards for the Saudi regime against terrorist attacks on oil facilities is not warranted by the potential improvements in regional welfare made through normalization. The men and women who defend our nation demand the respect and dignity to enter the danger of combat only when absolutely necessary, and not for reasons that exist only politically.

Instead of directly working to increase the scale of the US-Saudi relationship, American diplomats must recognize that Saudi Arabia is more conducive to work in the sphere of authoritative influence of Russia or China than it is in that of the United States. To see the amount of influence that Saudi Arabia hopes to command perceptually over the United States, look no further than the “fist bump” given by MBS to President Biden in July 2022 meaning, a sign of informality that indicates a feeling of power and comfort from the Saudis over the US. In a panel with the Carnegie Institue, former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk proposed a policy going forward of “dignified aloofness”, previously utilized by a disgruntled Ford administration in the 1970s towards an Israel that refused to cooperate fully with the United States diplomatic priorities, in which economic and arms deals continue but all other special privileges afforded to Saudi Arabia diplomatically are mitigated. 

There is no room for the United States to experience diplomatic subservience with so many pressing issues in the world of global politics, especially when the American global future shifts in direction towards the Pacific as energy independence reduces the global significance of the Middle East. A certain 193-kilometer gutter in the Sinai Peninsula will always ensure that the United States has to keep at least one foot in the region’s door, but American diplomatic resources cannot be exorbitantly spent in a sphere so highly conducive to quagmire-like conflicts, already having degraded American foreign position so severely in the 21st-century. The path forward between the United States and Saudi Arabia is unclear, but it is certainly one that should trend away from any further intensification of diplomatic proximity at the expense of American security and international dignity.