What happens between Saudi Arabia and the US. Report Ft
Saudi Arabia and the United States are drifting again. Financial Times analysis
Joe Biden was forced to swallow his pride when he visited Saudi Arabia in July to greet Mohammed bin Salman with his fist. Although he exposed himself to accusations of hypocrisy after brandishing the kingdom as a pariah, Biden's embarrassment would have been worth it if he weakened Vladimir Putin's Russia. This result has not been seen. The autocratic crown prince of Saudi Arabia appears to have gotten closer to Putin ever since. The question is whether Biden can do anything to dissuade Saudi Arabia from being a recurring thorn in America's side. The Financial Times writes.
The implicit Saudi answer is yes, as long as Biden is replaced by another president, preferably Donald Trump. The Saudi Crown Prince's ties to Trump's family are as intimate as his contempt for the Biden administration is evident. Saudi Arabia is therefore part of a select group of countries that support one of the American parties rather than the other. This includes Putin's Russia, Viktor Orbán's Hungary, and Israel when Benjamin Netanyahu was his prime minister. In the new world disorder, America's openness can often be its Achilles heel.
There are three reasons to think that Prince Mohammed's Saudi Arabia will be a growing problem for Biden's America. The first is financial in nature. The most pressing challenge for Biden is to ensure that the recent drop in oil prices does not come to a halt. This decline, which has curbed Putin's dollar earnings and improved democratic chances in the upcoming midterm elections, has little to do with Saudi Arabia. It was mainly caused by the slowdown in the Chinese economy. After Biden's visit, Prince Mohammed agreed to increase Saudi daily production by 236,000 barrels. But earlier this month he agreed with Putin to cut a third of the OPEC + quota. Further cuts are likely. The Saudis prefer oil to exceed $ 100 a barrel. Prince Mohammed's motive may be more monetary than geopolitical. But the collateral damage to Biden is a bonus.
The second is the crown prince's hostility to the lessons of Western liberals. The rhetorical contrast between Biden and Trump is like night and day. Biden divides the world into autocracies and democracies. Trump, whose first overseas presidential trip was to Saudi Arabia, has a fondness for strong men. Prince Mohammed is fast becoming the autocrat of the autocrat. This is almost certainly why he gave up attending Queen Elizabeth's funeral on Monday. Avoiding the protesters would have been embarrassing. The recent incarceration by Saudi Arabia of two female activists for posting dissenting views on social media shows how little Prince Mohammed cares about Biden's concerns. Both sentences – 45 years and 34 years – were extreme even by strongman standards and could have been easily avoided. The Crown Prince seems to want to point out that Biden's values don't matter.
The last reason is that Prince Mohammed viscerally prefers a Trumpian US foreign policy to that of Biden. The Crown Prince's ties to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner go far beyond their WhatsApp friendship. Last year, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested $ 2 billion in Kushner's private equity firm, even though Kushner's only previous experience was in his family's real estate business.
A Saudi control group judged Kushner's operations "unsatisfactory in all respects". But it was rejected by Prince Mohammed. This probably saved Kushner's feat. The Saudi fund represents the majority of its capital. Congress is investigating the deal. Kushner strongly defended Prince Mohammed after US intelligence agencies expressed "high confidence" that the crown prince ordered the operation that led to the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and dissident, in 2018. For Prince Mohammed, $ 2 billion is a small risk to take for a potential huge payback if Trump and his family were to retake the White House.
Biden's frustration is that he can't do much to change Prince Mohammed's calculation. Western renewed ambitions for clean energy threaten the profits of Saudi Arabia and Russia. According to most forecasts, fossil fuels will experience a centuries-old decline within the next ten years. It should come as no surprise that the Saudis and other exporters want to squeeze what they can while it lasts. There is no shortage of customers, China in the lead . When President Xi Jinping makes his expected state visit to Saudi Arabia later this year, they will no doubt exchange warm handshakes on the red carpet.
The headaches that the young and ruthless Gulf autocrat creates for Biden's America are specific and generic. Prince Mohammed stands out as one of the most uncompromising absolutists in the world. However, he also gives a face to the once flexible areas of the world that no longer pretend to like America's rules.
(Extract from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/che-cosa-succede-tra-arabia-saudita-e-usa-report-ft/ on Sun, 25 Sep 2022 05:16:49 +0000.