The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - US and Saudi Arabia Relations: Part 1 || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Today we're talking about key players in US - Saudi relations. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan went to Saudi Arabia to lay the framework for a new relationship. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/us-and-saudi-arabia-relations-part-1

Hey, everybody, Peter Zeyn here, coming to you from Deer Creek Canyon Park in Colorado on a swell terrain morning. And today we're going to talk about U.S. Saudi relations. Let's talk about the people and then talk about the policies. So first, the people. Jake Sullivan, who was the U.S. National Security Advisor, went to Saudi Arabia last week in order to put together the framework of a new set of relations because relations under Biden have been pretty poor. National Security Advisor is the real manager of American foreign policy. The State Department gets all the glory. It's not that it's unimportant.

Diplomacy obviously is critical, but the National Security Advisor is in charge of diplomacy and coercion and military policy, the whole shebang. And Sullivan is clearly the most competent National Security Advisor we have had since Condoleezer Rice under W. Bush, who was easily the best one we had since James Baker under Reagan, which is easily the best one we've had since Henry Kitchinger himself under Nixon. He may look like he's 12. He's a millennial.

But he's hyper-com. competent. And so having him head up this policy development tells us that it's serious. Now, if you remember back, the Biden administration's general shift towards green technology and green ideology is part of the reason why relations with the Saudis have not been so great. But there's also some stuff on the other side. On the other side, the personnel is MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince. His father is technically still king, but the guy's like 180,000 years old. And so it's MBS who really runs the shop and will be for probably the next 40 or 50 years, unless he gets, you know, assassinated. He is, how it's the best way to put this? Well, he's a bit

of an ass. Under Donald Trump, he kidnapped a troublesome journalist and had his people hack the guy to death in a consulate in Istanbul and then burned the body in a barbecue pit that was being used at the time to serve a feast for a couple hundred people. And even Donald Trump was like, whoa. Needless to say, Biden, who's a little bit more concerned with hacking to pieces of journalists, was like, hey, this guy's a thug. We don't want to deal with him at all. I don't want to say that's all bygones, but Biden has had now a half of his term in the big chair and he realizes from his long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, time on this earth, that sometimes you have to deal with people that you don't want to get things done.

And in the presence of a China that is being ever more persniquity and a Russia that is ever more genocidal, Saudi Arabia is a very useful part. Cover that next.