SUSRIS 2007 Summary - Articles Interviews Special Reports

The year 2007 was a remarkable year in the course of the historic Saudi-US partnership that showed both the inevitable strengths and strains which accompany such a complex strategic relationship. The challenges covered the spectrum: governmental, political, military, business, academic and on an individual level. In 2007 we strived to make SUSRIS a faithful chronicle of developments in these areas and we hope SUSRIS will continue to be helpful to you in keeping pace with the dynamic and important connections that are the Saudi-US relationship.

As we turn the page to a new year of providing the most comprehensive view of the US-Saudi relationship on the Internet we want to provide a compilation of 2007�s SUSRIS production � special topic sections, articles, interviews, special reports and newsletters. You can use this compilation to dig down into the SUSRIS web pages to find needed reference materials or just as a review of the year past.

We also want to start the year with the reflections of some of the voices who were heard in the �pages� of SUSRIS in 2007. We will continue to turn to them and countless others to provide you the unvarnished analysis and perspective on US-Saudi relations that you have come to expect here.

�I think that the net is that it is moving the countries closer together. In the two or three years following 9-11 we went through a lot of difficulties recalibrating the relationship. I think a lot of those difficulties have now been resolved.� [�Focus on the Relationship: A Conversation with Amb. Robert Jordan�]

�The mood among Arab elites since 9/11 has progressed from shock at the event, through distress at rejection by their former American friends, through desultory efforts to test the possibility of renewed friendship, into fatalistic acceptance that the mutual confidence and regard that have been lost will not be restored..�
[�Impressions of Arabia, Autumn 2007� � Amb Chas W. Freeman, Jr.]

�..We are reaching out to people in the United States � academia, media, government, religious, business communities, and the public at large � and we have made it known that it is our intention to interact with the world on the basis of equality, fairness, transparency, mutual respect, friendship and cooperation against not only terrorism but against poverty, ignorance, racism, abuse, ethnic cleansing, crime, diseases, environmental pollution, and all other ills facing our world..� ["An 'Open Letter' from a Saudi Businessman � Revisited A Conversation with Amr Khashoggi"]

�..My sense -- coming back to the Kingdom after a long absence � is that never has the bilateral relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia been more important. However, the paradox is that while it has never been more important there is, at least at the non-governmental level, a sense of disengagement..� [US-Saudi Relations: Never More Important: A Conversation with Amb. Mark Johnson]

�..we as Muslims invite Christians to come together with us on the basis of what is common to us, which is also what is most essential to our faith and practice: the Two Commandments of love..� ["A Common Word Between Us and You," 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals]