And since taking their respective offices in the Obama administration, Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker have had their own official visits to Saudi Arabia. These were no routine diplomatic courtesy calls. Most experts, analysts, and followers of U.S. – Saudi relations agree that the Kingdom and the United States have reached a historic crossroad in their 80-year-old relationship. Until January 23, 2015, all prior visits to the Kingdom by President Obama and the emissaries of his cabinet dealt with the late King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Upon King Abdullah's death, announced Friday, January 23, 2015, Saudi Arabia was launched into a period of profound and unprecedented transformation.
On January 23, 2015, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, His Majesty King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. On April 29, 2015, King Salman appointed His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed Bin Naif Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud crown prince and first deputy prime minister. The late King Abdullah had already appointed HRH Prince Mohammad Bin Naif Minister of the Interior on November 5, 2012. And, in a move that caught most Saudi analysts off guard and surprised many, His Majesty King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud appointed his son, His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz as deputy crown prince, putting him third in line to the throne after Deputy Crown Prince and Interior Minister Mohammed Bin Naif.
The appointment of His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, 30 years old, as deputy crown prince, was also accompanied by His Royal Highness's appointment as minister of defense, making him one of the youngest ministers of defense in the world. Although the actions taken by His Majesty King Salman in conveying to His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed Bin Salman his appointments and new responsibilities were quite substantive, they also held great symbolism for many Saudis of younger generations. For the first time, the Kingdom signaled to the world, and most importantly to Saudis themselves, that its leaders were fully cognizant of the importance of the contributions to be made to the future of the country by its younger generation.
On September 4, 2015, at the invitation of U.S. President Barack Obama, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, His Majesty King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, along with his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and the Saudi ministers of foreign affairs, finance, commerce, and health, paid an official state visit to the United States and met with President Obama at the White House. The dimensions and depth of the Saudi–U.S. relationship have expanded and deepened greatly over the last 80 years. The relationship certainly continues to withstand a seemingly constant stream of threatening geopolitical storms. These official meetings, and even unofficial back channel communications between the two nations, have served in the long run to bolster and fortify the relationship between them.
The United States has been one of the most important trade and investment partners of Saudi Arabia since the creation of the modern Saudi state. The United States recognized the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd and its Dependencies on May 1, 1931. The name of the country was changed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by decree on September 18, 1932. Diplomatic relations were established on February 4, 1940.1
Of course, between U.S. recognition of the Kingdom in 1931 and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Kingdom in 1940, there was a very significant occurrence inside the Kingdom…the 1938 discovery by the Standard Oil Company of California of the first commercial oil field and its famous first productive well, “Dammam No. 7.” Although it took the Kingdom 42 years to acquire complete ownership of what has become the world's largest oil company, it was during these years that the bedrock of the U.S.–Saudi bilateral relationship was formed…commerce between the two countries.
There have been peaks and valleys in this relationship, often caused by geopolitical winds blowing throughout the Middle East that have bolstered and tested commercial relations. Less than three years after the United States established its first diplomatic presence in the Kingdom with the opening of the American Legation in Jeddah on May 1, 1942, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt had his celebrated meeting with Saudi King Abdulaziz Al Saud aboard the USS Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake near the Suez Canal on February 14, 1945. During their visit, President Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz discussed the ending of World War II, a portion of their nations' mutual commercial interests, and from the Saudi perspective, the discouraging momentum toward the partitioning of Palestine.
Today, as the Kingdom faces regional armed conflicts, prosecutes a war in Yemen as it works to achieve a responsible peace with all parties, comes to grips with the ghastly rise of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – also known as ISIL or DAESH), articulates its continual consternation over the world community's irresolution of the ever-present Palestinian-Israeli issue, the September 4, 2015, meeting in Washington between His Majesty King Salman and President Barack Obama must have been viewed as oddly reminiscent of the 1942 meeting between King Abdulaziz Al Saud and President Roosevelt on the Great Bitter Lake, or at the very least, a lamentable case of déjà vu.
The White House reported that when President Obama and His Majesty King Salman met in September 2015, they discussed a range of issues. Among a host of subjects, the White House Office of the Press Secretary reported in its press release of September 4, 2015, that the two leaders discussed, it stated:
The President noted the Kingdom's leadership role in the Arab and Islamic world. [T]he two parties affirmed the need to continue efforts to maintain security, prosperity and stability in the region and in particular to counter Iran's destabilizing activities… [T]he two leaders noted the on-going military cooperation between the two countries in confronting ISIL/DAESH, in working to protect the sea-lanes and in confronting piracy… [T]he two leaders underscored the importance of confronting terrorism and violent extremism. They expressed their continued commitment to the security cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United States, including joint efforts to counter al-Qaeda and ISIL/DAESH. They noted the importance of their cooperation to stem the flow of foreign fighters, to counter ISIL's hateful propaganda, and to cut off terrorist financing streams… [O]n Yemen, the two parties stressed the urgent need to implement relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, including UNSCR 2216, in order to facilitate a political solution based on the GCC Initiative and the outcomes of the National Dialogue… [R]egarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the two leaders underscored the enduring importance of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and underlined the necessity of reaching a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement to the conflict based on two states living side-by-side in peace and security… 2
Despite the thorny foreign policy matters facing the two nations, one of the most reassuring qualities of the U.S.–Saudi bilateral relationship is the ability of both nations to continue trading and investing with each other at levels that over time always trend higher. Over the 80-plus years of the relationship, there have been serious ruptures, rebalances, and repairs of the two nations' political and strategic cooperative bonds.
I took note of one such unofficial bilateral flap on a March 2016 trip I made to the Kingdom when it seemed as though everyone had an opinion of a magazine interview with President Obama in a cover story of The Atlantic titled “The Obama Doctrine,” in which he seemed to many Saudis as depicting them as having benefited from America's political and military engagements in the Middle East with marginal contributions from them at best. It seemed to upset so many that most Saudis with whom I spoke during my March 2016 visit to Riyadh viewed with high skepticism the fourth planned visit to the Kingdom by President Obama the following month. When President Obama arrived in Riyadh on April 20, 2016, he received what the world press characterized as a chilly reception. Nevertheless, photos of the president being greeted by Saudi King Salman at Al-Auja palace show a respectful and cordial reception.
Unfavorable political agitations and incidents will likely continue between the two nations with varying degrees of harm. The business relationship, however, continues to manage to maintain its remarkable strength. In recent years, a number of analysts have predicted the decline and even the outright demise of the Saudi–U.S. strategic bilateral relationship. They often
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Guide to the United States' History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations, by Country, since 1776: Saudi Arabia,” http://history.state.gov/countries/saudi-arabia#diplomatic_relations.
The White House, President Barack Obama, Office of the Press Secretary, “Joint Statement on the Meeting between President Barack Obama and King Salman Bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud,” September 9, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/04/joint-statement-meeting-between-president-barack-obama-and-king-salman.
