Britain has signed a deal with Bahrain that will bolster the United Kingdom’s military presence in the island nation and give it permanent naval base in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, officials announced Saturday.
The move, which shook the oil market wasn’t a move at all. On Thursday OPEC decided to keep production steady, consciously accepting much lower prices.
To Saudi Arabia and its Arab partners of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the United States in six years of Barack Obama’s presidency has become as unpredictable and unreliable as it is indispensable. When President Obama passes the baton in 2017, it is likely that he will not be recalled fondly, but this is a distinction shared with most of his predecessors.
Those who expected the summit between US President Obama and Saudi King Abdullah to produce a “reset” button after unusually strained relations between the two nations were bound to be disappointed.
Among the would-be therapists of the foreign policy world, the alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a textbook case of a “loveless marriage.”