America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia [65min]

For fifty-five years, the United States and Saudi Arabia were solid partners. Rachel Bronson argues that contrary to popular belief this relationship was never simply about"oil for security." Saudi Arabia's geographic location and religiously motivated foreign policy figured prominently in America’s Cold War efforts to defeat communism. From Egypt to Nicaragua, the two worked to beat back Soviet expansion, but decisions made for Cold War purposes left behind a legacy that today enflames the Middle East. In Thicker than Oil, Rachel Bronson reveals why the partnership became so intimate and how the countries' shared interests sowed the seeds of today's Islamic radicalism. Speaker: Rachel Bronson, Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East and Gulf Studies, Council on Foreign Relations.