Biden Aides and Saudis Explore Defense Treaty Modeled After Asian Pacts

Despite U.S. fatigue over Middle East wars, the White House sees a security agreement resembling those with Japan or South Korea as an incentive for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel.

The United States is discussing terms of a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia that would resemble military pacts with Japan and South Korea, according to American officials. The move is at the center of President Biden’s high-stakes diplomacy to get the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel.

[OCS: The Biden Administration hates the idea that President Trump negotiated the Abraham Accords, a bilateral agreement for Arab–Israeli normalization that was signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on September 15, 2020. The progressive communist democrats want a similar agreement to tout in the 2024 election.]

Under such an agreement, the United States and Saudi Arabia would generally pledge to provide military support if the other country is attacked in the region or on Saudi territory. The discussions to model the terms after the treaties in East Asia, considered among the strongest the United States has outside of its European pacts, have not been previously reported.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, regards a mutual defense agreement with the United States as the most important element in his talks with the Biden administration about Israel, current and former U.S. officials said. Saudi officials say a strong defense agreement would help deter potential assaults by Iran or its armed partners even as the two regional rivals re-establish diplomatic ties.

[OCS: Of course, Mohammed bin Salman wants the United States to protect his totalitarian regime, especially at no cost to the Kingdom.]

Prince Mohammed is also asking the Biden administration to help his country develop a civilian nuclear program, which some U.S. officials fear could be cover for a nuclear weapons program to counter Iran.

[OCS: Sounds like the same bullshit the Iranians fed former President Obama.]

Any treaty with Saudi Arabia that is similar to the American pacts with East Asian allies is sure to draw strong objections in Congress. Some senior U.S. lawmakers, including top Democrats, see the Saudi government and Prince Mohammed as unreliable partners who care little about U.S. interests or human rights.

[OCS: By Congress, they mean the United States Senate – and we all know that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel and several establishment Republicans will most always jump the aisle to join the progressive communist democrats in pushing their anti-America agenda.]

An agreement would also raise questions about whether Mr. Biden is getting the United States more militarily entwined with the Middle East. And such a treaty would also contradict the Biden administration’s stated goal of reorienting American military resources and fighting capabilities away from the area and toward deterring China specifically in the Asia-Pacific region.

The U.S. military has bases and troops in both Japan and South Korea, but American officials say there are currently no serious discussions about having a large contingent of American troops in Saudi Arabia under any new defense agreement. The Pentagon has just under 2,700 American troops in the kingdom, according to a letter the White House sent to Congress in June.

[OCS: 2,700 troops in Saudi Arabia? Why? What are they protecting? Can’t be our diplomats who are protected by the DSS (Diplomatic Security Service).]

But U.S. officials have said a diplomatic pact would be an important symbolic defusing of Arab-Israeli tensions and could also have geopolitical significance for the United States. Bringing Saudi Arabia closer to the United States, they argue, could pull the kingdom farther from China’s orbit and blunt Beijing’s efforts to expand its influence in the Middle East.

[OCS: Symbolic? At what cost to America for nothing more than a photo-op?]

The United States and South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, signed a security treaty with similar language in 1953, when the Korean War halted under an armistice.

[OCS: In Korea, we had skin in the game. With Saudi Arabia, nothing comes to mind.]

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