The Future of the Saudi-American Relationship

Oh, how easy it is to talk about the present and the past, and oh, how difficult it is to talk about the future! Many have analyzed and interpreted past and present aspects of the Saudi-American relationship, but what about its future after Saudi monarch Malik Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and American President Barack Obama met in Riyadh in the presence of top administration officials and decision makers from the two countries?

Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s calm composure inspires me to look to the future horizons dominating the historical relationship between the country with the biggest global role and the most important Arab and Middle Eastern country. I say upfront that this unique pairing, distinguished by its longevity, will not change. As no problem afflicts it, it will stay fixed and stable in a dangerous, versatile and changing world.

Where, then, is the problem? The Riyadh meeting was inevitable. It is likely that bilateral meetings between the two countries will convene on all levels. The goal is to avoid aggravating the differences in the vision, thinking, behavior and practices of the two countries when dealing with Arab and regional issues.

These differences had begun to harm the interests and policies of both countries with regard to these issues. I won’t use wooden language and claim that the Riyadh meeting reached a harmonization or joint bilateral solutions. It is only logical to say that two countries enjoying sovereignty and independence cannot practice a perfectly united policy in their relationships with other countries in and outside of the region.

In short, what occurred in Riyadh was a deepening of the reciprocal understanding of the two countries’ positions with regard to their policies on the countries and issues involved. I say frankly that an understanding and a mutual understanding are not the same thing. It is an injustice to Saudi Arabia to claim that, after the meeting, it has a mutual understanding with or has become a partner of the United States in its strange polices and positions that are unacceptable to the Arabs or the nation.

I am not pessimistic. There is space for the countries to move from a reciprocal understanding to mutual understanding and cooperation. There needs to be diplomatic consultation and political communication leading to, for example, an open or closed discussion with the Saudi political leadership to which the Obama administration is compelled to adhere whenever a matter concerns an American decision like moving closer to Iran.

Iran is a sea neighbor of Saudi Arabia. Thus far, Saudi Arabia has continued to be complaisant in this tiring relationship, irrespective of the media that enjoys the freedom to accuse Iran of threatening Arab security, including Gulf security, by intervening in Syria, Iraq and with Hamas in Gaza to affix them to the wheel of Iranian policy.

The rebuke to Obama’s America in the future will be great if it doesn’t consult Saudi Arabia when separating the “hypothetical” from the real in America’s relationship with Iran. A preliminary nuclear agreement was broached with Iran without obligating it, now or in the future, to stop violating Arab security and sovereignty in the Levant and Gulf.

With Hassan Rouhani, America might control the “hypothetical” nuclear danger. But Rouhani wasn’t able to visit Saudi Arabia when, after being appointed president, he came out and announced that Syria is a “red line” — meaning Bashar must not be removed, there shall be no stop to the destruction of Sunni cities, and there shall be no restraint in the collective killing committed with the weapons of the Iranian and Iraqi militias infiltrating Syria (with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s knowledge) and the Hezbollah mercenaries coming from Lebanon.

What is the future of American strategy in the region after the collapse of the regimes of (Muslim Brotherhood-esque) political Islam that, with American support, hijacked the Arab uprisings? Unfortunately, America’s political and media discourse is still Brotherhood-esque. In Egypt the Obama administration has abandoned the people powers that descended from the hypothetical world of the Internet and made the uprising real on the ground. They were unable to stop the Brotherhood’s creep to power as they scattered.

What Obama heard in the Riyadh meeting about the need for Egypt to participate in the defense of Arab national security might make him do away with America’s campaign, in the media and otherwise, against al-Sisi, the presidential candidate. The Arab’s test for Obama will be America’s delivery of Apache helicopters to Egypt to fight the “jihadi” violence that Hamas, from Gaza, is sponsoring in the Sinai Peninsula.

Al-Sisi promised Egypt democracy, security and stability. He formed an elite force in the army to fight the violence of the Brotherhood and the “jihadis.” It is expected that he will ease the difficulty that Egypt’s Grand Mufti faces in agreeing to the execution of 529 Brotherhood members and “jihadis,” most of whom are on the run from justice. There is no doubt that the Gulf countries that liberally supported growth and floating the Egyptian economy will welcome a lightening of these sentences.

The democratic competition has put the Nasserite candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, who is strong with the people, in confrontation with candidate al-Sisi, who has stronger luck. I had hoped that, had Amr Moussa — the candidate for administering al-Sisi’s electoral campaign — steered clear of this competition, 5 million Egyptians who voted for Sabahi against Muhammad Morsi would become a solid populist foundation for a political alliance between al-Sisi and Sabahi, as long as the two men don’t want to disturb the Arab order by practicing Gamal Abdel Nasser’s role in the Arab street.

The deep divide within the Obama administration and its inability to control and cooperate with the two houses of Congress increases the tragedy of America’s future strategy. America’s hesitation in Syria prompted Putin to resolve the Ukrainian crisis by retaking the Crimea peninsula, a strategic area for the Russian ports in the Black Sea.

Obama is the outcome of the inability of all American presidents, in the latter years of the 20th century, to deal with Saudi Arabia as a nation that carries its own importance thanks to its view overlooking the entries and exits of the most important seas and oceans and its possession of oil, which remains the primary source of power for human civilization.

Obama’s fluctuation between giving lofty public reassurance that America still works to protect Gulf security and gradually withdrawing from the region to disappear in the terra incognita of Asia will conflict with reality in a strategic Arab region where the destiny of large and small countries around the world is decided.

Whenever dealing with America’s political strategy, the role of the American media in serving or harming this strategy must be accounted for. In a Western democratic state, there is no media ministry that governs or regulates the relationship between the state, on one hand, and the press and various media outlets, on the other. Rather, there is a hidden relationship between the regime and the media.

This relationship is usually based on supplying elite editors and reporters with information, news and secrets in exchange for publicity and the propagation of the bigger state policies domestically and abroad. The Obama administration guarantees the friendship and loyalty of America’s largest political papers through this precise mechanism in order to broadcast whatever it wants spread, whether positive or negative, about the countries and regimes with which it deals.

As such, in the Arab region a great network of offices and correspondents of the big American news agencies and press organizations sprawls out and uses its occupational and technological superiority to launch campaigns to support or damage regimes, organizations and men, all in accordance with the interests of the governing regime in Washington. So don’t believe most of the official statements about protection, reassurance, trust, and squandering concern and anger. If you trust your political consciousness, then all you need to do is read this colossal media giant to see, between the lines, what the administration thinks about you, your country and the decision-making inside it.