Like a beggar at the door

Some 69 years ago, on February 14, 1945, then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with the King Abudlaziz of Saudi Arabia (also known as Ibn Saud)

An ailing Roosevelt arranged to have this meeting on the USS Quincy in Great Bitter Lake, in the Suez Canal. Roosevelt had travelled on the cruiser to attend the "Big Three's" Yalta Conference in the Crimea earlier in the month.

Over time, that meeting has taken on a greater historical significance. Not just because the two leaders forged a strategic partnership. In mind of many Americans, the meeting went down in history as the meeting where Roosevelt kowtowed to the Saudi ruler. The official photograph of that meeting is the best possible depiction of what the relations ultimately became.

The photo shows Colonel William Eddy, the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Saudi Arabia, kneeling before the Saudi king (who is comfortably sitting on his couch, smiling). This picture is all about submission. Alas, the U.S. courting of Saudi Arabia's goodwill dates to the early days of their relationship. Over the years, though, this courting would become one of the hallmarks of U.S. foreign policy in the region.

At Roosevelt's request, the leaders also talked about the fate of the Jewish people, who had just experienced the Holocaust. Despite the White House's deafening silence during most of the war, Roosevelt appeared engaged on this issue and finally resolved to ask Ibn Saud to support the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

But to his amazement, Ibn Saud went on a tirade against the Jewish people, saying the Arabs would prefer death over losing their land. The only "solution," he said, was to let the displaced Jews settle in Germany and Italy once the war is over.

Some seven decades have passed since that surreal encounter. Once again we have an American president who kneels before the Saudi king (albeit metaphorically). Despite Saudi Arabia repeatedly hampering the relationship (leading the oil embargo during the Yom Kippur War; its unwillingness to help the U.S. fight Islamic terrorism; its refusal to issue visas to Jewish Americans), the U.S. hegemon keeps finding itself in a defensive posture vis-a-vis Riyad.

When U.S. President Barack Obama met Saudi King Abdullah this week, there was one topic that was conspicuously missing from their discussions. They did not discuss the ongoing human rights abuses in the kingdom (and the lack of religious and political freedoms). And this, despite the liberal Obama putting this high on his agenda everywhere he goes and despite such themes being highlighted in his speeches

Since there are strategic and economic interests at stake (although the U.S. dependency on Saudi oil is in decline), why embarrass the Saudi host on moral issues; why make the charged relationship even more problematic? Right?

Saudi Arabia has had its share of misgivings about U.S. foreign policy. It blames the U.S. for abandoning the Sunni-moderate axis and leaving it to its own devices. The U.S. has been projecting weakness, it has been reluctant to act and it has subscribed to dangerous isolationism, Saudi Arabia says. While Obama has been a weakling when it comes to intervening in Syria and helping the pro-Western rebels, Saudi Arabia bears much of the blame for his failed outreach to the Arab-Muslim world.

As we all know, Obama wanted to establish a close-knit coalition of Sunni states in the region that would check Iran and preempt a vacuum that would be created once the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Iraq. Obama thought Israel's 10 month settlement freeze would incentivize the major players in the region -- like Saudi Arabia -- and make them rally behind him. He hoped this would lead to a closer bond with the region.

The settlement moratorium, he though, would demonstrate the administration's ability to pressure Israel and produce effective results. He hoped this would create a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But he would soon discover that the freeze did not further his grand vision of an inter-Arab bloc that would check Iran (not unlike the Baghdad Pact in 1950s that was to counter the Soviet influence in the region). Saudi Arabia would not embrace this new architecture, despite Obama's efforts to have it serve as its linchpin. Riyad was determined not to make any good-will gestures vis-a-vis Israel. Obama's vision would ultimately disappear into the Arab Spring oblivion.

You can see where Saudi Arabia is coming from. It has become increasingly worried over the rise of the Iranian-fanned fundamentalists and the ongoing American disengagement from the rest of the world (it considers this development a strategic threat to the region's stability). It was hard watching the leader of the U.S. superpower act like a panhandler when he met the aging and grumpy Saudi ruler.

Obama promised to increase the covert assistance to the pro-Western rebels in Syria and to provide them with MANPADS. He also made it clear that he would hold firm in the talks with Iran. He also said he would take into account the Saudis' fear of Iran's rising stature and the dangers it would pose as a nuclear threshold-state.

For now, the only thing left to do is to sit back and watch. Will the U.S. promises share the same fate as the American pledge to use military force against Syrian President Bashar Assad if he crossed the red line of using chemical weapons? Will the American decadence continue? How will it affect the other major players in the region. And most importantly, how will it affect Egypt and Saudi Arabia-

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