A Saudi Treaty Is a Dangerous Trap

Saudi Arabia is a liability, not some prize to be won.

The Biden administration won’t give up on one of the worst ideas in the world:

The Biden administration is close to finalizing a treaty with Saudi Arabia that would commit the U.S. to help defend the Gulf nation as part of a long-shot deal to encourage diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Israel, U.S. and Saudi officials said.

But the success of the diplomatic effort hinges on Israel’s commitment to a separate Palestinian state, and more immediately an end to the war in Gaza, an unlikely proposition amid months of fruitless cease-fire talks and an Israeli weekend raid to retrieve hostages from the heart of the territory.

The U.S. should never commit itself to defend Saudi Arabia, especially when the U.S. stands to gain nothing significant in return. The administration’s obsession with giving the Saudis a formal security guarantee is as bizarre as it is unwise. The last thing that the U.S. needs is another treaty commitment, and there are few other governments less deserving of protection than the Saudi monarchy. The current level of U.S.-Saudi cooperation is bad enough, but to formalize it in a treaty and put the U.S. on the hook for their security for decades to come would be insane.

Saudi Arabia is a liability, not some prize to be won. Even if the U.S. were able to keep the Saudis from doing lots of business with China as a result, it wouldn’t be worth the price that we would be paying. We have every reason to expect that the Saudi government will continue expanding their ties with China no matter what the U.S. gives them, so it is sure to be a bad bargain for our country. Locking the U.S. into a new Middle Eastern security commitment isn’t some brilliant masterstroke in a contest with Beijing. It would be the foreign policy equivalent of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.

A clear sign that a treaty with the Saudis would be terrible for U.S. interests is that it is supported by the likes of Lindsey Graham. Graham is one of the most reliable warmongers in the Senate, and he has been obsessed with getting the U.S. into a conflict with Iran for decades. He wants a treaty with the Saudis to pave the way for a war with Iran. A Saudi treaty will create a trap for the U.S. that Graham and his allies would love to rush into.

The Saudi government under Mohammed bin Salman has already proven to be reckless and destructive. The murderous intervention in Yemen is a foretaste of what we can expect in the future when the crown prince becomes king. He is not going to become any less dangerous if he has a formal defense treaty with the United States. If anything, he will conclude that there are truly no limits to what he can do after he has been rewarded with a treaty.

It is possible that the president thinks that he will get some credit for the “achievement” of negotiating a treaty with the Saudis, but it is no achievement to give away the store in exchange for worthless promises. Having spent the better part of a year enabling war crimes and genocide in Gaza, Biden is going to go before the American people and boast that he wants to commit U.S. forces to fight and die for Mr. Bonesaw? I don’t think that is going to go over very well. Whatever few shreds of credibility Biden might have left on foreign policy would be turned to ash.

Like other defense treaties that the U.S. has made over the decades, this one is almost entirely one-sided. According to the report, it is modeled on the treaty with Japan. It will be framed as a mutual defense agreement, but everyone understands that it is a one-way arrangement where the U.S. protects another dependent at its own expense. That might make sense when the U.S. has vital interests at stake, but that isn’t the case with Saudi Arabia.

The treaty with the Saudis is simply bad for American interests. The good news is that the administration is overreaching and it is unlikely that this treaty will ever be ratified. It is one thing for the Senate to rubber stamp NATO expansion, but it will be much harder for senators to justfy voting for a treaty that would commit the U.S. to send its soldiers to die for the Saudis.

The U.S. has managed to do without a treaty with Saudi Arabia for the last eighty years, and it doesn’t need one now. Our government ought to be working on scaling back and downgrading the relationship with Riyadh rather than adding to it. Biden’s desperate pursuit of this treaty will be another indelible stain on his foreign policy record. The Senate should reject the treaty when it is submitted and deliver the president a well-deserved rebuke.