Saudi Turns on the Hegemon

Relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US have soured to the point of public hostility, even as Saudi relations with Russia and China are growing.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, ruled by a dictatorial monarchy and Wahhabist religious diktat, is hardly commonly thought of as a beneficent state.

But their economic strength, control of global oil markets and flows, and the cultural power in the Islamic world from being the location of Mecca, makes them a strong regional power with serious global clout and influence.

So whatever one may think of the nature of their political regime, for anyone inclined to a realist view of global politics they are a player on the world stage to be reckoned with and respected.

Just so – since the discovery of oil in the Gulf deserts in the 1930’s the US established a close, strategic and allied “special relationship” with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Indeed - for decades Saudi and Israel have been the twin local pillars of US Hegemony in the Middle East.

But all of that is in jeopardy. Biden has tossed it all away.

Relations between the US and the Kingdom have soured to the point of threats, insults and hostility, driven in no small part by the evident personal animosity between US President Joe Biden and the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Bonesaw, I mean Bin Salman.

Biden campaigned on making Saudi a pariah due to MBS’s assassination of the former Saudi Intelligence operative and journalist, Jamal Khashoggi and ending US military support for Saudi’s genocidal invasion of Yemen.

Biden backed down from those promises and did neither after becoming President. But MBS it seems took the rhetoric to heart and was further incensed by the Biden admin’s half-hearted efforts to renew the JCPOA with Saudi-arch rival Iran.

Now Saudi has openly defied the US, according to the New York Times, betraying a secret deal with the Biden admin to increase oil production this autumn which would have lowered gasoline prices and inflation in the US, aiding the Democrat’s Congressional Elections efforts. Saudi instead cut oil production in conjunction with OPEC and Russia, and even further specifically hiked prices for the US.

MBS just threw Biden and the Democrats the finger.

Saudi has also recently joined the Russia and Chinese lead SCO as a dialogue partner, applied to join BRICS, proposed conducting energy business with China without the US dollar, and even started large purchases of Russian oil for domestic purposes, while selling their own oil to the West for a big mark up.

This all has led to outrage and fury in Washington, accusations that Saudi is “siding with Russia” – with calls for the Kingdom to be “punished” and Biden promising “consequences”, as if the Kingdom were a naughty child.

Saudi isn’t “siding with Russia”, of course, Saudi is looking after its own national and economic interests.

 US and Western efforts to weaponize their control over the global financial and economic system against Russia, seize their financial reserves, and cut them out of and dictate global oil prices is something that the Saudi regime evidently finds very dangerous, frightening, and threatening.
After all what can be done to Russia, could one day be done to them.

Saudi wants options.

And they just may be considering that a multipolar world ushered in by Russia and China that pays them due respect diplomatically, respects cultural, political, and societal differences, and rationally conducts normal business and geopolitics without the forced imposition of post-modern liberal ideology - might be preferable to being a coddled, but despised, vassal of US Hegemony.

MBS had best sleep with one eye open though lest he find himself victim of a US-backed coup or regime change effort.

Hell hath no fury like the Hegemon scorned.

[Video version]