The U.S.-Saudi Spat Is Over More Than Just Oil Prices
The decision by the OPEC+ grouping of oil-producing states on Oct. 5 to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day has generated yet another episode of friction in relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Its timing struck a raw nerve in Washington, following President Joe Biden’s high-stakes visit to Saudi Arabia over the summer and active lobbying by the administration to hold off on cuts that could trigger a price hike at the gas pump just ahead of the U.S. congressional midterm elections. Higher oil prices also help the Russian economy in the midst of the war in Ukraine, especially angering lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted, “What Saudi Arabia did to help Putin continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans.” And U.S. senators are now calling for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, while Biden has threatened unspecified “consequences.”
The Saudis have pushed back, arguing they made their decision on economic grounds in consultation with the other OPEC+ members and were surprised by the negative U.S. reaction. In their view, they were simply pursuing their national interest and responding to market forces to avoid a collapse in oil prices. Although Saudi officials and their sympathizers argue it is all a misunderstanding, Riyadh is reportedly considering retaliatory options of its own, including selling its holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds, should the U.S. enact any punitive measures.
But this latest row is not just a dispute over oil prices between Washington and Riyadh. It is a more fundamental divide between Washington and most of its security partners in the Middle East over what’s at stake in the war in Ukraine, and more broadly how each side sees the current geopolitical map.
The gaps were already widening because of a U.S. desire to do less in the Middle East—a fatigue with the region that spans across the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. Regional perceptions of a U.S. retreat combined with, and contributed to, a growing assertiveness on the part of regional powers to tackle challenges on their own, whether countering popular uprisings following the Arab Spring or intervening in regional wars. The lack of a U.S. response to Iranian-backed attacks on oil facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement reinforced the narrative of Washington’s withdrawal and increased uncertainty about the reliability of U.S. security guarantees.
The U.S. shale boom—making the U.S. the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas—further fueled friction with Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states. Indeed, growing U.S. oil exports that reduced OPEC’s share of the world oil market were one reason the Saudis moved to align with Russia to form the OPEC+ grouping in 2016, angling to better control global oil prices and drive prices up. As a recent Baker Institute report outlines, U.S. shale production forged common cause between Saudi Arabia and Russia, undermining the oil-for-security compact that has underpinned U.S.-Saudi ties for decades.
But if the cracks in U.S. ties with regional partners like Saudi Arabia were long in the making, the war in Ukraine has exposed them more starkly and revealed differing views of the global stakes.
In the U.S. narrative embraced by the Biden administration, the international order is increasingly bifurcating into a bloc of largely democratic states dedicated to a rules-based international order and a bloc of states led by authoritarians seeking to undermine that order, with the U.S. and its allies on one side, and China and Russia on the other. In the view of U.S. officials and many analysts across the political spectrum, the war in Ukraine clearly demonstrates who is on the right side and showcases that it pays to be an American ally. To paraphrase a U.S. analyst who spoke at a recent workshop I attended, this war is as simple as it gets—it’s the good guys against the bad guys, and the good guys are winning.
The war in Ukraine should be a wakeup call that Washington’s status quo policies in the Middle East are not working.
This framing has bipartisan support in the United States. A Chicago Council on Global affairs poll from August showed little “Ukraine fatigue” among the U.S. public. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans support maintaining economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia, as well as providing additional arms and military supplies to Ukraine. An October poll from the University of Maryland finds that U.S. public support for Ukraine remains high even in the face of rising inflation at home. This popular sentiment helps explain why, from Washington’s standpoint, there is no way to justify neutrality in this war. If you are not vocally and materially opposing Russia’s invasion and supporting Ukraine, you are on the wrong side. Hedging is not an option.
The narrative among even the closest U.S. partners in the Middle East could not be more different. They do not see Ukraine as “their” war. They resent that, after having ignored the Middle East for years, the U.S.—in their view—only started paying attention to it again when the war affected global oil supplies and thus gas prices for American consumers. They ask, Why doesn’t the West care about our wars? Why didn’t the West care about Iran’s military involvement in Syria or its drones being used by Houthis and other proxies to target neighboring states? Why are Iranian drones all of a sudden seen as a major threat now that they are being deployed to kill Ukrainian civilians, but not when they were killing Arabs?
This explains why Iran’s transfers of drones and missiles to Russia is not raising the same alarm in the Middle East as it has in Washington and European capitals, nor is it seeming to turn Arab states that are hostile to Iran against Russia. In their view, they have been living with this threat for some time, but the West is only waking up to the problem when a European country is targeted. Kuwaiti professor Bader Al-Saif captured the mood when he tweeted, “The ‘West’ now gets to see firsthand what Iranian meddling is all about & why Arab states raise this issue over & over again.”
If Washington’s Arab Gulf partners never liked the Iranian nuclear deal, it was because it failed to address regional concerns over Iran’s missile program and use of proxies across the region. Putting aside the questionable feasibility of striking a wider deal with Iran on these issues, it is important to appreciate the resentment generated in the Gulf by the view that the U.S. pushed forward with the Iran nuclear agreement at the expense of dealing with Tehran’s regional activities. Meanwhile, despite rising concerns about Tehran—and possibly because of them, in order to avoid becoming Iran’s target again—Arab states have been reaching out to Iran on their own the past few years, with some states like the UAE even sending ambassadors back to Tehran. The message is clear: Washington no longer dictates regional choices.
Because of these differing narratives, unrealistic expectations now exist on all sides. The U.S. cannot expect the region to take its side against Russia, or even against Iran—this is no longer the Cold War when Washington could expect partners to align with it against ideological enemies. Washington is learning that partnerships come with risks, and that just keeping partners on “our side”—which no longer appears feasible at any rate—may not be enough to justify turning a blind eye to their repressive policies at home or destabilizing activities abroad that implicate the United States.
For their part, Washington’s Arab partners are realizing that their expectations of unquestioned U.S. military support regardless of Washington’s regional and international priorities are equally unrealistic. But at the same time, they believe they have more leverage in today’s geopolitical context, and they have no desire to return to their “client state” status of the Cold War era. Ties with Russia among the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, member states—comprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman—have only grown stronger in recent years and the Ukraine war does not appear to be reversing this trend.
To be sure, GCC ties with the U.S. remain extensive, and Russia—or China, for that matter—cannot replace U.S. military engagement in the Middle East anytime soon. But at the very least, Washington’s partners are seeking to keep their options open in a region no longer dominated by the United States. Arab partners have not been willing to cut economic or military ties with Russia even after its invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine should be a wakeup call for Washington to adjust to these realities and lower its expectations. Outdated transactional relationships based on models like “oil for security” are not working and are sure to keep disappointing.
A more productive path forward would be to structure regional relationships based on mutual interests. But mutual interests can no longer be built on cooperation against an ideological adversary. This won’t be feasible with authoritarian partners who simply do not share Washington’s global outlook.
U.S. policy could instead focus on mutual interests based on common challenges. Regional partners themselves say they no longer want their relationships with the U.S. to be narrowly focused on energy or military ties. U.S. policymakers could take them at their word and shift their focus to the socioeconomic reforms many regional leaders are promoting to prepare their countries for post-oil economies.
Reducing currently outsized arms sales and military deployments would not be framed as a punishment for unwelcome energy decisions but as part of a strategic adjustment in how the U.S. engages regional partners as priorities on both sides change. At the same time, the U.S. could increase attention and help galvanize international and regional investment for common goals like mitigating climate change impacts and food insecurity. Such challenges are reaching crisis levels since the start of the war in Ukraine and can spill over beyond the region as the risks of environmental catastrophe and pressures for migration grow.
Shifting investments in regional partnerships to these areas will not eliminate all potential for friction, given the two sides’ values gap and different ways of seeing the world that the war in Ukraine has so clearly illustrated. But it can help avoid unnecessary spats and futile attempts to preserve status quo relationships that are not benefiting U.S. interests or regional stability—or ultimately the people in the region.
Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations and the former director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation.