Biden Should Punish Saudi Arabia for Backing Russia

As the United States and its allies stand united against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia is siding with Russia. By failing to publicly condemn the invasion and reiterating its commitment to the OPEC+ agreement, the Saudi government exposed cracks in its long-standing partnership with the United States.

Despite entreaties to raise oil production, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly declined to speak with U.S. President Joe Biden a week after speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin. By refusing to compensate for Russian oil, the crown prince is facilitating Putin’s aggression by allowing him to weaponize energy in the face of sanctions imposed by the international community and hold energy-dependent European countries hostage to Russian oil and gas.

On Monday, the Saudi government still refused to condemn Russian actions: Instead, the Saudi foreign minister spoke with his Russian counterpart, affirming the countries’ bilateral relations and “ways to strengthen and consolidate them.”

Saudi unwillingness to raise oil output in response to Biden’s request represents the latest sign of shifting loyalties.

Despite Saudi intransigence, the Biden administration recently sent additional Patriot anti-missile systems to the kingdom as Houthi attacks hit Saudi water and energy facilities. In a declaration of their need for U.S. protection, the Saudis issued a statement denying responsibility for any oil supply shortages caused by these attacks; Washington sent the defenses without any reported guarantees that Riyadh would raise production, a commitment by ARAMCO to increase investment notwithstanding.

Saudi unwillingness to raise oil output in response to Biden’s request represents the latest sign of shifting loyalties. Throughout a seven-decade partnership, Washington has acted as Riyadh’s main security guarantor, and, in return, most Saudi monarchs coordinated closely with the United States on energy issues. However, since Mohammed bin Salman consolidated power, the bilateral relationship has been increasingly strained by reckless Saudi foreign-policy decisions, including a seven-year war on Yemen, as well as a deteriorating human rights record, most glaringly apparent in the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In reality, Saudi Arabia does not doubt the U.S. security guarantee. What the crown prince wants is to ensure his own rule. The United States has shown that although it will act to support the physical security of Gulf partners, Washington will not attack civilians, as authoritarian Arab leaders do, to defend its preferred regime. Gulf rulers see America’s neutral stance during the Arab Spring as having allowed for the ouster of Washington’s long-term partner Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

The Saudi royals feel that only their direct military intervention in Bahrain in 2011 saved the Al Khalifa royal family, no thanks to the Americans, despite the presence of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Manama’s harbor. Since then, Saudi mistrust of the United States and paranoia about internal dissent has only grown. Under the rule of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has accelerated the cultivation of close ties with Russia and China.

Unlike the United States, Russia and China have no history of protecting Saudi Arabia, nor any meaningful military presence in the Gulf.

Like Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the Saudi rulers prefer an autocratic model of capitalism as well as an alternative world order built on authoritarian survival and the exclusion of human rights from state-to-state relations.

The indifference of Saudi Arabia and other major Muslim states to China’s and Russia’s mistreatment of their Muslim minority populations demonstrates the compatibility of these governments’ opposition to human rights. Saudi Arabia and the UAE share China’s and Russia’s paranoid fear of Islamist movements as possibly potent sources of regime instability.

The Saudi king and crown prince have actively sought to marginalize Islamists, in part by displacing the importance of Islam to the Saudi national narrative and centering the role of the royal family. For example, on Feb. 22, Saudi Arabia celebrated Founding Day for the first time. The new holiday traces Saudi national origins to 1727, when Mohammed bin Saud took control, rather than the previously celebrated year of 1744, when Saud partnered with Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, thereby bolstering Saud’s religious legitimacy and launching his territorial expansion.

While many in the West have welcomed decisions by the Saudi government to disempower actors like the religious police and allow for less stringent gender segregation, these changes have also corresponded to unprecedented levels of internal repression. The imprisoning of human rights activists, targeting of dissidents abroad, and recent mass execution of 81 prisoners reveal the true nature of Mohammed bin Salman’s intentions: the silencing of all dissent, including from formerly state-empowered clerics and conservative elites, behind a veneer of more Western social norms.

The lingering outrage and political estrangement over Khashoggi’s murder may have convinced the crown prince that his efforts to rebrand Saudi Arabia in the eyes of the West have failed. Instead, China and Russia represent partners that would never chastise him for murdering a journalist. In Russia’s case, recent history suggests they might even assist in carrying out the deed.

Yet betting on Chinese and Russian security guarantees represents a gamble. Unlike the United States, Russia and China have no history of protecting Saudi Arabia, nor any meaningful military presence in the Gulf. If Saudi Arabia decided to transition its military away from American-made equipment, the process would take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars.

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Furthermore, both China and Russia have close and mutually beneficial relationships with Iran, which they are unlikely to sacrifice for the sake of the Saudis’ feelings. When speaking to the Americans, the Saudis have long insisted on ever greater assurances of U.S. protection against Iran and the groups it supports around the region. If Riyadh is willing to overlook such fears in order to partner with Beijing or Moscow, it will be clear that this position was largely intended to play upon Washington’s lingering mistrust of Tehran.

Even if the crown prince’s unease about Iran is genuine, his anxieties about internal unrest are greater. For this reason, he would prefer a partner like Putin, who manifested his commitment to keeping Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in power even at the cost of massive civilian casualties. He hopes that by siding with Russia now, the Kremlin will come through for him in an hour of need, such as massive popular protests by Saudi citizens.

The current U.S. policy of appeasing Saudi Arabia only reinforces the crown prince’s perception that Biden needs him more than Riyadh needs Washington.

Mohammed bin Salman would rather make the longer-term gamble on supporting Putin than risk antagonizing him for term-limited elected Western officials. The failure of recent in-person entreaties by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and senior American officials, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk, as well as a refusal to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, prove that the Saudi crown prince has made up his mind. He will not be adopting an oil policy that would undermine Putin’s energy leverage and cut Russia’s petrodollar lifeline: He has chosen Moscow over Washington.

Likewise, the Biden administration should stop begging the Saudis for oil when it is pressuring European allies to give up Russian fossil fuels. The incompatibility between American democracy and Saudi authoritarianism has long strained the relationship. It is past time for the United States to stop begging the Saudis for oil. This is not the time to reempower another brutal hydrocarbon dictatorship.

When confronted with the unpleasant prospect of replacing Russian oil with Saudi, Iranian, or Venezuelan oil, rejoining the Iran nuclear deal and allowing Iranian fossil fuels back onto the global market represents the best of bad choices to address recent price increases. The purchase of Iranian oil would remain constrained by the terms of the renegotiated nuclear deal, whereas giving in to Saudi (or Venezuelan) demands comes with no additional safeguards to address areas of U.S. concern. In the longer term, Biden must work to reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, thereby protecting the U.S. economy from inevitable oil price shocks. Only then could the U.S. government forgo hypocritical deals with oil-rich authoritarians.

The current U.S. policy of appeasing Saudi Arabia only reinforces Mohammed bin Salman’s perception that Biden needs him more than Riyadh needs Washington, a view that will encourage him to partner more closely with Russia and China, believing the U.S. government has no choice but to continue to support him.

Instead, Biden should take the opportunity to fundamentally rethink America’s relationship with the Saudi monarchy, including by ending all weapons sales and suspending maintenance contracts for the Saudi military. Only this will demonstrate the risk Riyadh runs of losing its only stable security partner.

If Mohammed bin Salman doubles down on his support for his fellow dictators, it will be no great loss to the United States.