A Harbinger of US Decline

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/04/11/saudis-arent-afraid-of-us-anymore/

These are noteworthy developments to say the least. Riyadh still maintains close ties with Washington and yet it's clear as the linked author indicates – the Saudis are no longer afraid of America or of earning its displeasure.

The US-Saudi relationship goes back to the 1930's and the days of oil development, but the relationship soured a bit mid-century and reached its nadir in the 1970's when OPEC cut production in order to punish the US for aiding Israel.

At that time the Nixon administration was desperate and there was even talk of invading Saudi Arabia and overthrowing its government in order to seize the oil. Instead a security deal was reached, and the two nations became all but intertwined a kind of symbiotic relationship. From the petrodollar to cross-nation investment, the House of Saud and the American Empire were (and are) closely intertwined. This relationship was strengthened throughout the 1980's and after – and yet has faced strain over the past two decades. On the one hand the Saudis have moved closer to the Israelis but tensions over support for Salafism have at times strained the relationship with Washington. But on one point there was strong agreement – Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia were all strongly opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

But now everything is about to change. China has entered the scene and at this point in time appears far more stable and objective than Washington. And as China is on the cusp of becoming the world's largest economy it is in a position that no one wants to say 'no' to Beijing – a position long held by the United States, but one that is rapidly slipping away. This is due to the rise of Beijing to be sure but it's also due to America's instability, increasingly unreliability, and its insufferable and much resented hypocrisy.

And suddenly, the Middle East faces new prospects. The China-brokered peace has the potential to end the regional Cold War between Riyadh and Tehran, peace looks very promising in Yemen – and there are new possibilities in light of OPEC and the petrodollar system. To the shock and anger of the Americans, the Saudis have also announced a willingness to trade petroleum on the basis of currencies other than the dollar. Analysts are still scrambling in an attempt to interpret these statements and their potential meaning. For some this marks the beginning of the end of US hegemony. For others it's an unfortunate development but not the catastrophe some would make it out to be.

Regardless, in terms of diplomacy and geopolitics, for Riyadh to make such statements, even as they enter into a China-brokered peace deal – is (by anyone's account) a very strong and ominous signal of a shifting geopolitical order. 

The US was not invited to the peace negotiations – a stunning rebuke and implied irrelevance. While the US is hardly out of the picture, it seems Washington cannot stop this train – it's already moving down the tracks and picking up speed.

US strategists are alarmed, even frantic and it's clear that many in the Washington and Wall Street Establishments are planning for a large-scale war to reverse this trend. I wouldn't count out some move made by Washington (and/or Israel) that seeks to sabotage the Riyadh-Tehran rapprochement.

The great irony is that the US brought this on itself. The Neo-Conservative inspired policy post-2001 destroyed and broke the Middle Eastern order. From North Africa to Central Asia and from Asia Minor to the Horn, we have witnessed sweeping changes over the past twenty years – reverberations and fallout from US policy, the wars it has prosecuted, and the proxy conflicts and political meddling it has supported.

There was almost a tangible moment during the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama years when many analysts sounded the alarm regarding China. The nation's economic transformation and rise happened much quicker than anyone realized and the ramifications of that rise had not been effectively calculated and weighed. The US had been distracted by the Iraq debacle.

The full weight of moves made by Bush – not even a decade earlier, we're already coming to bear.

It should have been a huge story – in mid-December 2001 when due to the lobbying efforts of the Bush administration, China was granted membership in the World Trade Organisation. The globalisation that erupted in the 1990's was about to enter a new wide open era. But few paid attention. The Taliban had collapsed and the remnants of al Qaeda were holed up in Tora Bora. The public was focused on the potential capture and killing of a Hollywood-style villain but the China story was actually of far more importance.

In 2011, a decade later – Bin Laden was in fact dead, but the US military was wounded, American foreign policy was in a state of disarray, and the country faced domestic unrest as it still struggled to recover from economic recession.

Obama sounded the alarm about China's rise and the threat it contained, and attempted to 'Pivot to Asia'. Many had come to realize that China was no longer merely the sweatshop labour pool of US capitalism, but a rising superpower in its own right. Its aspirations were regional at best but the sheer economic power and drive to invest would transform China over the next few years into the primary rival and adversary of the US Empire. This reality was also recognized within the CCP with the rise of Xi Jinping. Xi clamped down on domestic unrest and the drive to invest and protect those investments launched China into a new era of authoritarianism and a soft form of imperial endeavour – at least for the present. This recent deal with Saudi Arabia and Iran is just a taste of what is to come.

As the US openly prepares for war with China, Beijing continues to work at dismantling American power – a death by a thousand cuts. Trump certainly did his part to help – taking a sledgehammer to the institutional pillars of US power, something he and his followers in their ignorance still don't understand. A loss of standing and allies will continue to weaken US power and its ability to project. If NATO doesn't get on board with the US war drive in East Asia, then Washington risks failure and defeat. This is also why it's so critical (from the standpoint of Washington) to manipulate China into firing the first shot. This will allow the US to invoke Article 5 and China will find itself at war with not just the US and its Asian 'allies' – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and the Philippines, but the entirety of NATO. The nations of Europe will be limited in what they can do militarily vis-à-vis China, but they can make certain that Russia won't be able to come to Beijing's aid. There are at least a dozen scenarios in which such a conflict could easily turn into a global conflagration.

Obviously no one knows for sure how this will play out, but one thing is clear, US standing has been weakened and the US is in evident decline. Once inviolable alliances are now revealed to be but ink on paper. US elites (Mandarins and Praetorians) are fearful and angry and storm clouds are building on the horizon. The Neo-Cons seem (once again) to be rising to the fore and that means one thing – War.