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Biden-MBS meeting was "total win" for Saudis, says expert
US President Joe Biden didn't get much out of his recent — and very controversial — trip to Saudi Arabia. Why?
His team didn't do their homework by getting the Saudis to agree on stuff in advance, says Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University and confidante of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
"This was a total win for the Saudis," Haykel tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Indeed, Biden's pledges to never allow Iran to get the bomb or defend Saudi Arabia from an attack are all "music to Saudi Arabia's ears."
What's more, Haykel adds, the Saudis "were able to show that they have tremendous convening power" by bringing in all the Gulf leaders, thus demonstrating that Riyadh is the most important player there — and the partner you need for political and energy stability.
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Crow on the menu during Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia
US President Joe Biden is currently en route to the Middle East for the first time since taking office, and he’ll be making stops in Israel and the West Bank before making a more controversial swing through Saudi Arabia.
Yes, the same Saudi Arabia that, as a presidential candidate, Biden promised to treat like a “global pariah” because of the kingdom’s grim human rights record, its brutal war in Yemen, and the alleged involvement of the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But that was then, and this is now. With inflation soaring, midterm elections approaching, and prospects for a new Iran nuclear deal receding, Joe Biden is hopping on a jet to Riyadh with a few key issues in mind.
Oil and inflation. Big post-pandemic demand and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have driven global oil and natural gas prices to their highest sustained levels in almost a decade, dragging inflation up and pushing Biden’s approval ratings down. (Way, way down.)
In principle, the Saudis could flip the switch to produce more oil for Uncle Sam — but will they?
High prices suit them just fine so long as they don't push major economies into a recession, and Riyadh is currently in a pact with other OPEC members “plus” Russia to increase output only gradually.
Whatever Biden says or promises to the Saudis this week, we’ll see the results soon enough: the next OPEC+ meeting is in early August.
Arabs and Israel (and Iran). Biden's efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear never had many fans in Israel or Saudi Arabia, both of which opposed the original pact. But hopes of reaching a new agreement are now flagging badly anyway, with the Islamic Republic back to enriching uranium while de-enriching trust with the West. What's more, Tehran is now reportedly ready to sell Russia drones for use in Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin is set to visit Iran next week.
All of that makes the US especially keen to boost regional cooperation between major Sunni Arab states and Israel, who share a keen interest in containing Tehran.
One big focus on this score is a new US-sponsored air defense alliance for the region, which Israel has reportedly been developing with several Sunni Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia. On this trip, Biden is almost certain to highlight this grouping — which some have even framed as the beginnings of a “Middle Eastern NATO.”
Another is the prospect of closer official ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. While full Saudi recognition of Israel is unlikely for now because they want a Palestinian state, Riyadh may announce incremental steps like opening airspace to Israeli airlines or to Palestinian pilgrims traveling to Mecca while quietly deepening their behind-the-scenes intelligence-sharing.
Yemen. With the eight-year-old war currently on hold under a tenuous truce between the Saudi-backed official government and the Iran-linked Houthi rebels, Biden will look to press the Saudis to do more to secure a lasting peace. The price for that, however, will likely be resuming US arms sales to the kingdom and helping protect Saudi Arabia from drone or missile attacks by the Houthis, likely to retain control over northern Yemen in any viable peace settlement.
So much for what Biden is after — what do the Saudis want out of all of this?
Satisfaction, for one thing. “The Saudis basically want Biden to eat crow,” says Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
After two years of being trashed over human-rights issues that had never really come to a head before, the Saudis are happy to see Biden admit that the kingdom is still indispensable to Washington.
But for Cook, there’s a deeper uncertainty that the Saudis want to address. “Every time I’m in the Gulf these days I hear the same thing: ‘we can’t count on US policy.’”
That’s partly because four consecutive US administrations have vowed to leave the region, says David Gordon, a senior adviser to Eurasia Group and the former head of policy planning at the US State Department. “That’s a lot easier said than done, obviously, but it creates an expectation that the US wants out.”
Throughout that time, of course, US policy has oscillated wildly. For Obama, the way out was the Iran deal. Trump then tore up that agreement, embraced the Saudis unconditionally, and brokered closer Arab-Israeli ties to contain Iran locally. Then Biden walked that back and ignored the Saudis while unsuccessfully re-engaging with Iran, only to come back now to kiss the ring.
With little clarity about the balance of power in Washington after the upcoming US midterms, let alone the 2024 presidential election, the Saudis want to get back to something that looks more predictable, says Gerry Butts, Eurasia Group's vice chairman.
“For the Saudis, this visit is about narrowing the oscillations in policy and bringing things back to normal, so that it doesn’t really matter to them again [who’s] in the White House.”
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Biden's Saudi Arabia visit is more about strategic partnership than oil
I accept that as a reason, but I would be much more direct than that. The fact is that when you have a country that is a strategic partner of yours and has been for a long time, that also matters. And when that country behaves in ways that are more aligned with you strategically, you should recognize that and your behavior should change accordingly. Now, there's no question in my mind that we have had significant differences with the Saudis in the past, and we still do. But Saudi Arabia's also the largest arms purchaser from the United States in the world, and the US is the largest arms exporter in the world. Russia is number two. Won't be for long given their manufacturing and supply chain challenges. So that matters, and that's one of the reasons why the Trump administration had such a good relationship there, as did, frankly, the Obama administration and previous administrations.
And it's not just that. It's also intelligence coordination. It's the Saudis working increasingly closely behind the scenes and at a high level with the Israelis, who are the closest American ally of the United States in the region. Now, on a number of issues over the past couple of years, the Saudis are increasingly, under Mohammed bin Salman, engaging in structural reform. For example, there was a big break in the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one side, and Qatar on the other. The Americans work closely with the Qataris. The Qataris have the most important American military base in the region. Well, that relationship has now improved dramatically. The boycott is over. The Gulf Cooperation Council has been more integrated. That's a positive, not just for the region, but also for the United States and its allies in Europe. That, of course, should be appreciated by the United States. That's positive progress.
So too, the fact that the war in Yemen, which was always a far worse, vastly worse human rights crisis than the slaying of a single journalist, is now in a ceasefire. And that's a positive, and hopefully that ceasefire can stick and we can have less of a humanitarian crisis in what has been an extraordinary proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians on the ground against the Iran-supported Houthis in Yemen. That's a positive. Also, the social and economic reforms that we're seeing in Saudi Arabia that are getting Saudi citizens to work on diversifying their economy away from fossil fuels and away from petrochemicals, that are getting women into the workplace, that are opening the Saudis culturally from an entertainment perspective, from a sports perspective. These are all things that make it easier to work with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that would not be happening unless Mohammed bin Salman and an increasingly competent and coherent cabinet around him, less arbitrarily selected, were in place.
So I'm not suggesting that the Americans and the Saudis are suddenly going to have a kumbaya moment and that we think that the Saudis have become the Scandinavians in terms of human rights, though I also recognize that the US needs to focus more on the strategic partnership piece and a little bit less on the holding true to American values piece, since the US is not doing such a great job in holding true to American values in the United States, given red versus blue on pretty much every issue these days, including the legitimacy of American elections, fundamental and critical to a sustainable Republican democracy. So number one, I completely support this trip, and Biden was the one who was personally dragging his feet. His foreign policy advisors, in cabinet and in the White House, all wanted him to go. He was the one that was reluctant.
He's now finally going. I think it's a good thing. And I hope that progressives in the Democratic Party don't beat up on him too much as a consequence of the trip because it is clearly in America's interest long term to have a more stable and sustainable relationship with all of the countries of the GCC and with Israel in the Middle East. I also though think that it's not appropriate for a president to make his first trip as president to Saudi Arabia, as Trump did when he was president. And look, he was close to the Saudis and they treated him like a king when he went there and he liked that and he's close to the Israelis, and Netanyahu when he was prime minister. They have a personal relationship and had for a long time. I get it, but the Middle East is not the top priority for the United States.
Asia, Europe, and of course the Western hemisphere, all more important for the Americans, especially with the United States as the world's largest energy producer, and especially given the increasing transformation to a post-carbon, renewable energy environment. So yeah, I believe that your first trip to the Middle East isn't in the first couple of months. You first go to Canada and Mexico. You first go to Europe and to Asia and you visit the core allies. But then in relatively short order, three, four, six months out, you make a trip to the Middle East, and of course you go to Israel and you go to Saudi Arabia. That makes a lot of sense to me. It's been kicked down the road and it's been pushed in part by the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and now everyone's talking about it as if there's some big breakthrough coming in oil. I think that the oil piece of this is less important than the broader strategic partnership, not least because oil prices have been coming down over the last few weeks. They're likely to continue to.
There is a lot of oil on the market right now. Concern about oil prices was spiking in part because of worries that there'd be a broad European boycott against all shipping and insurance, which would reduce the supply by millions and millions of barrels a day. That is not coming imminently, and will probably be watered down at least a degree by the potential of having some kind of coordination on waivers from the Europeans in the near term. But also, because the world is probably heading towards a global recession, a mild one, but nonetheless a real one, on the back of the pandemic, the supply chain challenges, the Russia-Ukraine challenges, the inflation challenges. And what that means, with China slowing down dramatically with big problems still, even in Shanghai and other cities on zero-COVID, and with the Europeans probably about to experience a contraction in their economy, and the United States maybe there in 2023, that means less demand for energy.
So will the Saudis put some more oil on the market? I think they will. I think they will together with other OPEC countries and I think there'll be some form of headline announcement when Biden is there. But that's not the big news from this trip, and frankly, it shouldn't be the big news from this trip. So again, all in favor of him going, we'll see how it goes. I suspect it's going to end up being less controversial than people think. It's going to be pretty friendly and we can get back to more normalized relations with a bunch of countries. The Americans have been doing business as if there wasn't a big problem anyway.
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Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia is about more than pumping oil
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares his perspective on US politics:
What is President Biden hoping to achieve by visiting Saudi Arabia?
This week the White House announced that President Joe Biden would make a visit to the Middle East. The most important part of the trip will be a stop in Saudi Arabia and a visit with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The President came into office saying he wanted to make the Saudis pariahs for their history of human rights abuses, including the kingdom's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and an ongoing war in Yemen that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties. But unfortunately for President Biden, his Middle East strategy has followed the Mike Tyson maxim that everyone has a plan until they're punched in the mouth.
Biden has found his presidency overwhelmed by high and rising price levels coming out of the pandemic. Perhaps, nowhere as bad as in energy. The national average price for a gallon of gasoline topped $5 for the first time ever this week. It's likely the problem gets worse before it gets better, and there isn't much that President Biden can do about it. Domestic oil production is slow to come online and isn't as potent as it was five years ago because of industry concerns about the long-term ability to make profits off of new wells, which has left Biden looking around the globe for additional supplies to help ease the global crunch that is driving up energy costs.
The tangible results of a meeting with the Saudis are likely to overwhelm expectations in Washington and, potentially, force Biden to play a high political price by backing off of his commitment to isolate the Saudi Crown Prince in exchange for very little. Getting the Saudis to agree to a specific commitment to put more barrels of oil in the market is unlikely, though, a narrower agreement for the Saudis to increase production caps is possible. However, this would have very little impact on high domestic gas prices as refining capacity in the US continues to be overstretched, suggesting high prices, at least, throughout the summer.
Interestingly, however, this trip is about more than just pumping oil. The Biden administration wants to provide a counterweight to the Saudis' growing relationship with Beijing. They want to get help from the kingdom in isolating Russia in the wake of the war in Ukraine and get commitments to maintain the ceasefire in Yemen, which the Saudis may be open to if the US is willing to resume arm sales.
So this trip makes sense for Biden, even if it doesn't necessarily lower gas prices. But the fact he's making it at all shows how hard it is for a US president to fundamentally change the direction of US foreign policy, which has elevated the US reliance on Saudi Arabia for over 40 years.
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