As President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia next week to meet with HRH King Salman and attend a GCC summit, familiar topics as well as new issues will be on the agenda for the President’s 3rd official visit to Saudi Arabia and second meeting with King Salman since September.
Along with long-standing regional and security concerns that require U.S.-Saudi cooperation, President Obama and King Salman are also expected to take on the matter of economic cooperation for the 21st century.
HRH King Salman greets U.S. President Barack Obama in Saudi Arabia.
According to a Rob Malley, a senior adviser to Obama on the Middle East, President Obama “wants to hear about ideas from King Salman and other leaders for dealing with economic issues, given the sharp drop in oil prices,” Al Jazeera reports.
A focus on economic cooperation as well as security and other issues is in line with a proposed “21st Century Partnership” between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
In anticipation of an announcement regarding a “21st Century Partnership” – which is expected by the end of the month and the details of which remain closely guarded – the U.S. and Saudi Arabian private sectors are gearing up for new opportunities. The recently launched U.S.-Saudi Arabia CEO Summit series of events between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its Saudi counterpart, the Council of Saudi Chambers, is the leading private sector initiative to boost bi-lateral commercial and business ties.
Although expanded economic and trade cooperation is a priority for both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, President Obama and King Salman, the security relationship first struck in 1943 will be reviewed and renewed. Former senior NSC advisor Bruce Riedel examines the long-term and evolving nature of this relationship in an article for the Brookings Institution.
“Obama has sold $95 billion in arms to the Kingdom. Both are determined to fight the Islamic State and al-Qaida, and the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef is a proven good partner for security cooperation with America. The two countries should enhance cooperation to combat al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which has grown dramatically during the war in Yemen,” Riedel notes.
Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser said that the president plans to discuss the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen, and Iran and regional stability issues, as saying, according to the AP.
“As you’ll hear more coming out of the summit, there have been agreements reached to increase our cooperation on counterterrorism, streamlining the transfer of critical defence capabilities to our GCC partners, bolstering GCC ballistic defence … systems, and defending against the cyber threat,” said Malley.
“On all of those, I think you’ll see progress has been made, there’s been much deeper cooperation between us and the GCC,” Malley told reporters on a conference call, according to Al Jazeera.
