Oil for Missiles
Our friends the Saudis make friends with the Chinese.
BY RICHARD L. RUSSELL
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
It was no coincidence that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah this week chose China for his first official trip outside the Middle East since acceding to the throne in August. 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.
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.
Since 9/11, and the American public's backlash over the fact that the majority of the hijackers were Saudi nationals, Riyadh's search for a new strategic partner has assumed fresh impetus. China, for its part, is importing ever increasing amounts of oil from the Gulf to fuel its rapidly expanding economy. That has prompted a degree of paranoia over "energy insecurity." Beijing military strategists worry that, because they lack America's "blue water" navy, the country is potentially vulnerable to a U.S. blockade of oil shipments from the Gulf to China.
Hence the mutual interest in a closer relationship demonstrated during King Abdullah's three-day visit, which ended yesterday. 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.
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.
Mr. Russell teaches at the National Defense University's Near East and South Asia Center for Strategic Studies and is the author of "Weapons Proliferation and War in the Greater Middle East" (Routledge, 2005).
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