Princely Entanglements.

• Author: Pillar, Paul R.
• Position: U.S.-Saudi relationship under threat from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's murder involvement - Report

Long before "transactional" became a cliche applied to policies of Donald Trump, the term accurately described the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The partnership brought together the world's most important democracy and a family-run autocracy that was medieval in its mores and allied internally with intolerant religious fundamentalists. Shared values have always been absent, and shared objectives and perspectives have been tenuous.

Oil has lubricated the relationship, of course. Oil was on leaders' minds when the relationship began--on a U.S. warship anchored in the Great Bitter Lake along the Suez Canal, where Franklin Roosevelt, returning in February 1945 from the Yalta conference, met with Ibn Saud, founder of the Saudi kingdom. Ever since, opposition to some adversary also has underpinned the relationship. With World War II still under way, U.S. military planners were thinking about access to the Arabian Peninsula for moving resources from the Atlantic theater to the Pacific once Nazi Germany was defeated. Later during the Cold War, minimizing Soviet inroads in the Middle East was a major ingredient in American thinking about the relationship with Saudi Arabia. Despite how little the Saudis had in common with the West, aversion to godless communism was an even bigger part of their sentiments.

Despite the divergence in values and the transactional nature of the U.S.-Saudi bargain, however, the emotive as well as the strategic have been part of the relationship from the beginning. Franklin Roosevelt and Ibn Saud hit it off well despite the huge difference in their backgrounds. After the Saudi king, who walked with difficulty because of old wounds to his legs, admired the mobility that Roosevelt's wheelchair provided, the president bestowed upon him the much-appreciated gift of one of the two wheelchairs he had brought on the trip.

Over the ensuing decades, American sentiment about Saudi Arabia has strayed from hard-nosed strategic calculations in ways that go beyond personal rapport between leaders. The sheer passage of time has engrained the habit of thinking of Saudi Arabia as a friend and ally, notwithstanding the absence of a mutual security treaty. Shared opposition to hated adversaries, whether they be godless Soviets or too-godly Iranians, has reinforced the habit.

The Trump administration would put opposition to Iran at the top of any list of its strategic rationales for treating Saudi Arabia as an ally. The administration's fervent stoking of hostility toward Iran has been one of the few consistent themes in a foreign policy otherwise replete with inconsistencies, and it has become a priority in shaping the administration's policies in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia figures prominently in the hostility-stoking campaign because the kingdom is Iran's principal rival in the Persian Gulf region. The simple notion that any enemy of my enemy is my friend is overriding sober calculation of how Saudi Arabia's conduct does or does not support U.S. interests.

The Trump White House also seems to hope that the Saudi regime will lean on the Palestinian leadership to declare surrender in its long contest with Israel and to accept a "peace plan" that leaves Palestinians with something less than a sovereign state worthy of the name. There is some basis for that hope in that the interests of the Palestinians may...