A U.S.-Saudi Defense Deal Now Is a Bad Idea for Both Sides
Timing is political, not strategic
Thomas Friedman reports in the New York Times: “the Biden team has worked out virtually all the details for a U.S.-Saudi defense alliance that would also include normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia — provided that Netanyahu would agree to embark on negotiations for a two-state solution.”
What’s the hurry? And what’s the downside?
The “Biden team” has an urgent deadline—they want a deal they can announce before Election Day, a concrete diplomatic achievement to show to voters. And they want Saudi help keeping gas prices low, and headline inflation numbers declining, between now and the election. That might help Vice President Harris’s chances of prevailing over President Trump in the election.
Netanyahu could also benefit politically from a Saudi-Israel peace deal, but he also knows that after October 7, 2023, the “two-state solution”—a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel—is more remote of a possibility than it had been before, because Israelis see a Palestinian state as a security threat. And Netanyahu is sophisticated enough about American politics to realize the risk of alienating Republicans by doing anything that looks like a last-minute favor to the Biden-Harris administration.
For the Saudis, giving a last-minute boost to Biden and Harris risks alienating Trump. It could increase the chance that Trump, if elected, tosses the deal out the window. The first-term Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama-Biden administration had painstakingly negotiated. Trump also renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. If there’s anything Trump can be counted on to do, it’s scrapping deals he considers lousy that were negotiated by previous administrations.
So why wouldn’t the Saudis just wait until after November’s U.S. election? The claim is that somehow Biden would be better than Trump at getting two-thirds approval from the Senate to ratify a deal. Yet it took Biden months to get the Senate to pass funding for Ukraine and Israel. Putting Saudi Arabia under the American defense umbrella on a formal basis, with a presidential campaign under way, might be more challenging, even for Biden, who never tires of telling people that his achievements in passing legislation are in a league with President Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
For treaties to outlast the politicians who signed them, they need to reflect some underlying national interests or values. In the case of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S., they have a common enemy in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet while Saudi Arabia has made progress toward modernization, it remains unfree and undemocratic. For Biden and Harris to run around claiming democracy is on the ballot in 2024 and that election is about freedom (which they define as abortion rights), while also saying let’s pledge the U.S. to defend the Saudi monarchy doesn’t exactly ring true. The Republican Party of 2024, meanwhile, is focused on defending the U.S. southern border, not Saudi Arabia.
There are instances when a political timeline or opportunity can lead to a deal with lasting value—the Abraham Accords, for example. But there are other moments when last-ditch, last-hour presidential diplomacy is either vindictive or simply fails to bear fruit.
In assessing the chances of a breakthrough, it’s worth considering that, at least for the next few months, the one thing that might serve Kamala Harris and Saudi Arabia nearly as well as a U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal is the ability to blame Benjamin Netanyahu for the lack of one. Until the American voters have their say in November, that fallback might have to suffice.
If such a deal seems to make sense after the American election, there will be plenty of time to tackle it then. But jamming it through now risks tainting it as an act of political desperation rather than national interest. America, after all, has survived nearly 250 years without a formal defense alliance with Saudi Arabia. We can make it for a few more months. If Biden thought it was such an important deal, he should have gotten it done at the beginning of his administration rather than in its waning days.