SECURITY

Where the United States remains preeminent in Saudi minds is in the area of security. The U.S.-Saudi defense relationship dates to World War II and actually predates the large-scale production of oil in Saudi Arabia. Most of the smaller Gulf sheikhdoms had established defensive ties to the United Kingdom decades before the discovery of oil; the Al Saud on the Arabian Peninsula were not only not part of the British domain, but they often threatened British power. It was the presence of UK defense relationships that helped protect sheikhdoms such as Bahrain, the Trucial States, and Transjordan in the 1920s from the advances of Saudi forces from the deserts of Najd in central Arabia, as the new kingdom of Saudi Arabia was defining its territorial scope. By the time they stopped, Saudi troops had brought Arabia's two greatest assets under Saudi control: the Muslim holy places of the Hijaz and what were swiftly discovered to be the oil-rich lands in the Eastern Province.

By the 1940s, the new Saudi state was potentially rich but in fact quite poor. With a huge strategic asset under its sands, it needed the protection of a great power it could trust. King Abdel Aziz ibn Saud chose the United States over the United Kingdom. President Franklin Roosevelt helped solidify that trust in 1943 when he extended Lend-Lease aid in exchange for permission to establish an airbase at Dhahran and met ibn Saud on the Bitter Lake on the Egyptian coast in 1945. Even so, the relationship was somewhat distant and relatively straightforward.

It was not until a quarter century later that the U.S.-Saudi relationship became strategically vital for both countries. The sharp rise in oil prices in the early 1970s made Saudi Arabia a spectacularly wealthy place and consequently a suddenly far more influential one. The country's effective use of "the oil weapon" after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War thrust it into the leadership of the Arab world, which was still searching for a leader after the demise of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nassar. U.S. trade with Saudi Arabia skyrocketed, mostly on trade in oil: from $2.6 billion in 1974 to $8.6 billion in 1976 to $10.2 billion in 1978. Equally important, Saudi decisions to pump or not to pump oil (in those days of plentiful excess capacity) had a material impact on the U.S. economy and thus on the political fortunes of U.S. politicians. 

It was in this period that the U.S. military became intimately involved in supplying and training the swiftly growing Saudi military forces and also established an exceedingly close relationship with the National Guard, the tribal force close to the king. U.S. primacy in the region grew still further in the wake of the British pullout from the Gulf in 1971. The decades-long Saudi bet on the United States seemed vindicated.

By the late 1970s, U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia had become something that had to be explained, and Saudi behavior had become something that had to be excused. To Saudis, this felt like a strategic ally was going soft. The peril became even more pointed after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which collapsed a decade-long "Twin Pillar" strategy of U.S. support for Iran and Saudi Arabia to "fill the vacuum" left by Britain's withdrawal from the Gulf. The renewed Iranian threat and attempt to "export" the Iranian revolution made the Saudis once again agonize over their security. President Jimmy Carter committed U.S. forces to the defense of Persian Gulf oil in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but he had few forces to actually commit to that effort. The Carter Doctrine nonetheless signaled a strong U.S. commitment to the security of the Gulf. It was the Reagan administration that created those forces and gave substance to the U.S. commitment to Gulf security.

A new actor on the Saudi side also contributed to the deepening of U.S.-Saudi relations; an energetic and charismatic ambassador. Prince Bandar bin Sultan became the Saudi ambassador to Washington in 1983 and quickly made himself a darling of the Reagan administration with its vigorous anti-Soviet efforts by helping to fund adventures in Afghanistan and Latin America and later cautiously opening ties between Saudi Arabia and Jewish American groups (and later Israel). This "extracurricular" assistance helped underline to American officials the strategic need for close ties to Saudi Arabia.

Still, the relationship was rocky. In 1981, Congress balked when President Ronald Reagan proposed selling radar surveillance planes known as AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) to Saudi Arabia, and the president scraped by after a long and difficult political battle with Congress. The congressional battles have continued since, most recently with a proposed $20 billion arms sale in 2008 meant to steel Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies against a threat from Iran. A group of 93 House members quickly objected to the inclusion of $123 million worth of precision-guided bombs.

On internal security, U.S.-Saudi cooperation has been increasing dramatically -- not so much after September 11, 2001, but more after May 12, 2003. On that date, and again on November 10, 2003, Saudi-based militants attacked foreigners' housing compounds in the Kingdom, killing dozens and sending a very clear signal that radical jihadis were a Saudi domestic problem and not merely a complication for Saudi foreign policy. The Saudi government embarked on a number of changes at home, ensuring that clerical voices fell into line, cutting funding for radical overseas activities, arresting scores, and imploring families to keep better track of their sons. But equally important, the United States dramatically improved its counterterror cooperation with Saudi Arabia, especially through the FBI, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Treasury. Immediately following the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh, the FBI sent an investigative team to the Kingdom that cooperated with Saudi law enforcement and intelligence services to complete a thorough inquiry into the terrorist attack. Although concern has lingered, U.S. officials publicly praised the greater security cooperation and Saudi counterterrorism efforts as well as specific Saudi steps such as the creation of a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

All of this suggests a vital role that the United States plays in security in Saudi Arabia -- from without and from within. China cannot begin to play a similar role. At the same time, however, there is also a growing sense of grievance against the United States that a more developed Chinese relationship helps slake. Saudis feel particularly aggrieved that U.S. visa policy tightened so profoundly after 2001, not only required all Saudis to appear in person to apply for a visa, but denying visas to many (especially young men), subjecting the entire process to capricious timing and decision making and subjecting many Saudis to secondary inspection or interrogation upon arrival in the United States. It is not coincidental, for example, that Saudi Aramco's annual training trip for up-and-coming managers in 2007 was held in China rather than the United States, in part to express displeasure over the persistent difficulties obtaining visas for Aramco engineers in years past.

Whereas the United States was the destination of choice for Saudi students abroad throughout the 1970 s and 1980s, an increasing number are now moving to other English-speaking countries and to Asia. Some Saudis lament the shift, especially those who were educated and lived in the United States. A concerted push by the Kingdom has increased the number of Saudi scholarship students in the U.S. institutions to a new high of more than 10,000 -- more than twice what it was in the wake of September 11. Meanwhile, 400 Saudis now are slated to study in China, a number up from zero just a few years ago.

WEAPONS SALES

Weapons sales have been an important part of Middle Eastern states' relations with both the United States and China. The region is one of the world's top consumers of arms. Overall, the seventh highest defense spenders as a percentage of GDP are all in the Middle East, and a significant portion of this spending goes to arms purchases. Although the Middle East arms market contracted from 2002 to 2005, it nonetheless accounted for 39 percent of all arms transfers in the developing world, and the top customers were Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Israel, and Kuwait. Weapons purchases have been a central component of defense strategies for the states of the Middle East, and the United States and China have been some of the leading providers of arms to the region. From 1995 to 2002, China supplied more than $1.2 billion dollars in military equipment to Iran, Algeria, Kuwait, and Libya. Yet three metrics have generally informed the arms relationships: quality, price, and political constraints.

The quality of the weaponry flowing into (and out of) the Middle East has been a function of the technology, price, and seller. The United States possesses the world's best military technology, and the demand for U.S. defense products has traditionally been strong. From 2003 to 2006, the United States accounted for 38 percent of total arms transfers to the region, and much of it has been for high-quality products unavailable elsewhere (the percentage represented a significant drop from the previous five-year period, as Western European and Russian exports expanded). China has rarely been a provider of high-tech weaponry to the Middle East, and the greater emphasis in recent years on advanced systems has hurt Chinese exports.

However, Chinese defense products have had an advantage over their U.S. rivals in price. Concerns about price are generally a reflection over budgets, and the region's poorer states may have been more inclined to purchase cheaper Chinese alternatives.

Finally, political constraints have been central in determining the flow of weapons into the Middle East. As consumers, there is a unanimous preference for simple commercial transactions that avoid political complications. The reality is that political concerns have played a major role at least in U.S. sales, and they have potentially made other partners more attractive. The relatively fewer political barriers that Middle Eastern consumers face in China may boost China's profile as a weapons provider to the region in the future, to the detriment of U.S. companies.

Yet given these metrics, no Middle Eastern state has opposed China's entrance into the weapons sales arena. States as diverse as Israel and Iran have sought to develop arms relationships with China, driven by the direct benefits to their militaries as well as the indirect political gains. 

Aside from arms sales to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, China has not become an alternative to the United States as a source of arms. Once the Iran-Iraq War was over, Russia quickly replaced China as Iran's preferred arms supplier. China has, however, occasionally served to remind U.S. officials that Saudi Arabia has alternatives to relying wholly on the United States for its weapons. In 1988, it was revealed that China sold Saudi Arabia 50 CSS-2 intermediate range ballistic missiles, which are capable of carrying a nuclear payload. Many in the United States viewed the act as a provocative one, and no Chinese deal of similar impact has been consummated since. Still, Saudi Arabia has become the third largest buyer of Chinese arms in the Middle East, lagging only behind Egypt and Iran. Compared with sales by the United States, Russia, and European states, Chinese sales were minor. Chinese arms were cheap and rugged, but so too were Russian arms. In terms of technological edge, European and U.S. weapons are superior to both, a fact that is recognized by Middle East defense procurement agencies.