For six years, the hallmark of Obama administration’s foreign policy has been its predilection for embracing foes and distressing allies like Saudi Arabia. President Obama’s determination to pursue détente with Iran, a deadly threat to the Saudis as well as to Israel, has shaken ties between the two countries. But the death of Saudi King Abdullah has caused both the president and his administration to belatedly attempt to repair the relationship. That is smart. But in doing so, it appears that the administration has once again faltered. The U.S.-Saudi alliance is one based on common interests, not values. Like the president’s choice to attend the king’s funeral after snubbing the Paris unity rally after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the decision by the Pentagon to sponsor an essay contest on Arab and Muslim issues in honor of the king’s memory is a spectacular example of how tone deaf Obama’s Washington is to the nature of the underlying threat to peace in the Middle East.
There is no better example of an alliance of interests but not values than the long and, in some ways, quite close, relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi kingdom is a medieval anachronism in many ways with its despotic form of government and its devotion to Wahabi Islam, an extreme and quite aggressive variant of the Muslim faith. But America’s interest in the free flow of oil from the Arabian Peninsula and stability in the Middle East has tied it to the Saudi monarchy, which, in turn has clung to the U.S. as a shield against even more radical Islamists, especially Iran. Thus, the Saudis are rightly alarmed at the administration’s retreat from a policy of rigorous opposition to Tehran and, to their amazement, find themselves more in agreement with Israel than with the U.S. on the most important issue facing the region.
This is an American blunder of huge proportions, but this type of fawning on the Saudis cannot make up for it. What exactly are we honoring when we ask scholars or military officers enrolled at the National Defense University to take part in such an exercise?
While the U.S.-Saudi alliance is important to the security of both nations, honoring Abdullah is, by definition, treating the political and religious culture that he exemplified as somehow compatible with the values of the American government and its military. By soliciting essays about the Arab and Muslim world, it will be inviting work that will not give the unsparing criticism of Saudi Arabia that is deserved.
The Saudis may be crucial to Middle East stability but the Wahabi monarchy is also a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is backward in its attitudes toward human rights and the treatment of women. Its brand of authoritarianism may be preferable to that of Iran or terrorist groups like ISIS but it is also the reason why many Muslims have come to think of the radicals as viable alternatives. Its intolerance for religious minorities is a scandal especially at a time when so many Western leaders are at pains to promote Islam as a religion of peace.
The spectacle of the leader of the free world paying a personal tribute to a backward feudal monarch or kowtowing to his successor does neither country much good. Nor will essays honoring the role of Abdullah enable the future leaders of America’s defense establishment to understand what the U.S. needs to do to promote stability or productive change.
What it needs is a policy that stands up to genuine threats to the Middle East like Iran instead of efforts to appease Islamists. At the same time, it needs to make it clear that our national interests have not compromised American values that are offended by everything the Saudis stand for.
The Obama administration has done the opposite in both cases. That means we are promoting insecurity while also reinforcing the worst instincts of a reactionary regime badly in need of reform. In doing so, it is laying the foundation for a future in which the U.S. will have neither allies nor common values with any nation in the Arab and Muslim worlds, including those who are now its allies.
