Joe Biden and the permanently troubled Middle East

Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have been longstanding. They go back seven decades. It is a strategic alliance, established with what is called the ‘Quincy Pact’. The cruiser USS Quincy was the American warship on which then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud on February 14, 1945. Legend has it that both rulers struck a strategic bargain then: Saudi Arabia accepted to reserve its oil production and reserves exclusively to the US, in exchange for which the US assured the security of the Saudi Kingdom.

The fact is, however, that according to the memorandum of the consultations published by the Office of the Historian on that ship, there was not a word about it. It was only in the years that followed that the lines of some sort of agreement “oil for protection” were drawn out. Whatever the case, the strategic alliance exists and continues to this day. There have been some ups and downs at times, and a number of events did evolve the nature of the relationship.

When Jimmy Carter became U.S. president in 1977, he focused his foreign policy on promoting international human rights and pursuing relaxation with the Soviet Union. This culminated with the signing in June 1979 of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II nuclear arms treaty between the Soviet Union and the United…