Despite all attempts to correct and remedy the mistakes of previous US administrations in dealing with the GCC, and despite the Biden administration’s claims to demonstrate its commitment to partnering with its GCC allies, these promises fail utterly in the face of the first serious challenge. This has already happened in the wake of criminal attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Disappointing and surprising, the US response fails short at protecting not Gulf but US strategic interests. In reality, the list of US interests has undeniably changed over the past two decades. And this did not begin when President Biden took office, as some believe.
This was prefaced by his predecessors Trump and Obama who signed the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, spelling out a new American vision in which Washington ignores the views of its allies, even if it compromises its national security and jeopardizes stability in a supposedly highly sensitive region in US strategic interest calculations.
In fact, US policy planners made their new calculations about one side and one side only. They converge on theories about the near end of the oil age and the entry into a new era in which traditional energy and the countries that produce and export it have no room. That was the most egregious mistake for them.
The chaos in the Arab region in 2011 was a sign of the American transformation. It deepened suspicion and mistrust between Washington and its Arab allies, especially in the Gulf. The US has made no real effort to address the growing misgiving that is gnawing away at the traditional alliance.
Rather, they have shifted their attention entirely to East Asia. China’s growing challenge that is. The US has consistently withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
It has washed its hands of the crises in Syria and Libya, settling for a nominal role in Yemen. Finally, the crisis in Ukraine came to widen the existing rift in the Gulf-US alliance. However, this was a clear wake-up call for Washington, which has made only mollifying statements that contradict the reality of every US action.
The latest episode in this evolution came from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who, in the context of OPEC+’s decision to cut oil production, announced that the US government was considering a range of options to address US-Saudi relations.
He stated that his country would not do anything that would harm its interests and that it was closely coordinating with all stakeholders in deciding on any steps in that direction. I do not know what Mr. Blinken was thinking when he talked about so-called response options, reducing OPEC+ decision-making to Saudi Arabia and treating the whole matter as an episode of mutual hostility.
That is far from being the case. But it is precisely nervousness and haste that have been prevalent in American politics lately. I believe that US political discourse presents a sequel to the series of strategic mistakes that successive US administrations have made under the pressure of political tensions and narrow electoral calculations.
Saudi Arabia is not an enemy of the US. It certainly did not make the decision to cut oil production to buck US policymakers. States’ interests are not to be managed from this narrow perspective.
Saudi Arabia did not make this decision alone. It was shared by all OPEC+ countries and is based on pure market calculations that have nothing to do with siding with Russia, as the White House claims, nor with calculations related to the midterm elections to the US Congress, which are the reason for President Biden’s dismay with the organization’s decision.
Personally, I know of no compelling reason why US officials would expect OPEC+ and its members to provide free support by forgoing market calculations and technical studies, sacrificing the interests of their peoples, and allowing a gradual decline in oil prices just to satisfy Washington’s desire to keep energy prices low and calm markets in order to gain favor in the next midterm elections.
One might think that the Biden administration is acting on the “if you are not with us, you are against us” logics that guided post-9/11 US politics. But that is apples and oranges.
This time, it is about country calculations, interests, plans and economic budgets; Russia is not Al Qaeda — it is one of the leading members of the OPEC+ alliance and certainly has great influence within the organization given the size of its production and export weight. But this influence obviously cannot override other members’ interests.
That is, Saudi Arabia and the other members of the club cannot support any desire by Russia to cut production if it conflicts with their national interests, which require maintaining a reasonable price per barrel of oil. The US should view the oil price issue with a degree of common sense, transparency and realism.
It has to recognise the danger of premature declarations that would turn back the clock and deepen the irreparable rift in relations with its Gulf allies. Above all, it must accept the new rules of the game in international relations. It cannot afford the luxury of losing new allies at a time when it seemed in dire need of renewed alliances rather than shedding the existing ones for good.
