In an article published today on the Wall Street Journal it reports, 'The U.S. has to have a foreign policy. Well-defined, well-structured. You don't have it right now, unfortunately. It's just complete chaos. Confusion. No policy. I mean, we feel it. We sense it, you know."'
Members of the Saudi royal family have voiced their displeasure with the Obama administration's approach to the Middle East through private channels and recently in public as well. None of them puts it quite like HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.
One of some three-dozen living grandsons of the first Saudi King Abdulaziz, this prince is a prominent but atypical royal. His investment company made him the Arab world's richest businessman. He strikes a modern image for a Saudi, employing female aides and jet-setting on a private Boeing 747. He's at ease with Western media.
The prince holds no important government post in Saudi Arabia, but it's hard to shake the impression that here is the uncensored id of the reserved House of Saud.
Mr. Alwaleed struggles to understand how a wing of the GOP can shut down the government and threaten a debt default. His company has a significant economic bet on the U.S. through Twitter and New York's Plaza Hotel, among many holdings. As for President Obama, his second term is "going downhill completely," he says, adding on several occasions the disclaimer that "this is the impression I have in Saudi Arabia." But it's clear that the Saudis believe that the president's political troubles shape his actions in their region.
Mr. Obama's recent Hamlet act on Syria surprised and infuriated Riyadh. After the worst chemical-weapons atrocity of the war, the American leader heeded long-standing calls for military intervention, then hedged by asking for congressional approval, then nixed airstrikes in favor of a disarmament pact with Syria's Bashar Assad. The civil war continued—with Assad and his Iranian allies lately taking the upper hand. Mr. Alwaleed says of Mr. Obama: "He blinked."
Then came the autumn outreach to Iran's new president, Hasan Rouhani, leading to this week's negotiations in Geneva on Iran's nuclear program. Another "impression" from the prince: President Obama's falling popularity explains his "overeagerness" for an agreement made "very fast to at least put one issue in foreign policy aside" because "he's wounded now across the board." The Saudis view the Shiite theocracy in Tehran as the biggest threat to the Sunni Arab world.
A frequent Saudi complaint these days is that this White House doesn't listen to them or reveal its true intentions.
"Frankly speaking," Mr. Alwaleed says, during the first Obama term "his communication was almost nil," aside from a brief visit with King Abdullah in Riyadh in 2009. Ronald Reagan and every president since cultivated personal ties, but "Obama is very cold because he is very, very immersed" in domestic policy.
Hillary Clinton, who logged 956,733 air miles in four years at the State Department, came to Saudi Arabia once. "She was not really tackling the Middle East," the prince says. In less than a year at Foggy Bottom, John Kerry has called on the Saudis three times, and the royals appreciate his engagement.
Susan Rice, the national security adviser, was explicit last month in an interview with the New York Times that the White House had adopted a new policy to scale back America's involvement: "We can't just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is."
As the U.S. distanced itself from Egypt after July's military coup, Russia has offered Cairo arms and support. The Chinese are in no position or mood to take the baton of regional enforcer from the U.S., which polices the Strait of Hormuz to keep it open for oil tankers and protects friendly Gulf states. But the Saudis are getting along better by the day with Beijing, says Mr. Alwaleed, adding that "China is very eager to fill any vacuum that the United States may create." Bluff, threat or prediction? Check back in a few years.
The House of Saud's concern about the U.S. these days isn't merely about foreign policy. The American energy revolution is also a potential threat. Driven by technological advances in shale exploration, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's top oil producer by 2015, the International Energy Agency said this month. Mr. Alwaleed hasn't looked at possible investments in shale—at least "not yet."
As for the Saudis' own bottom line: With America's reliance on imported oil declining, he warned his government a few months ago about the kingdom's unhealthy dependence on oil-export revenues. But Mr. Alwaleed also says the world will always demand Saudi Arabia's cheaply drilled crude.
After July's coup in Egypt, Riyadh gave the new military-backed government $5 billion to tide the country's economy over for a few months. The rise of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and demands for popular democracy were unwelcome in Riyadh. Mr. Alwaleed notes that Saudi diplomacy also carries a fat checkbook in Jordan, Palestine and Yemen, which are in his words "under our hegemony."
"If you look at a map of the Arab world now, Saudi Arabia is very much the leader," says the prince. "America cannot afford to have the leader of the Arab world not be on the same wave length as the United States."
