Biden’s Saudi Disaster – USA Gov Policy

There has rarely been so substantial, and detrimental, a turnaround in foreign policy equal to that in U.S.-Saudi relations over the past several years.

During Trump’s tenure, Washington and Riyadh were unprecedently close. It was part of a larger success in the Middle East, headlined by his Administration’s peace deals with Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The Saudi’s were a major asset in countering Iran’s malign influence in the region.

That happy turn of events swiftly deteriorated under Joe Biden.

The disastrous result has been the alienation of a key Middle Eastern ally. The Saudi’s have moved substantially closer to China. The two nations agreed to 35 deals valued at $29.6 billion. Even more worrisome, Riyadh and Beijing inked a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement.”

Many members of the Senate have decried the current White Houses’ missteps in the region, noting that:

“President Biden entered office with a Middle East united against the Iranian threat and on the heels of the Abraham Accords, an unprecedented boon to Middle East peace. Under these agreements, struck in 2020, four Arab states – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan – agreed to recognize the State of Israel and opened the door to further cooperation. The Biden administration quickly undid that progress. From the start, he put politics ahead of policy in his zeal to restart the failed Iran nuclear deal, simply to make good on a campaign promise. In courting Tehran, the administration removed the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and ended U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s war against the group. The administration delayed an arms deal with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and withdrew air defense systems, caving to progressive demands to end the war while our allies faced Houthi attacks against civilian infrastructure. Buoyed by the administration’s actions, the Houthis launched renewed offensives in Yemen and increasingly threatened our partners. When Iran-supported militia groups targeted Americans in Iraq and Syria with rockets and drones last summer, the administration barely reacted. In a dogged effort to keep the nuclear deal alive, the Biden administration has not conducted a strike against Iranian proxies since October 2021, and regional deterrence is sorely lacking. The Israelis, to whom Iran poses an existential threat, have deeply and publicly disagreed with the administration’s approach. President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan last August confirmed fears that he was willing to abandon our allies…”

The inexplicable tilt towards Iran by the Biden Administration (similar to that by the Obama White House) is a major factor. The Saudis depended on the U.S. as a bulwark against Tehran’s expansionist threat. Despite Iran’s ongoing nuclear program (now believed to be mere months away from the ability to construct atomic weapons,) its support for violence throughout the region, its provision of weapons to Putin for use in the invasion of Ukraine and its purchase of Russian advanced fighter aircraft, the current White House continues its softness on the nation.

A New Republic review called Biden’s 2022 Middle Eastern trip “Nothing short of a disaster.”

Author Joel Pollack notes that “President Trump signed the Abraham Accords, creating a network of peace deals between Israel and many Arab and Muslim states. Biden has punished many of the key players: raising tariffs on the United Arab Emirates (UAE); withholding arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia; de-listing the anti-Saudi, pro-Iran Houthi militia as a terror group; publishing an intelligence report naming the Saudi Crown Prince as a key player in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi; and appointing the same pro-Iran diplomats who crafted the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. All Biden had to do was continue where Trump had left off, rewarding Arab and Muslim countries that made peace, and maintaining pressure on Iran. But Biden’s foreign policy team, apparently blinded by the conviction that everything Trump did must necessarily be wrong, continues to repeat the mistakes of the Obama administration, which appeased Iran and allowed it to cause regional chaos.”

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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