Summary
Title: Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia
Author: Rachel Bronson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195167430
Pro:
• Based on extensive research
Con:
• Doesn't do enough to directly engage opposing opinions in other books
Description:
• Exploration of the diplomatic relationship between America and Saudi Arabia over the past century
• Explains that the relationship is based on far more than just oil
• Argues that the relationship is important and should be cultivated for the future
Book Review
Although it may seem that the importance of oil cannot be overestimated, the relationship is far more complex than oil alone. Understanding how to balance the two when evaluating interactions between America and Saudi Arabia, already a challenging task, is made far more difficult by the fact that people have such a tendency miss the forest for all the oil wells. Luckily, Rachel Bronson has produced and excellent resource for anyone who desires to learn the truth with her book Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia.
If the relationship between America and Saudi Arabia could be reduced to three legs, with one of course being oil, then the other two would have to be God and Real Estate. Both of those, though, might themselves be reduced to a single issue: anti-communism. Although Americans tend to be Christian and of course Saudis are Muslims, they still share strong beliefs in God and the involvement of God in history — especially in opposition to the atheistic communism of the Soviet Union.
Indeed, the religious relationship between the two probably hasn't received nearly as much attention as it deserves. Even going back to the 1950s, American leaders promoted the Saudi king as a leader of all Muslims around the world precisely because they saw strong political benefits in a religious alliance between the nations. The Saudis worried not only about the influence of atheism, which was being spread by the Soviets, but also their territorial ambitions towards the south in gaining control over more oil fields as well as ports.
America shared these concerns, seeing a strong Saudi Arabia as a bulwark against Soviet aggression throughout the Middle East. This has serious complications for the current relationship between the countries today. First, there is no communist menace to help keep them bound together. Second, the Saudi war against atheism included funding extremist religion which is now coming back to bite both countries.
Bronson's book is in many ways a response to several popular books which have reduced the nation's relationship to nothing more than America's unhealthy dependence on Saudi oil. She succeeds in that she manages to show just how much more is going on; she fails in that she doesn't directly address their critiques of the relationship and America's unavoidable dependence on Saudi oil.
This is unfortunate because the relationship between the nations has seriously deteriorated — not just on the official level, but even more with the general public. Saudis disdain America for its secularism and decadence; Americans disdain Saudi Arabia for its sponsorship of religious extremism and backwards social mores.
Bronson believes that good diplomatic, political, and economic relations between America and Saudi Arabia are very important for the future — she even ends her book with ideas about how the two nations can proceed to make things better. A bit more about how the people themselves could develop more positive feelings about each other probably would have been better. Even more interesting would have been some discussion about how to elevate the relationship beyond oil dependency — America's dependence on fossil fuels for energy and the Saudi dependence on selling oil in order to have any sort of financial stability. So long as that aspect of the relation continues at its current strength, it will necessarily color every other aspect of their relationship.
