Saudi Arabia Is Moving Closer to China While Moving Away From the United States

HNewsWire: Don't worry about the millions of illegal immigrants flooding into the country as you leave costly military equipment in Afghanistan and deplete your weapon stocks in Ukraine and then pretend there's no issue. When China is ready to infiltrate outside, as it has done domestically, there is a serious danger that the United States may be unable to defend itself.

According to Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, the United States' relationship with Saudi Arabia is deteriorating as a result of China's increasing closeness to the Gulf Kingdom.

"It is the most severe setback that the US and the West has faced since arguably the middle of the Cold War era," Copley said on NTD TV' "China in Focus" program.

He cited the interaction between the West and the Middle East during President Richard Nixon's presidency.

"What we observed in the early 1970s was that the United Governments and the West acquired a tremendous relationship with all of the Middle Eastern states, including Israel, the Arab States, and Iran," he remarked.

"There was no serious fear of mutual hostility, and the area was seeing much more positive development and stability," he noted.

The Nixon administration was successful in establishing a cease-fire between Israel, Egypt, and Syria in 1973.

"And fundamentally, what we saw under President [Joe] Biden was the total, what we saw under President [Barack] Obama early in his time, the collapse of that equilibrium in the Middle East," Copley said.

He singled out Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia in early December.

"The People's Republic of China's goal was to step in and say, 'We are a friend to everybody, and we will ensure peace in the area,' something only the United States had been able to achieve in the previous several decades," he said.

Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, described Xi's visit as the "biggest and highest-level diplomatic event between China and the Arab world since the formation of the People's Republic of China."

"So we have President Xi doing something that had not been accomplished since President Nixon's successes in the early 1970s, up until 1974," Copley observed.

Various Reactions
According to Copley, there was a huge contrast between Chinese President Xi Jinping's opulent greeting in Saudi Arabia and Biden's frigid reception in Riyadh during his July visit.

"There were no ministers waiting for him at the airport. "His welcome was nothing remarkable, and the conversations were on very, very tiny and continuing details," he said of Biden's visit.

"However, when... Xi Jinping came in Riyadh recently, he was met with all of the trappings of a complete state visit, with flypasts, Royal Saudi Air Force fighter and trainer jet aircraft, all in the colors of the People's Republic of China flag, and the like," he continued.

Copley ascribed the deterioration in US-Saudi ties to Biden's criticism of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was suspected of masterminding the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 when he entered a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

"You have a situation where much of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, was becoming alienated toward the US. Biden administration, because of the basically disruption of the [Abraham] Peace Accords, which had been achieved with so much difficulty and hard work," he added, referring to the 2020 peace agreement reached by Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates through the Trump administration's mediation.

China and Saudi Arabia Progress

Copley also emphasized Beijing's improvement in its economic connection with the Gulf country, as seen by Xi's recent visit to Saudi Arabia. "The People's Republic of China was making tremendous success in negotiating Middle Eastern oil sales in currencies other than the US currency, the petrodollar," he claimed.

"Saudi Arabia has been experimenting with selling oil and gas to the PRC with yuan as well." During his visit, Xi reportedly focused on China's ongoing attempts to replace the dollar as the currency denomination for Chinese-Saudi oil trading by using the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange as a payment mechanism.

"So what we've seen is a significant crack in the dominance of the US dollar in the Middle East, but it's far from complete," Copley said. Xi's visit featured Saudi-Chinese talks, a China-Arab conference, and a summit between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

"The accords that Xi Jinping has done in the Middle East are highly significant geopolitically because they also connect the Beijing-dominated Eurasian bloc of states—a strategic alliance involving Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran," he added.

"It provides them, in particular, a conduit now down via Saudi Arabia, down to Africa," he continued.

According to the expert, this connection would allow Beijing to avoid sailing cargo "across the Indian Ocean in the South China Sea up to Chinese ports," which he claims are "susceptible to interdiction by Western countries, whether it's the US or the Europeans, or the Japanese and Australians."

There is no long-term solution. Copley believes that if China's economy continues to deteriorate, the arrangements reached with the Middle East will not provide a long-term solution to the regime.

China's economy is being harmed by poor consumer demand as a result of Beijing's zero-COVID policy, notably in the real estate industry. The slow real estate market has resulted in a considerable decrease in fiscal income and a significant rise in expenditures, resulting in a severe fiscal imbalance.

"It's a tremendously dramatic moment of transition for Beijing," he remarked. They will either make a tremendous breakthrough, causing the West to collapse, or they will fail and fall within the next decade."

George Bush was dead right about one thing.
Please do not inquire. Don't tell anybody. Most eastern countries will eventually abandon the United States.