With high prices in the United States and the looming mid-term elections, Biden took the time to fly to the other side of the world for four days (13-16) this week, to Israel and Saudi Arabia for his first visit after taking office.
As we all know, for the president who once declared that he would turn Saudi Arabia into a "pariah" because of the killing of a dissident journalist, Israel is just passing through, and Saudi Arabia is the main event, especially Biden and the reporter. The suspected mastermind of the corpse incident, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, shook hands and made peace.
If you don’t admit it, you have to admit it. The main goal of Biden’s trip to the Middle East is to persuade Saudi Arabia and other countries to increase oil production on a larger scale, hoping to calm down the inseparable car before the mid-term elections. American anger.
At present, Biden’s popularity was as low as 33%, surpassing Trump to become the president with the lowest popularity in the history of the same period.
The "midterm exams" in November are likely to see Democrats lose control of Congress.
Seeing the Crown Prince "just a coincidence"?
While the Democratic Party's politicians who uphold human rights and values scolded Biden for going to Saudi Arabia for "accusation", Biden insisted that his visit to Saudi Arabia was not simply to visit the crown prince, but to participate in the "Gulf Cooperation Organization" (GCC) six Leaders' summit with Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.
His meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed was all because the latter "just happened" to be the real leader of Saudi Arabia, so it was a "must see".
(Democrats were extremely opposed to Biden's trip, and some left-wing media even revived the suspected Saudi government role in the 9-11 incident to hype.)
However, the Saudi crown prince is probably also someone who reads American newspapers.
When he saw that Biden's support had fallen to the lowest level in history, and that many politicians in the Democratic Party were angry with Saudi Arabia, he of course knew that the situation was on his side. Of course, he accepted Biden's plea, but he was not necessarily willing to do it. There's a price to be paid -- especially with Republicans likely to be in Congress by next year and Trump or another "Trump Jr." retaking the White House in 2024.
Therefore, how much return Biden's "please" can get in return depends on what actual and immediate benefits he can bring in exchange in exchange for this diplomatic statement.
The picture shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed review a military honor guard during a welcome ceremony in Ankara, Turkey, on June 22, 2022.
(AP)
At present, the relationship between the United States and the Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia, in the context of China's oil imports from Saudi Arabia has been three times higher than that of the United States, only military and security are left as the basis.
The Biden administration has always had obvious shortcomings here: the failure and chaos of the Afghan withdrawal; the suspension of support for the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen; the withdrawal of some air defense deployments from Saudi Arabia late last year; the lack of response to Iran-backed attacks; After the deadly attack by the Houthis in Yemen, the United States sat idly by (Secretary of State Blinken allegedly took months to apologize privately to the UAE).
Can Biden have a "big gift"?
Before Biden's trip, all circles were wondering what quid pro quo Biden could offer on security issues.
Although Biden wrote an article in the "Washington Post" before his visit to state the purpose of his visit, the article was "off topic", and most of the content was used to explain how Biden's Middle East policy far surpassed Trump's, and the target of the visit was On the issue of Saudi Arabia, he only said that he would embody the values and interests of the United States, and he listed how it has taken various actions against Saudi Arabia to strongly defend human rights.
After reading it, people only know that this is an excuse for visiting Saudi Arabia, but they do not know what actual policies will be brought about by their visit.
First of all, it was reported earlier that Biden may bypass Congress to put forward security guarantees for the UAE. Scholars close to the UAE government said last month that the United States would reach an unprecedented and binding strategy with the country. and defense agreements.
However, congressional Democrats have long rebounded, and Biden does not seem to dare to do so.
In addition, Israel has also reported that the United States will promote an air defense alliance supported by the United States and involving Israel and several Arab countries.
The Wall Street Journal said in June that the U.S. Defense Department was planning to introduce bills that would create an "integrated air and missile defense system" that would include Israel and regional Arab states.
On July 12, Biden boarded the presidential plane and began his visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
(AP)
Although the details are unknown to the outside world, this is likely to present a dilemma for Biden.
First, if this system is simply constructed through Israel and Arab countries, and only by the United States, people can’t help but ask: At this moment, Israel is constantly promoting security cooperation against Iran with countries in the region, why is it necessary? America intervenes?
And this type of regional security cooperation would reduce the value of U.S. security.
Second, if this system requires the United States to mainly invest in technological establishment and even operation, it will inevitably bring the United States back into the geopolitical conflict in the Gulf region, which runs counter to Biden's "Indo-Pacific turn".
At the same time, the outside world also paid attention to whether Biden would take this opportunity to promote the normalization of state relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia in one fell swoop.
However, the relationship between the two countries has been slowly "normalizing", and due to the "legacy issues" in Palestine, the two countries also clearly believe that the normalization of relations should be delayed rather than urgent.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel has clarified a few days ago that during Biden’s visit, Israel and Saudi Arabia will not announce normalization of relations.
As for Iran, a common rival of Israel and Saudi Arabia, Biden's "return to the nuclear deal" has always aroused varying degrees of opposition from the two countries; the latest round of nuclear deal negotiations at the end of last month also ended without results; at the same time, Iran has refined Enriched uranium has come very close to making it a nuclear weapon.
Under these circumstances, Biden appears to have no visible alternative to continuing fruitless negotiations.
Israel's new transitional Prime Minister Lapid visited France in early July to meet Macron.
Macron allegedly warned Biden at the G7 summit that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had limited capacity to increase oil production.
(AP)
The Holy City "Refreshing" Tour
To sum up, it is clear that Biden has no "gift" to deliver to Crown Prince Mohammed.
On the other hand, the crown prince does not have to return it with a big gift.
What's more, even if Muhammad is benevolent and wants to help Biden, his help on oil prices is limited.
On the one hand, Saudi Arabia's remaining oil production capacity is only about 1 million barrels per day. Analysts believe that this is at an emergency level to adjust global supply and cannot be exhausted. Therefore, its capacity to increase production is questionable.
On the other hand, one of the reasons for the high prices that Americans encounter when refueling is the shortage of oil refining facilities in the United States (the number of oil refineries in the United States has been declining in recent years), which is not a problem that can be solved by a slight drop in oil prices.
In addition to Saudi Arabia's difficult oil price, Israel's grand coalition government has just fallen, and the transitional Prime Minister Yair Lapid (Yair Lapid) who has just taken office can only strengthen his image as a national leader by shaking hands with Biden and taking pictures, hoping to suppress The return of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At this moment, the Palestinian autonomous government has lost the trust of the Palestinians, and Biden obviously has no intention of promoting the two-state solution, and his visit can only be a "visit here."
At this point, we can't help but doubt that Biden's trip to the Middle East is just a "refreshing" vacation trip to the Holy Land. At most, it can only show the domestic people his efforts to suppress oil prices, and there is no hope that it will bring back any results. .
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