Between 2011 and 2021, emerging economies accounted for 67% of the global GDP growth rate, and over the next four years, these economies are expected to grow at a rate of 9.3% annually. Leading in this trend is Saudi Arabia, with its longstanding role as the West’s comprador, marked by an invasive, overpowering foreign policy that reminded poorer Arab nations of their place in the world of US hegemony, and a brutal domestic policy that ensured the comprador-class compliance sustaining regional petrodollar and global dollar hegemony. Yet, this is challenged by an emerging role as a regional player in an emerging multipolar chessboard. In late March, Saudi Arabia entered into a historic landmark agreement with Iran, brokered by China, as the Kingdom steps up to join the BRICS coalition along with other rising Middle East nations UAE, Algeria, Egypt, and Bahrain.

Internal Instability

External changes are meeting internal realignments as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s (MBS) time in power marked internal skirmishes and splits in the Saudi ruling class. His tenure was marked by continuing the Kingdom’s brutal and murderous war on Yemen while ameliorating Riyadh’s image and marketability for the West. This feat saw increasing liberalization, cashing in into global capital, and hoisting Saudi Arabia from a clear loser in Yemen to an aspiring winning actor as an emerging nation-state. 

The split in the Saudi ruling class was accompanied by events such as the 2018 Khashoggi scandal and the 2017 internal coup. MBS’s rise to power in 2016 aggravated these dynamics, and nation-state building took precedence over the preservation of old alliances, such as that between the Saudi family and the Wahhabi clerical class. In the construction of its new nation-state, global capital-oriented liberalized identity, turning more toward Vision 2020 and away from Wahhabist fatwa as doctrine, a new, liberal, highly educated, liberalized social class as the contemporary foundation of state power. 

The Saudi economic direction of the last six years has been characterized also by an immersion into the fourth industrial revolution and a shift towards a paradigm that seeks to integrate Riyadh into global capitalism in 21st-century terms. Accompanying the corresponding changes in the ruling class were changes in the position of slipping US hegemony, and dollar dominance, which also accompanied the changes to global capital and state power.  

In the wake of the 2014-2015 glut in oil prices, Saudi Arabia cooperated with Russia on a new oil price deal that gave way to the establishment of OPEC + - a petro-alliance that, in time, found it more advantageous to pay lesser mind to Washington’s dictates. At the same time, US global oil production targets are increasingly coming into conflict with Riyadh, with the extent of Washington’s unsuccess in getting Saudi Arabia onboard with delaying OPEC’s planned production cut. 

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It seems that Biden misread the amount of influence they have over Saudi Arabia which culminated in a sharper maneuver towards the east. 

The deals further usher Saudi Arabia, long regarded as little more than a Western proxy in the region, into a more multipolar orbit. Yet its dependence on Western infrastructure and Western weapons systems renders it not ready to make an abandonment of Washington just yet. While the material conditions facilitate a Gulf integration into the multipolar order, it won’t happen anytime soon in the foreseeable future: it will take the Saudis almost 10 years to be able to obtain alternatives to the weapons provided by Washington to them. Riyadh still is in the midst of multi-year weapons-buying agreements with the United States, such as 2017’s deal pledging $110 billion immediately and $350 billion over 10 years. 

Security trust broken

Security for oil began to crack once the US could not ensure Riyadh's security guarantees. Repeated strikes on Saudi Aramco facilities from the Yemeni resistance signaled to both Riyadh and Dubai that Western protection could no longer offer the illusion of safety in exchange for economic prosperity. Washington’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 also put stakes in the confidence of the US allies in the Middle East faced with a living, catastrophic testament to Washington’s trustworthiness. As Ansarallah drones knocked out half the production capacity of Saudi Arabian processing facilities or US tankers were attacked off the Gulf of Oman or the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia saw itself less as a sworn protected US ally and more like the proverbial ‘milk cow’ destined to its eventual slaughter, akin to the political allegory drawn by Donald Trump in 2017. 

With US security failing in the Gulf - in the Gulf of Oman, where Iran caught many US naval tankers, or in the UAE where Ansarallah drones struck an oil storage facility, it became evident that there are a number of reasons for the Gulf Compradors to no longer put their institutional trust - and provide oil - to the West.

China has not been as significant of a diplomatic broker for Riyadh, as it is political collateral in signaling to Washington the lackluster status of its commitments to Saudi Arabia. Major policy moves, such as MBS’s seeking of a civilian nuclear energy program - are vehemently opposed by "Israel" and, by default, the US.

While China has yet to provide an alternative security agreement - the prospects are still far-fetched and the institutional reality still places Riyadh under Western tutelage - both the US and Saudi Arabia are gearing up to part their separate ways. Biden has been actively discouraging US companies from expanding their ties with Riyadh, as Saudi Arabia gears up to replace it with China as a business partner, despite the emergence of such ties not inherently mutually exclusive towards Washington.

In the standoff between the US and China, Bin Salman will continue to play in the margins. However, despite any potential defense agreements with China and the Beijing-brokered Iran agreement, the ultimate testament to the trajectory over the turn eastward relies on the question of when - not if - the dollar goes into full freefall.

Saudi Arabia’s mulling over switching to the Yuan in March 2019 was a threat against US price setting, yet it’s not clear what the alternative proposed by China would be, as every last incentive for war has been rendered obsolete - determined by the US’s standing after confrontation and provocations in Ukraine and China. But the US dollar is already trending towards weakening, along with high inflation - a trajectory that is further accelerated by the implications of Riyadh dropping the dollar for yuan.

China and Russia, clearly making headways in integrating the kingdom into a new multipolar order and though the Saudi regime continues to be one marred by internal and external brutality, sectarianism, and rule by the petrodollar (for now), Washington is finding greater friction with the current Saudi leadership. The new emerging multipolar powers, on the other hand, position themselves as best suited to accomplish the changing of a Gulf political order, not by regime change, but through a massive realignment in the external material conditions that dictate a historically foreign curated Saudi policy.