The man in the picture may be a Saudi. Or may not. The point is larger than any individual.
I have had a great deal to do with that country. Three years as Defense and Army attaché in the US Embassy, with the status of Counselor of the Embassy. Many, many visits since in various capacities. I cannot say I ever liked the place, and I share that sentiment with many Muslims who are not subjects of the Saudi state. I was lucky when I lived there that, even as a Christian, my diplomatic status protected me.
In spite of the fancy hotels and the infrastructure built by foreign flunkies, Saudi Arabia remains a frightening, medieval place. An ability to speak Arabic well merely guarantees that a foreigner will be thought a dangerous spy. That I was an American diplomat meant absolutely nothing to them. To the Saudis, the necessity of supposedly cordial mutual relations with any country in the non-Muslim world is an unfortunate necessity. Iran and other Shia-dominated places? They are thought to be deluded and apostate.
For the Saudi state and much of the citizen population, all relations with non-Muslim states and companies must be transactional. All of them. If you want to do business with the Saudis, you must have something of value to trade. Sentiment does not enter into it.
In the past, in return for our willingness to protect them from people with actual strength and to sell them our military toys, they were willing to surreptitiously give some of us money with which to corrupt our own political system. That was the deal. Transactional. Unsentimental. Everyone understood the terms.
Then Joe Biden went to Jeddah. He went expecting that the diminishing power and majesty of the United States would cause the Saudis to fall down in wonderment, eager to appease him. He went to reset ties, to lower gas prices, to reassert American influence. He came back with nothing. No announcements. No guarantees. No victories. Just photo ops and the price of oil spiking above a hundred dollars a barrel.
The critics gave him a failing grade. They were right.
Look at the photographs from that visit. Nearly all the Saudis greeting Biden are straight-backed, looking him right in the eye. The old breed of Saudi would have been slightly bowing in deference to the President of the United States. That is gone now. They do not bow. They do not defer. They look him in the eye because they know something that he does not: the relationship has changed.
The United States needs them less than it used to, but they know the United States still needs them. And they know that the United States under Biden is weaker, more distracted, more desperate. That changes the transaction. They are not our friends. They never were. They are counterparties in a deal, and the terms are being renegotiated in real time.
Saudi Arabia is not our friend. It is not anyone’s friend. It is a medieval monarchy with oil and money and a worldview that regards all non-Muslims as outside the circle of genuine concern. We delude ourselves if we think otherwise. We delude ourselves if we think that Biden’s bumbling trip could change any of that.
The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can stop pretending and start dealing with them as they actually are, rather than as we wish them to be.
