A Deal Only the 'Blob' Could Love

China hawks will endorse practically any hare-brained scheme as long as they can somehow shoehorn it into the framework of combating Chinese influence.

In my Responsible Statecraft column this week, I responded to the Israeli foreign minister’s use of the alliance with South Korea as a model for a U.S. security guarantee to Saudi Arabia:

Creating a stronger U.S.-Saudi security relationship in opposition to Iran would likely make regional tensions worse and might encourage hardliners in Iran to pursue more confrontational policies. Far from fostering “true regional harmony,” this would stoke conflict by expanding the U.S. role in the Persian Gulf. 

It would also encourage the Saudi government to become more reckless on the assumption that the U.S. would be there to bail them out. If constant U.S. reassurances enabled earlier periods of what Barry Posen has called “reckless driving” by clients, a formal defense commitment would lead to even more of the same. 

In case I didn’t drive the point home in the column, a U.S.-facilitated normalization deal would be a monumental error if it goes ahead. It is doing the wrong things in the wrong part of the world with the wrong governments for the wrong reasons. It is the sort of thing that only the foreign policy “Blob” could love, and like pretty much everything that they love it is terrible for America.