Still widely regarded as the greatest work of history in the English language, Edward Gibbon’s six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) was closely scrutinized by generations of British leaders, owing to their belief that it revealed portents as to the fate of their own empire—which by the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1897) had grown to encompass fully one-quarter of the earth's land surface and population.
Sharp validation for the fears of decline arrived under her grandson, George V. One of the major consequences of the calamitous First World War was that it commenced the transition in the role of world's dominant power from Great Britain to the United States. Sorely afflicted by imperial fatigue and economic exhaustion—now a debtor, not a creditor nation—the UK had gained victory in the war only at a terrible price in blood and treasure.
Unsurprisingly, major elements of the British ruling class did not accept the inevitability of this transition, believing that their global imperium could be repaired and sustained, Gibbon aside. How and why they were proved wrong is well recounted in Zachary Carter's The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (2021)—the remarkable Keynes having been very active in this transition from beginning to end.
Reflection on these events is occasioned by the world's reaction to the recently revealed China-brokered accord between two nations long thought to be implacable foes – Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Wall Street Journal reported this event on March 10 in a front page story entitled “Accord marks diplomatic victory for Beijing in a region where U.S. has long dominated geopolitics.”
The New York Times weighed in similarly, describing China's emergence as “an alternative to a U.S.-led world order.” Aaron David Miller, a veteran U.S. negotiator, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, characterized the accord as a “real slap in the face to Biden” and suggested that the Saudis now see themselves in a multi-polar future with China, Russia, and Iran—“fellow autocrats who don't ask questions about human rights.”
News of the accord stunned U.S. allies in the Middle East and elsewhere, leading to renewed criticism of the perceived failures of the Biden Administration foreign policy. Particularly tellingwas a lead article in The Times of Israel citing an unidentified member of the Israeli cabinet as sharply criticizing U.S. overreaction to the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
During the 2020 presidential campaign candidate Biden promised he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” At that point, according to the Israeli source, the Saudis concluded that they could not rely on the U.S. for support and it was time to look elsewhere for backing. Reinforcing this conclusion was Biden's pointed personal criticism of the new Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Compounding the Biden Administration's deepening alienation from our principal Middle Eastern ally is their barely concealed dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their persistent promotion of two policies—revival of the Iran nuclear deal and reopening of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the basis of “land for peace”—that are bitterly opposed by Israel.
It is not hard to imagine the dismay of Israel when their deadliest enemy—Iran—which has repeatedly threatened to “wipe them off the map” and is now approaching nuclear weapons capacity, outflanks them diplomatically in a stunning accord with Saudi Arabia.
As recently as the once praised but now marginalized “Abraham Accords,” Israel could hope for a broadening of the group of nations opposed to Iran's unending sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East, the ultimate objective of which was the destruction of the Jewish state. Now such hopes are collapsed.
So as Israel sees itself between an implacable enemy in nearby Teheran and an increasingly ambiguous friend in distant Washington, she must of necessity—like Saudi Arabia albeit from a different perspective—begin to contemplate whether an emerging new geopolitics requires her to consider new alignments.
The geopolitical waves made by the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian accord will ripple across the world. The surprise will particularly resonate in the capitals of those nations that have chosen to align themselves with the United States, where it will be viewed in context with other recent events, beginning with the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, that have seriously called into question the quality and reliability of American leadership.
In a world grown accustomed to U.S. success and global domination, it is impossible to foresee where these new doubts may lead—but they do not bode well for the rules-based international order that America created and has for so long struggled to uphold.
Bill Moloney is a Senior Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University's Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.