JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia – During his painful encounters with a string of Arab strongmen here in Saudi Arabia this weekend, President Biden kept returning to a single reason for renewing his relationship with US allies who are on the wrong side of the battle. which he often describes as a struggle between ‘democracy and autocracy’.
“We will not run away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran,” Biden said Saturday during a session with nine Arab leaders in a cavernous ballroom of a hotel in this ancient port on the Red Sea. “And we will try to build on this moment with active, principled American leadership.”
It was revealing that Mr. Biden framed America’s mission as part of a renewed form of superpower competition. For decades, American presidents largely viewed the Middle East as a hotbed of strife and instability, a place where the United States had to be largely present to keep the flow of oil flowing and eliminate terrorist havens. Now, more than 20 years after a group of Saudis left this country to carry out terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and attack the Pentagon, Biden is driven by a new concern: his forced dances with dictators, though distasteful, are the only choice if his greater goal is to restrain Russia and outsmart China.
“We’re getting results,” he insisted Friday night as he emerged from a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who clearly sees the opportunity for diplomatic rehabilitation after Mr Biden refused to see him for months. accuse him of complicity in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist.
Biden’s attempt to negotiate greater oil production — shocking enough for a president who took office and vowed to help rid the world of fossil fuels — is driven by the need to make Russia pay a heavy price for invading Ukraine. Until now, that price has been low: Not only do Russians continue to collect significant oil and gas revenues, they even supply Saudi Arabia, Reuters reported recently, with fuel for its power plants — at discounted prices.
Perhaps the most notable of Biden’s many announcements with the Saudis was an agreement signed Friday night to collaborate on a new technology to build the next generation of 5G and 6G telecommunications networks in the country. The United States’ main competitor in that area is China – and Huawei, China’s state-privileged competitor, which has made a significant breakthrough in the region.
It’s all part of a larger effort by the Biden administration to push Beijing back into parts of the world where the Chinese government has made progress for years without feeling much competition.
Three weeks ago, at the NATO summit, Mr. Biden celebrated a new “strategic concept” for the Western alliance that, for the first time, recognized China as a systemic “challenge” and described its policies as coercive and its cyber operations around the world as malicious. The doctrine said Beijing, along with Russia, sought to “undermine the rules-based international order,” words similar to those used by the Biden administration during this trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
After that summit, European officials said they would focus on curbing China’s influence within Europe and reducing reliance on its electronics, software and other products.
President Biden’s Visit to the Middle East
The US president traveled to Israel and Saudi Arabia after calling the latter a “pariah” state after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist.
The efforts here in Jeddah are similar – to show that the United States will help reduce Chinese and Russian influence. Mr Biden outlined a five-part “New Middle East Framework” that included support for economic development, military security and democratic freedoms. “Let me conclude by summarizing all this in one sentence,” he said. “The United States has invested in building a positive future in the region in partnership with all of you, and the United States is not going anywhere.”
In a room full of unelected autocrats and absolute monarchs, he made it a point to nudge them about human rights a day after his meeting with Prince Mohammed, who the CIA says ordered the 2018 operation that killed Mr Khashoggi. . Freedom to disagree, he said, would make them stronger, not weaker.
He made no mention of the looming trade relations of the Middle Eastern countries with Beijing: they know that China’s investments come without lectures, let alone sanctions, for human rights violations. But Mr. Biden was trying to make it clear that freedom and innovation go hand in hand.
“I have received a lot of criticism in recent years. It’s not fun,” he said. “But the ability to speak openly and freely exchange ideas is what makes innovation possible.”
Biden also tried to reassure Sunni Arab leaders around the table that his efforts to negotiate a renewed nuclear deal with their Shia nemesis in Iran would not put them at risk. “As we continue to work closely with many of you to address Iran’s threats to the region, we are also pursuing diplomacy to reduce restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program,” Mr Biden said. “But whatever happens, the United States is determined to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.”
The session with the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, along with leaders from three other Arab states, came after Mr Biden met separately with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, where tens of thousands of political prisoners are locked up and mr. Sisi conducts a relentless crackdown on dissent. Mr Biden did not comment on that when the reporters were in the room for the first few minutes, but instead thanked Mr Sisi for “the incredible help” in Gaza, where Egypt has pledged to help rebuild after the short war last year between Hamas and Israel. Aides said he would raise human rights privately.
In the battle with China, the United States still maintains close ties throughout the Middle East, with business interests pouring in decades after the oil discovery.
But curbing China’s influence in the region will be an uphill battle, as many of the president’s advisers acknowledge. China has made tremendous progress in recent years.
As America waged wars in the region, China’s “Belt and Road” development initiative across the Gulf progressed and even built a major port in the United Arab Emirates – until work halted after American warnings to the UAE that Beijing’s real goal was to a secret military base.
In January, Chinese officials held a virtual meeting with Saudi officials about the sale of military equipment to the kingdom, acknowledging that Chinese weapons are now significantly more advanced than they were a few years ago. (Decades ago, Saudi Arabia bought a number of giant intercontinental ballistic missiles from China, raising fears it might investigate nuclear weapons construction, but those concerns have not materialized.)
Huawei has cabled the region and quietly installed its networks on the theory that the country that controls the flow of electrons across national networks will have extraordinary control over the region’s infrastructure.
During the Trump administration, the United States warned allies that if they signed up with Huawei and other major Chinese suppliers, Washington would cut off their access to intelligence reports and limit their participation in military alliances. But it was all baguette and no carrot, as there was no alternative American product to offer them.
What Mr. Biden brought up this weekend is a new technology, called “Open-RAN” for Open Radio Access Networks, that runs largely on software and access to information in the cloud – all areas where the United States has advantages. After months of negotiations, US officials have worked out a “Memorandum of Understanding” in which Saudi Arabia will essentially turn itself into a testbed for using the system at scale — even though Huawei has already rolled out its networks across the country.
“That’s the thinking behind the project,” said Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies. “Quickly build a prototype here in Saudi Arabia, prove it works at scale and become a model for the region.” She called it a “pragmatic, reality-based project.”
When asked about US strategy, Saudi officials went out of their way to say that they were not trying to keep China from anything — and that they could accommodate both Western and Chinese telecommunications systems. The Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, likened having co-existing technologies to “a Starbucks and a coffee bean” or “a McDonalds and a Burger King”. But networks are much more complex, because they have to work together.
Skeptics question whether the Cold War, in which the need to revive alliances in the Middle East, is more of an excuse for oil deals than a genuine interest in deep involvement.
“It’s true that China is making some headway,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “But that’s a natural consequence of China’s energy needs and oil producers experiencing a bonanza because of Russia’s invasion, and the United States among the last three presidents to refuse to retaliate against Iran’s attacks on the Gulf states.”
“But it is also the result of the Biden administration’s policies that have framed the Chinese challenge as democracy versus autocracy,” she added, “putting Saudi on the Chinese side of the ledger.”