OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, held a meeting in Vienna on Feb. 6 to try to reach agreement on oil prices and production levels. The meeting ended without agreement following Russia’s refusal to slash production, even if this meant a further drop in prices already depressed by the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.
Russia’s obstinacy was curious, as energy exports make up the lion’s share of its budget. But given Putin’s adventurist foreign policy, which includes costly military interventions in Syria and Ukraine and extensive cyber-warfare operations against the United States and other major western political systems, as well as growing discontent within Russia over the deteriorating standard of living, he likely felt he could not afford to lower production levels, even if that meant no increase in prices that were already relatively low.
A few days after the meeting, Saudi Arabia dropped an even bigger bombshell when it announced that it would not only increase production but also reduce prices via discounts. The result was a decrease of $24 per barrel in a single day (March 9, 2020), the biggest single-day oil price drop in almost three decades. This left prices at around the $30/barrel mark.
Why would two major producers so dependent on oil exports act in a way seemingly so detrimental to their own economic interests?
Regarding Russia’s motives, the answer seems obvious. The main casualty of prolonged low oil prices would be the U.S. energy industry. For decades, the United States was highly dependent on energy imports, as anyone knows who remembers the fuel crises generated by the post-1973 war Arab oil boycott. This has changed in the past two decades as new fracking technologies have enabled U.S. energy producers to exploit the country’s vast shale oil reserves. Thanks to fracking, the United States achieved energy independence by 2016, and last year began exporting significant amounts of crude and refined petroleum products.
Fracking, though, is more expensive than drilling. At $30/barrel, most oil drilling operations may not be lucrative, but they remain viable. Fracking, by contrast, begins losing its economic viability at around the $50/barrel mark. For Saudi Arabia and Russia, prices hovering over the $30 mark are the economic equivalent of a bad cold. For the U.S. energy industry, such prices are a terminal disease that will cause the fracking industry to implode.
Because Russia has, over the past decade, made no secret of the fact that it regards itself as adversarial to the United States, it is no surprise that it is willing to inflict economic pain on itself if doing so would inflict greater pain on the United States. Putin’s strategy has been to obliquely confront the United States, primarily by subverting its political system via an ongoing sophisticated and effective cyber-disinformation campaign. One of his biggest frustrations has been his inability to inflict any kind of economic damage on the United States. He appears to have found a way to do this, and is willing to absorb the pain that goes with the gain.
Yet this is not the whole story. Unleashing economic mayhem on the U.S. energy industry could significantly boost Putin’s efforts to further destabilize and paralyze the already dysfunctional American political system. As this is an election year, he could create a near perfect storm of eco-political disruption, given that the majority of states that would bear the brunt of a fracking implosion are either in the American rural heartland (Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming) or the South (Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana). Even more ominously, several Midwestern swing states that are likely to be election deciders, such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania (much of which is culturally if not geographically Midwestern), are also key fracking centers, and their economies are highly dependent on the industry.
These states share a few important common denominators. They all voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and they are all poorer, more conservative and less diverse than America as a whole. For most of them, fracking is one of relatively few significant employment generators. If fracking goes south, they will see unemployment spike, which could significantly impact the election, especially in the key states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
An attack on the American fracking industry also has the potential to inflict significant geopolitical damage. Without fracking, the United States instantly goes from being an oil exporter to a major importer. Moscow has already succeeded in exploiting the European Union’s dependence on Russian gas to its geopolitical advantage. Putin no doubt remembers how the Arab oil boycott affected the United States in the 1970s. Returning America to a dependency on foreign oil would give Putin unprecedented leverage over Washington.
The bottom line is that if this ploy works, Moscow could hit Washington with a triple whammy: it could further compromise the American political system, reduce the United States’ economic clout and ability to project soft power, and curtail its ability to counter Russian aggression.
The more interesting and, for Israel, possibly ominous question is why Saudi Arabia would cooperate in such a damaging assault on the United States. After all, the kingdom has always been totally dependent on the United States to ensure its survival.
One possible answer is that Crown Prince and de facto ruler Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) has come to the conclusion that the kingdom can no longer rely on the United States and needs to recalibrate its strategy and policy. There is some logic to this thinking. Trump has proven that while he talks loudly and boasts about the American big stick, he is extremely hesitant to use it. His record since taking office shows a pattern of withdrawal, especially regarding the Middle East. He abandoned the Kurds and weakened Saudi deterrence when he declined to retaliate after Iran launched a damaging cruise missile attack on Saudi oil fields, considered a strategic target.
Even worse, this is not a short-term development. The Republican Party, which has tended since the 1950s to be more hawkish than the Democrats, has undergone a metamorphosis under Trump. It has adopted all his policies, which are largely populist and neo-isolationist. Economically, it has abandoned its commitment to fiscal prudence and reasonably balanced budgets. Regarding foreign policy, there is scant difference between “Make America Great Again” and “America First.” There is little reason to assume that a second Trump administration would jettison its neo-isolationism and adopt the type of proactive and hawkish foreign policy that has been a Republican hallmark since the 1950s.
With that said: If a second Trump administration is an unappealing prospect to MBS, the idea of a Democratic administration is a nightmare.
Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s leading foreign policy luminary. That administration’s foreign policy in general, and in the Middle East in particular, was characterized by timidity, appeasement and a deep aversion to confrontation. On Obama’s watch, Syria was abandoned to Iran, Russia and Al-Qaeda as well as its more radical jihadi spin-offs. Iran was empowered while traditional American Sunni allies got the cold shoulder.
A Biden administration would be even less likely to intervene militarily on behalf of traditional U.S. allies, given that it has a not insignificant radical wing to deal with. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the party’s elder statesman, is a tame hawk compared to many of his supporters, especially the “Squad” (freshmen Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts). These four have already established a reputation as radical Young Turks who relish being gadflies of the first order. If Obama was indifferent to Saudi Arabia, the Squad is positively hostile to the Ibn Saud dynasty. Their instinct is to oppose military intervention, especially to defend non-democratic regimes. Regarding Saudi Arabia, they are more likely to support the use of force to facilitate regime change in Riyadh than to maintain the status quo.
MBS seems therefore to have embarked on a high-risk game in which he hopes to achieve two aims. By coordinating oil price policy with Russia, he hopes to get Moscow to take Riyadh’s interests into account and include it in the game it is playing with Iran and the Turkish-Qatari axis in Syria. He wants to see Iran’s presence in Syria curbed, and knows that for now, only Russia can be of any use to him in this regard. Low oil prices will affect Iran much more than any other Middle Eastern country, forcing it to reduce its military involvement in the region (Syria, Iraq, Yemen) and perhaps even generating a regime-threatening economic crisis.
He also knows that the only way to ensure continued American support is to have it once again dependent on Saudi oil. Working with Russia to gut the American fracking industry is the best way to achieve that.
MBS can play this game with a reasonable chance of success because of the contradictory nature of Russia’s tactical alliances with countries with more opposing interests than matching ones. Turkey and Iran are historical enemies and each has a totally different agenda, in that both aspire to be the prime regional power. Turkey wants to lead a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Sunni Islamist revolution that would see it regain the status the Ottoman Empire had over a century ago as leader of the Sunni world. Iran wants to take over the entire Islamic world and make Shi’ite Islam, for the first time since the split, the dominant force in that world.
Neither Putin’s balancing act between Ankara and Tehran nor MBS’s between Russia and the United States can last forever. But until Putin decides to end it and make a strategic choice, Saudi Arabia can continue to play the game.
Jonathan Ariel is a South African native who served as an intelligence officer with the ANC and subsequently worked with Nelson Mandela. In Israel, he was news editor of “Makor Rishon,” editor-in-chief of “Ma’ariv International,” and editor-in-chief of “Jerusalem Online’s” English-language website Channel 2 News.
This article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.