Christian Abu, the former director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, praised the Saudi announcement. “The policy of the last 15 or so years has been to buy off as many Arab allies as it can in order to preserve the status quo,” he said.
Some American officials say a more aggressive version of Saudi policy is already under way. “The Saudis have started to take a much sharper policy,” said Michael Auslin, a former Pentagon and State Department official who is now a member of the advisory board on Arab affairs at the Center for American Progress. “The biggest question that is on everybody’s mind … is: How do you balance this, on the one hand, against Iran and on the other hand, against Assad?”
The Obama administration has already been weighing this issue closely, said John A. Daley, Mr. Obama’s former national security adviser, a former ambassador to Egypt and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Daley is also a leading advocate of a peaceful resolution of the conflict, which the White House insists is driven more by hatred of the Shiites than by any sectarian motive.
That does not mean that American support for the Syrian opposition is unconditional, Mr. Daley said in a recent interview.
“The biggest question that is on everybody’s mind … is: How do you balance this, on the one hand, against Iran and on the other hand, in terms of dealing with Assad?” he said. “That’s certainly something that I think the administration’s been struggling with.”
The Saudi move, Mr. Daley said, is more directed against Iran than at any other country. If the United States is going to continue buying sophisticated military equipment for the Saudi air force and navy, it can’t be for humanitarian reasons, he said: “Those are the two main concerns of those who call themselves moderate.”
The American military purchases have been directed not only at arming the Saudis. The State Department has been quietly pushing to deepen their regional influence by deepening financial and banking ties with the region’s wealthiest nations, to be in a better position to influence the governments of such Arab countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Daley said that American investment in Saudi Arabia since the 1980s reflected “a long-standing policy” that Washington would “do whatever we could to increase our leverage and our presence. I mean, we were there in the ’80s, after