The Saudis and China

The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece which is critical of the burgeoning Saudi relationship with China. In a piece entitled Oil For Missiles, and subtitled Our friends the Saudis make friends with the Chinese National Defense University Prof. Richard Russell frets over a Saudi-Chinese “strategic relationship” inaugurated by King Abdullah on his first official trip outside the Middle East.

With five agreements signed during the visit, including a pact for closer cooperation in oil, natural gas and minerals, the two countries are laying the foundations for a strategic relationship that challenges U.S. interests.

Oil, natural gas and minerals agreements are about all the Saudis can deliver or engage in trade with, so what is the challenge. How does that situation challenge U.S. interests? But it seems Prof. Russell has an old bone to pick.

Humiliated by their dependence on Washington for survival in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Saudi royal family has long been seeking to forge closer ties with Beijing in the hope of reducing their dependence on the U.S. The Saudis began moving in this direction even before the first Gulf War, secretly negotiating a deal with China in the mid-'80s to purchase CSS-2 ballistic missiles. That was an affront to the Reagan administration and its policy of preventing the proliferation of ballistic missiles. But the Saudis risked American ire because they saw Iran, Iraq and Israel all armed with ballistic missiles and did not want to be left out. In return, China won hard currency for the missile sale, as well as diplomatic relations with Riyadh in a snub to Taiwan.

Prof. Russell is incensed about the Saudi "affront," but he leaves unsaid the fact that the CSS-2 Chinese missiles were equipped with American ballistic systems, supplied by a third-country which served as an intermediary.

For all the headlines about the agreements he signed with President Hu Jintao on issues such as energy cooperation and double taxation, it's a safe assumption that strategic issues were also on the agenda away from the bright lights of the media. Saudi Arabia's CSS-2 missiles are now obsolescent and Riyadh would welcome modern Chinese models as replacements. For Beijing, that offers a useful tit-for-tat should Washington agree to further large arms sales to Taiwan. But it would come at the price of violating China's commitment to adhere to the Missile Technology Control Regime, which seeks to control international transfers of ballistic missile technology.

That horse left the barn a very long time ago, as American missile technology has now become the operational engineering on Chinese systems which in turn have already been sold to the Saudis in their earlier models and there is evidence that the US supplied China with missile tech in the '90s long after the CSS-2 episode. This is an open secret in Washington, and Russell ignores the fact that on missile technology the United States is an Emperor without any clothes. But Russell keeps seeing a yellow peril.

The danger is that these developments will pass largely unnoticed in Washington, as they fall between bureaucratic cracks in the national-security apparatus. In the National Security Council, as well as at the Departments of State and Defense, separate sections still focus on the Middle East and Asia (despite Condoleezza Rice's recent reforms). No one seems to be looking at the bigger picture in terms of the emerging strategic relationship between two regions so important to American national interests.
In the old days of the Cold War, the U.S. viewed the security relationships in the Middle East through the prism of its rivalry with the Soviet Union. Today, Russian power in the Middle East has withdrawn as Moscow grapples with getting its domestic house in order. But China's power in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf, is increasing, a dimension of world politics that American policy makers need to begin focusing attention on.

So the answer is a reorganization of the cumbersome and ineffective foreign policy bureaucracy? Actually, Prof. Russell confuses focusing attention on a problem with doing something about it.

For example, Venezuela and Nigeria are two examples of areas outside the two regions Prof Russell is concerned about. The US has done little and can do little about these two oil suppliers [and in Venezuela, coal is also a big trade item]. Why doesn’t Prof Russell suggest that the US supply the missiles to Saudi Arabia that China is going to supply in any event?

Might as well recycle those petrodollars, as they used to say once upon a time.