It’s already too late.
Bradley Bowman 4-28-2023, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, served as a national security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, as well as an active duty U.S. Army officer, Black Hawk pilot, and assistant professor at West Point. Orde Kittrie. Ryan Brobst. The United States and Saudi Arabia: A Possible Path Forward. Foundation For Defense of Democracies. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/04/28/the-united-states-and-saudi-arabia/. DL
The Biden administration will likely be unable to agree to Riyadh’s requests without congressional acquiescence, which seems unlikely owing to anti-Saudi sentiment among some members of Congress. Riyadh is therefore increasingly sidling up to Beijing.2 It is not clear whether Riyadh realizes that this strategy risks sending already-strained U.S.-Saudi relations into a freefall. Americans of both parties increasingly believe that countries that “side” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are not America’s friends (or partners).