America and the Saudis: What Biden might learn from FDR

On a trip that might herald a reluctant shift in his administration’s Mideast policy, President Biden will arrive in Saudi Arabia next week.

The White House is portraying the visit as a response to “the invitation of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud,” the kingdom’s 86-year-old nominal ruler. But all eyes will be on Biden’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka “MBS,” whose de facto leadership led presidential candidate Biden to describe his soon to be hosts as a “pariah” nation. 

The agenda will include energy, regional security and relations with Israel. The elephant in the room will be the alleged complicity of MBS in the 2018 Istanbul murder of Saudi-American dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

America’s foreign policy toward the Saudis has long been a case study in pragmatism. Washington has guaranteed the kingdom’s security in return for Riyadh assuring the industrialized world a reasonably consistent flow of petroleum. Over the years tensions have flared over Israel and the Palestinians, and lately Iran and the Saudi human rights record.

It’s worth recalling that this often-fraught relationship began with the first meeting of a U.S. president and a Saudi leader nearly eight decades ago. 

On Valentine’s Day 1945, three days after the conclusion of the Yalta Conference and with only two months to live, President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) delayed his return to Washington for a stop at the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt’s Suez Canal. It was an opportunity to meet with the first king of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, also known as Ibn Saud.

The monarch had consolidated his kingdom in 1927 by wresting the western province of Hejaz, bordering the Red Sea, from the rival Hashemite dynasty. Ibn Saud feared a resurgent threat from Hashemite monarchies in Jordan and Iraq, sponsored by Britain after World War I. The king was looking for a new patron to offer security guarantees and financial aid.

The U.S. recognized the kingdom in 1931 but had paid it scant attention. In 1938 American geologists, the forerunners of ARAMCO, had made substantial oil discoveries, but it took the onset of war for their strategic significance to make an impact in Washington.

Events took a turn in 1943. In February, Roosevelt issued an executive order declaring “the defense of Saudi Arabia vital to the defense of the United States” making the country eligible for aid under the Lend-Lease program. But the simmering conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine had already cast a cloud over a budding relationship.

Ibn Saud had not publicly pressed the U.S. on the postwar status of the British Mandate. But he was fearful his continued silence might impact his image in the Arab world. In April he wrote to FDR, imploring that he “help to stop the flow of migration by finding a place for the Jews to live in other than Palestine.” 

Thanking him for his discretion, FDR assured the king “it is the view of the Government of the United States that no decision altering the basic situation of Palestine should be reached without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews.” It was a message typical of Roosevelt, both flattering and noncommittal.

The president reprised that theme at the February 1945 summit, adding that “resolutions in Congress” notwithstanding, “he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no hostile move to the Arab people.” It’s not clear if he believed he could make good on that pledge, and probably would have punted the question to the fledgling United Nations. 

But Roosevelt sealed the meeting with a promise that, should Iraq or Jordan threaten Saudi territory,  the United States would provide “all possible support short of the use of force.” He suggested U.S. preference for a Syria and Lebanon independent of the Hashemites. In August an agreement was signed to build a U.S. airbase at Dhahran, and the Saudis became the first recipients of a postwar U.S. foreign aid program.

President Truman’s 1948 recognition of Israel provoked the first crisis in relations with the kingdom. But Ibn Saud’s concern with regional security kept relations, including ARAMCO oilfield concessions, from reaching the breaking point.

The king’s passion for the Palestinian cause was lukewarm; he sent a minimal force to join the Arab League in its 1948 action against Israel. But when the eventual partition of Palestine permitted Jordan to annex Arab portions of the former mandate, Ibn Saud’s fears of Hashemite expansion were revived. He again appealed to Washington for support, and Truman acted. 

By the end of 1949, the Dharan base lease had been renewed, and plans were afoot to train and equip a Saudi defense force of over 40,000. As the global Soviet threat intensified, the Saudi relationship, with all its complications, would only grow in importance.

The Saudis have yet to sign the Abraham Accords, but  MBS now sees Israel as a strategic partner in the fight against Iranian influence in the region. It’s the U.S. that appears as the odd man out as the region re-aligns, with the Russians and Chinese both vying for influence.

When Ibn Saud met with Roosevelt, he saw the United Kingdom as a nation in decline with divided loyalties in the region. The Saudis today have a similar ambivalence regarding America’s commitment to their security; they see as threats the administration’s attempt to revive the Iran nuclear deal and its opposition to Saudi intervention against Tehran’s Houthi proxies in the Yemeni civil war.

The global energy crunch means the oil for security bargain is again in play. If President Biden again believes “the defense of Saudi Arabia vital to the defense of the United States”, it may take a performance worthy of FDR to convey that message to his hosts in Jeddah.

Paul C. Atkinson, a former executive at The Wall Street Journal, is a contributing editor of the New York Sun.