Biden’s Middle East deal is a disaster, from Hoffman at the Cato Institute (shudder), writing in Responsible Statecraft (news site of the Quincy Institute). Some weird cope in here about Russia and China but it is an indicator of what the ghouls are fighting about in the upper echelons of the United States.

The Biden administration is currently considering going where no other president has gone before: offering a formal security guarantee to Saudi Arabia and helping the kingdom develop a civilian nuclear program in return for Riyadh normalizing relations with Israel.

President Biden and his team argue that the United States has a national security interest in brokering such a deal, even if that means massive and unprecedented concessions to Riyadh.

Biden and his team are wrong. Entering into a mutual security agreement with Saudi Arabia would represent a catastrophic miscalculation. A security guarantee for Saudi Arabia would entrap Washington as Riyadh’s protector despite a fundamental disconnect between the interests and values of the United States and the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia seeks increased security commitments in return for formally normalizing relations with Israel, a country with which it is already strategically aligned. This is part of a deliberate strategy by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to exploit growing fears in Washington that the United States is losing influence in the Middle East relative to other actors such as Russia or China.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, “in private, Saudi officials said, the crown prince has said he expects that by playing major powers against each other, Saudi Arabia can eventually pressure Washington to concede to its demands for better access to U.S. weapons and nuclear technology.”

And yet, though Russia and China have expanded their respective footprints in the Middle East, neither Moscow nor Beijing can fill an American void in the Middle East, nor do they desire to. States within the region are aware of the limitations facing Russia and China. Saudi Arabia and other U.S. regional partners have cultivated Washington’s anxiety about losing its position relative to Russia or China and are pressing for major policy concessions, resulting in a type of “reverse leverage.”

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This is precisely the lens through which Riyadh views its possible entry into the Abraham Accords: as a way to pressure the United States into granting the kingdom sweeping concessions and guaranteeing Washington remains its ultimate protector over the long term. Washington’s ongoing support for actors like Saudi Arabia has resulted in a vicious cycle: by committing itself to propping up the underlying sources of regional instability, the United States repeatedly finds itself having to confront challenges that are largely the product of its own presence, policies, and partners in the Middle East. Making things even more obscene, Washington may be deepening its commitment to these illiberal states at a time when it has become clear that the region hardly matters to U.S. national security.