The Biden Administration’s Policy Towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2021–2022

This paper addresses the question of the Biden administration’s policy towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with special regard to the reasons for the US decision to send strong signals of reassurance in 2022 after the initial deterioration in their relations. This paper’s main hypothesis posits that the US overall implemented a hybrid strategy towards its Gulf partner, but there were different constellations of coercive and accommodative elements to it in different time frames. It draws on Jeffrey Taliaferro’s theory of intraalliance politics, which examines great power patrons’ strategies towards allies and partners based on the administration’s perception of the regional power distribution, the assessment of the threat level and time horizon for its actualization, as well as the presence of domestic constraints. In the case of this paper, it was contended that the Biden administration perceived a mostly unfavourable power distribution in the Middle East and that the initial perception of a long threat horizon was replaced by uncertainty, stemming from the indirect effects of the Russia-Ukraine war on the Persian Gulf. These variables, combined with the high domestic opposition of Congress to accommodating Saudi Arabia, can explain the resulting hybrid strategy. The method of congruence analysis was used in this paper to test the observable manifestations of the hypothesis.