Why a pause on Washington's dealmaking with Riyadh may be for the best, the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Beijing's motives around Taiwan, and more.

ON HOLD

The U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal is now at risk—but is it even worth saving?

"Perhaps U.S. President Joe Biden's strangest policy U-turn since taking office," writes Stimson Center scholar Emma Ashford at World Politics Review, "has been his total reversal on U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia."

Before taking office, Biden was downright hostile toward the Saudi regime, but lately, Ashford writes, "as part of a drive to secure Saudi Arabia's diplomatic recognition of Israel, the Biden administration is inching ever closer toward offering Riyadh the kind of security guarantees only given to Washington's closest and most important allies."

The future of that arrangement is newly uncertain after the outbreak of war in Israel this week following heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas. Does it serve U.S. interests to try to salvage the deal?

At risk

The war "is threatening to delay or derail the years long, country-by-country diplomatic push by the United States to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors," the Associated Press reports.
- And perhaps predictably so, as "critics have warned that [the deal] skips past Palestinian demands for statehood."
- Indeed, "Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Hamas attacks may have been driven in part by a desire to scuttle … the sealing of diplomatic relations between rivals Israel and Saudi Arabia." [AP / Aamer Madhani and Ellen Knickmeyer]
Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the Eurasia Group, went so far as to say the deal "is for now off the table," and other experts have expressed similar doubts. [Fortune / Paolo Confino]
The Biden administration is still pushing for the deal to go through, officials have said. [NYT / Edward Wong et al.]
Still, at the very least, Blinken tacitly granted on Sunday, the deal will take a back seat to the current focus on "dealing with Hamas." [FT / Felicia Schwartz and Samer Al-Atrush]

Worth saving?

But should the push for an agreement with Riyadh be preserved? Or is this, perhaps, an out the administration should take?
Writing before the Hamas attacks, Ashford takes a skeptical view of the prospective deal, laying out a critique which included concerns about unintended consequences in Israel.
Her primary contention, though, is that the "deal as it is currently being reported is that it would do little to advance U.S. interests" on three counts:
- Energy: "[G]rowing U.S. energy self-sufficiency has reduced the Cold War-era security risks that drove Washington to make Saudi Arabia a linchpin of U.S. strategy. To put it bluntly, the U.S. now has enough domestic energy production if it ever needs to fight a war."
- Stability: "As with all security guarantees, there will be strong incentives for the U.S. to maintain forces in the region to strengthen deterrence and reassure its allies—and equally strong incentives for those allies to perpetuate that dynamic and shift the burden of their defense to the United States."
- China: "[T]he idea that a U.S. security guarantee will somehow peel Saudi Arabia away from China is naïve in the extreme. Indeed, the most likely scenario for this deal is that the U.S. will take responsibility for Saudi security while China remains the kingdom's most important economic partner." [WPR / Ashford]
All told, "Saudi-Israeli normalization deal would be historic, but the price the U.S. is preparing to pay for it is simply too high." [WPR / Ashford]

Sober analysis

The U.S. nuclear arsenal can deter both Russia and China

[Foreign Affairs / Charles L. Glaser, James M. Acton, and Steve Fetter]

At first glance, a repeal of the [2002 AUMF that authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq] may seem like a symbolic gesture. After all, the main body of U.S. troops in Iraq withdrew more than a decade ago, and the small force that remains ceased combat operations in 2021. And the Biden administration, which supports the repeal, has made clear that it would have no impact on ongoing U.S. military operations.
But focusing on current operations misses what repeal would accomplish.More than20 years of practice has substantially expanded the effective scope of the 2002 Iraq AUMF, making it susceptible to unexpected uses beyond its original motivationof removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power—including in ways that could allow a future president to bypass Congress while pursuing another major war in the Middle East. Repeal is the only way to ensure this doesn't happen, and a prudent step that the House should take regardless of where the broader debate over AUMF reform might lead.

Read the full analysis here.

Related reading: Why Biden and Xi need to meet more often [Asia Times / Quinn Marschik]

By the Numbers

U.S. aid to key allies and partners, compared

See more comprehensive data on U.S. spending on Ukraine at The Washington Post.

Conversation

Lyle Goldstein, DEFP's director of Asia engagement, joined author Robert Wright in a conversation for his Nonzero newsletter about the lessons of Ukraine for Taiwan.

GOLDSTEIN: [O]ne reason that China is so obsessed with Taiwan is not that they dream of conquering the island. Honestly, it's more that it makes them horribly uncomfortable—the idea that this island is swarming with Americans and foreigners. That is truly offensive to them. […]

My view is that if we said, Okay, we're going to take the One China policy seriously—that is, we regard Taiwan, in fact, as part of China [and] we're going to stop giving them endless support, I actually think the temperature would drop in the Taiwan Strait a lot. I think China would sort of relax about it. In other words, I don't think the idea of autonomous Taiwan is so offensive to them. It's the idea of Taiwan as a foreign base.

Watch the full conversation here, or listen on Apple Podcasts. Read the Nonzero writeup here. Read Goldstein's series of coauthored articles on the same subject at The Diplomat:

Biden's strangest U-turn