Asset, Liability, or Both: The Future of U.S.-Saudi Relations

With the release of the incriminating U.S. intelligence report on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Biden—in a sharp break with the Trump administration—has clearly outlined his intention to recalibrate the U.S.-Saudi relationship to ensure it advances U.S. interests and values.

Are the administration’s initial steps sufficient to rebalance the relationship? Or does more need to be done? What impact has this shift had on Saudi internal politics, specifically on the standing of the crown prince? And even more fundamentally, with the fracturing of the decades-long oil-for-security trade-off, what are the U.S. interests in its relationship with the kingdom in 2021?

Join us as Yasmine Farouk, Bernard Haykel, and Robin Wright sit down with Aaron David Miller to address these and other issues.

Watch the full event.

SPEAKERS

Yasmine Farouk is a visiting fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Bernard Haykel is a scholar of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing on the history, politics, and economics of Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), and Yemen. He is a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University.

Robin Wright, a former Carnegie fellow, is a columnist for the New Yorker and a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center. She has covered the Middle East for almost a half century.

Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy.