Diesel fuel trades in a global market. Gulf states usually provide 20% of this market, and Russia another 10%. Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s new plan to suspend sanctions on diesel imports from the latter, both these supplies have been severely disrupted. Yes, crude oil is now leaving the Gulf via pipelines, while a shuttle system of state-owned vessels, protected by the US Navy, ensures volumes very close to their pre-war level.

But shipments of refined products and petrochemicals have not recovered. Ukrainian drone attacks have damaged several Russian refineries, perhaps also explaining Trump’s rising anger with President Zelensky, whatever the truth of this latest “energy ceasefire”. China, for its part, has also prohibited the export of refined products in an effort to control domestic prices. Little wonder the rest of the world’s refineries are hard-pressed to meet demand. First of all, there are simply fewer refineries. In 2000, Britain had 18 refineries. Today it has four. Many of the closed refineries were too small to compete internationally, but high industrial electricity costs and environmental regulations also helped make them uneconomic.

Second, a barrel of crude oil contains a variety of molecules that refineries break down into different products: based primarily on their boiling points. Gasoline is a light distillate with a low boiling point. Diesel and jet fuel are middle distillates with higher boiling points, while marine bunker fuel is a heavy distillate. Most refineries are built to process specific types of crude and produce a specific mix of fuels. Separating the different segments of a barrel of crude oil is a complex process; refineries cannot always adjust quickly, even if demand shifts from one product to another.

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Another factor is the shipping industry, which uses 4% of global oil production. In 2020, the United Nations’ International Marine Organization dramatically shifted global energy demand, when it compelled the world’s ship owners to stop using heavy marine bunker fuel, and start burning more environmentally friendly fuels like marine gas oil. Unfortunately, marine gas oil comes from the same segment of the crude barrel as diesel and jet fuel. While the impact of this change was initially masked by Covid, which reduced oil demand, this has permanently increased demand for middle distillates. That, in turn, has raised the cost of all shipping, flying and heavy goods transport, and made diesel and jet-fuel prices more volatile.

Britain now produces only half of the roughly 500,000 barrels of diesel it consumes every day. The rest is imported. Since Russian supplies were suspended in 2022, most of those imports come from the US, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Middle East. All over the world, refineries that can produce diesel and jet fuel are operating at maximum capacity. In the US, capacity utilization has reached 98%, the highest utilization rate in a quarter of a century. The “crack spread”, which measures the difference between what a refinery pays for crude and what it sells product for, is now three times its historic average. If refineries could produce more diesel, they surely would.

The headline-grabbing news in the UK has been £2-a-litre diesel. However, the fuel’s retail price has actually risen by less than the price of crude oil. Dated Brent crude is up 70% this year, while the price of diesel has risen by only 40%. This is largely because, in the UK, two fifths of the price of diesel is tax: which does not vary with the price of crude. Moreover, dated Brent is a spot price that changes with the latest news, while refineries producing diesel operate on more stable long term contracts.

Things look very different in America. The United States is the world’s largest oil producer, and its largest diesel exporter. Most of those exports go to Latin America, not Britain. Nevertheless, diesel fuel prices in the US have risen by nearly 80%, compared with only 40% in the UK. In fact, while retail diesel prices in the UK have risen by a smaller percentage than the price of Brent crude, in the US the opposite is true.

With diesel prices reaching the equivalent of $200 per barrel in the US, and crucial midterms coming up, the Trump administration had ample motivation to act. America is exporting 30% of its diesel production into a global market. At the same time, America’s own strategic petroleum reserve is at its lowest level in 44 years. Between 2021 and 2025, the Biden administration drew down America’s reserve by 45% — or 245 million barrels — largely following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During that same period, all the other G7 nations together drew down their own reserves by only 40 million barrels. In other words, the US government provided the global market with 85% of the oil used to calm markets after the Russian invasion.

Always a proponent of America first, President Trump concluded that other nations should now draw down their own stocks, rather than continue to rely on American reserves. Trump’s threat to ban US diesel exports has anyway been effective, resulting in a commitment by other G7 members to release 100 million barrels of oil over just four months. As a result of this agreement, diesel prices in both Europe and the United States have declined slightly. For his part, Trump has also signed an executive order granting fuel tax breaks, usually reserved for farmers, to truckers. This latest diesel-exporting agreement with Russia — while mattering more from a geopolitical perspective — is also perhaps intended to help drivers at the pump.

Whether any of this will bring down prices enough to benefit Republican election prospects next month remains to be seen. What may be more long-lasting is the damage done to public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. Americans increasingly view European governments as freeriders: unwilling to meet their Nato defense commitments, but quite happy to use America’s strategic petroleum reserve and diesel exports to keep their own fuel prices down. As for the Europeans, they see a transactional Trump administration extorting its allies for domestic political purposes. Both sides have a point. Either way, the old political adage remains true: if loyalty is a sentiment, leverage is a fact.

The Protestant Reformation was ignited when accepted Catholic practices were carried to extremes that became abusive — most notably simony (selling church offices) and indulgences (pardons purchased to get out of purgatory), neither of which had any basis in scripture. Once begun, the Reformation was seized upon and accelerated by ambitious German princes who sought to free themselves from the financial and political influence of the pope. The Catholic Church eventually stopped selling bishoprics and forgiveness, but not before the fabric of European civilization had been torn asunder.

Much as 16th-century Europe was anchored by respect for religious institutions, the United States is today united by respect for its Constitution, a sacred document to which citizens, civil servants, and the military all regularly swear allegiance. Unlike the constitutions of France or Germany, which have changed with the political seasons, the American Constitution has functioned effectively for nearly 250 years.

Yet nowhere does the Constitution give any one of 677 unelected district-court judges the authority to block the policies of an elected president, as they’ve been doing regularly for the past decade by issuing nationwide injunctions. These injunctions cover everyone in the country, not just those who brought the case. Yet the use of sweeping injunctions is a manufactured practice created by legislation, but not found in the Constitution. And like simony and the sale of indulgences, it has been abused by excessive use. It needs to stop.

Do not scoff at the possibility of a constitutional reformation. For centuries, the pope was a powerful and respected figure throughout Europe, until one day he wasn’t. Today our judiciary is powerful, but there is a large element of faith and mystery upholding respect for the Supreme Court. The justices reside in a building designed to resemble a Roman temple. They appear in costumes resembling the robes of a high priest and inform us that, like oracles, only they are qualified to decipher the constitution. As with the papacy, faith in the Supreme Court will quickly evaporate if it is seen to endorse the widespread abuse of contrived practices not found in scripture.

The facts speak for themselves. Issuing nationwide injunctions to block executive orders has become a routine partisan tool. In Donald Trump’s first term, 64 nationwide injunctions were issued against him, of which 92% were granted by Democrat-appointed judges. In the first five months of his second term, 92% were granted have been issued against him — the overwhelming majority coming from just five judicial districts, all of which are located in liberal cities such as San Francisco and Boston. In many recent cases, the terms “arbitrary and capricious” were used to block any executive order the judge disagreed with, including policies many Americans strongly support such as deporting illegal aliens and reducing government waste.

Conservatives have played the same game: Republican judges issued all 14 of the injunctions against President Biden. As a result of all this, citizens are beginning to regard some judges as unelected politicians in robes rather than unbiased arbiters of justice. That should worry all Americans.

Last week, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court dismissed three nationwide injunctions against President Trump. The significance of the verdict is not that it allowed his efforts to reinterpret birthright citizenship to proceed. That issue will return to the lower courts and be decided later. This was a landmark decision because it concluded that Congress never granted trial judges the authority to issue broad relief to individuals who had not actually brought a case before their court.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett indicated that nationwide injunctions do not align with accepted practice in either the United States or Britain. She wrote: “The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our nation’s history… Its absence from 18th and 19th century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority.”

It’s worth noting that the Supreme Court looked only at legislation governing court procedures. It did not address the fundamental constitutionality of nationwide injunctions. Therefore, Congress could quite easily pass new legislation reversing this decision.

Regrettably, the decision also undermined the credibility of the court’s three liberal justices. During the Biden administration, when Republican judges issued nationwide injunctions, Justice Elena Kagan stated: “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a national policy in its tracks.” Yet last week she voted against ending nationwide injunctions. Regardless of the legal reasoning behind her decision, it appeared to many as politically motivated hypocrisy.

Even more remarkable was Justice Barrett’s public rebuke of the court’s newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Jackson called the majority decision of six more senior judges “an existential threat to the rule of law”. Justice Barrett, who has frequently sided with the liberal justices, essentially told Jackson that she needed to go back to law school, writing: “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument which is at odds with more than two centuries of precedent, not to mention the Constitution.” She added, pointedly: “We observe only this, that Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

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Such division is worrying given that faith in many civic institutions is already in decline. Reporting by the mainstream media is routinely dismissed as propaganda. Following Covid, scientific pronouncements are no longer accepted at face value. Congress is seen as promoting partisan excess rather than national interest. Even the judiciary is no longer immune from growing skepticism. Accurately or not, many Americans consider prosecutor Letitia James and judge Arthur Engoron to have been overtly partisan in Donald Trump’s real estate fraud trial. A Colorado state court actually sought to keep Trump off the ballot only to be overturned by the Supreme Court. As a result of these and similar incidents, a new and troubling phrase has crept into the American vocabulary, “weaponized lawfare”.

Even more significantly, while the Supreme Court decision limited the use of nationwide injunctions, it still allows “class certification” through which courts can issue injunctions affecting a very broad group of people. As Justice Samuel Alito noted, this is “a potentially significant loophole” in the decision. Is there any reason to doubt that judges who were lax in the use of nationwide injunctions will be any stricter in their use of class certification? The failed plaintiffs in last week’s decision have already sought a new injunction under this provision of the law.

The decision neither enhanced the Supreme Court’s legitimacy nor resolved the issue of judicial overreach. The potential for abuse remains. Once a tipping point in public trust is reached, partisan actors, like the German nobles, will seize the issue. They will twist legitimate reform efforts to their own immediate gain, potentially undermining the entire process of judicial review. Every law school professor will tell you the courts have the authority to declare laws unconstitutional. Every one of them also knows that this authority is not found anywhere in the Constitution. It was the self-aggrandizing brainchild of Chief Justice John Marshall who promulgated it in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison. It has been accepted because it is generally regarded as useful. So was papal infallibility.

The Protestant Reformation began on All Saints Day 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg and publicly declared that selling forgiveness of sins was a fraud. Yet Luther wanted to reform the Church, not dismember it. Pope Leo X could have defused the Reformation, and preserved the unifying stature of the Catholic Church, by ending practices many had come to regard as corrupt.

Luther’s Reformation became a political as much as a religious event. Today, the authority of district court judges has become a political as much as a legal issue. In “Federalist 47”, founding father and president James Madison noted that it is the concentration of power that defines tyranny, not the ends to which that power is used. The power of one unelected, junior trial-court judge to block the policies of a nationally elected president is an unwarranted concentration of power in the judiciary. Hopefully, last week’s decision will end the abuse of judge shopping to block executive orders, but it may not. We do not need a constitutional reformation. We need the Lutherans and Catholics on the Supreme Court to firmly rein in highly partisan district court judges from both parties before someone nails 95 Theses to their courthouse door.

For Israel, Iran’s possession of a deliverable nuclear weapon posed an intolerable, existential threat. There can be no doubt that Iran was close to achieving this aim, enriching uranium far beyond the level needed for nuclear power generation, and doing so in secretive, hardened locations. It had a delivery system, with ballistic missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Only the question of a bomb mechanism remained and this could have been resolved with a bomb too large to fit on a missile, but deliverable by other means.

Following the war, all three parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons program have been severely degraded. Most of the senior scientists working on a bomb mechanism are dead. The enrichment facilities are at the very least severely damaged. Most of Iran’s long-range missiles and missile launchers have either been used or destroyed. Moreover, by weakening Iran, Israel has reduced the threat from Tehran’s proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. While Israel’s military leadership wished to wage the war without foreign assistance, the political leadership sought direct American intervention. This was achieved, thus demonstrating and strengthening Israel’s strategic alliance with Washington. All of this was accomplished with the loss of fewer than 30 Israeli lives.

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What Israel failed to achieve was regime change in Iran. For 40 years the Ayatollahs have based their regime’s legitimacy on calls to destroy Israel and drive the United States from the Middle East. They remain in power and committed to a vision they believe to be divinely inspired.

What, then, did Iran gain from the ceasefire? The country is ruled by an ageing, ideologically rigid theocrat who is currently hiding in a bunker. He governs an ethnically and religiously diverse nation. Iran’s Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs together make up nearly half of the population, and they have long resented Persian dominance. Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Baha’is, and Zoroastrians have been systematically persecuted by the Islamic revolutionary government. This multicultural patchwork could easily unravel without widespread fear of the Ayatollah’s secret police.

Ayatollah Khamenei may very well believe the encouraging propaganda broadcast on state television, but the Iranian economy is failing and his government increasingly unpopular. His regional allies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, have been greatly weakened while his international allies, Russia and China, have provided little tangible support. At 86 he faces a looming succession struggle, but many of his most trusted potential heirs have been eliminated. For such a weak leader to survive such a massive military blow must be considered a success. His agreement to a ceasefire, however brief, allows the regime to survive and the revolution to rebuild.

Many other regional players have also been affected by the war. For one thing, the interests of the conservative Gulf Arab monarchies were conflicted. On the one hand, they welcomed any action that weakened Iran. Iran has long posed an ideological and security threat to them. The 1979 Iranian Revolution supercharged Islamic militancy in the region forcing Saudi Arabia to adopt far more socially conservative policies. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman takes his role as Custodian of Mecca very seriously, yet the Ayatollahs have explicitly challenged his right to this status and tried to disrupt the Hajj more than once. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE recently went to war against Iranian proxies in Yemen. Iran has territorial disputes with several of the Gulf states and, of course, Iran’s nuclear ambitions are as much a threat to its Arab neighbors as to Israel.

On the other hand, the Gulf Arabs did not wish to be drawn into the Iran-Israel conflict. Salman, in particular, is in the midst of a very ambitious program to reshape Saudi Arabia socially and economically. He needs regional stability to attract foreign investment and oil revenues to finance economic development. But all the Gulf Arabs are highly vulnerable to Iranian missile attacks. Their oil fields, oil-loading terminals and above all life-sustaining seawater desalination plants are all easy targets. For them, then, a ceasefire is the ideal outcome: Iran has been weakened, but they have not been seriously attacked.

Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and even Iraq have long felt the boot of Persian imperialism delivered by the likes of Hezbollah and Iraq’s Hasht al Shabi or popular militias. These Shia forces have killed thousands of Sunni Arabs and, like Hamas and the Houthis, will no longer be receiving generous support from Tehran. For the first time in decades, Syria and Lebanon have the opportunity to set their own course without taking instructions from Tehran.

But there’s another group with interests at stake: oil producers and consumers. The war saw price increases for some shipping and insurance rates as well as for jet fuel from Gulf refineries, which have become very important for Europe since it imposed sanctions on Russia. However, it could have been much worse: there was no loss of supply and no crude oil price spike. Attacks on oil facilities were limited to Israel’s refinery at Haifa and Iran’s North Pars gas field. The Straits of Hormuz remained open. Had it been needed, the Saudis maintained enough spare capacity to compensate for the total loss of Iranian oil exports.

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Nevertheless, both oil producers and consumers have drawn lessons from the conflict. The apparent vulnerability of Gulf oil has increased demand for alternative energy supplies in China, the United States and Europe. Europe, with very little oil of its own, will seek to accelerate its transition away from hydrocarbons, while the United States, already the world’s largest oil producer, will seek to increase domestic production even more.

China, for its part, is heavily dependent on flows of oil from the Persian Gulf. It remains one of the few nations still buying oil from Iran, is currently Iran’s largest customer and buys Iranian oil at a deep discount. However, the People’s Republic buys even more oil from Saudi Arabia and made its displeasure with Tehran clear when Iran attacked Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq in 2019. And Beijing will have cautioned Tehran against similar attacks or closing the Straits of Hormuz during the recent conflict. While China was no doubt mollified to see American military assets diverted from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans, this will only have emphasized fears that in times of crisis, the US Navy could interdict all oil flows from the Middle East to China —  a profound strategic liability.

The United States, meanwhile, has come off well from the ceasefire. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been set back with no loss of American life. There has been no oil shock, no increase in inflation, and no stock market crash. Most Americans supported the President’s action and allies have seen that Donald Trump is not the next Neville Chamberlain. With the threat from Iran diminished, the United States may finally be able to make its much-anticipated pivot towards Asia.

Nevertheless, while the American strike on Iran was impressive —  involving the world’s largest conventional bomb — it remains uncertain whether “one and done” will be enough to change Iran’s behavior. Will the Ayatollahs agree to forego uranium enrichment and curtail their ballistic missile program? Will they allow inspectors to visit the damaged sites and accept direct negotiations with the United States? Through prolonged negotiations, Europe and the United States have tried to bring Iran back into the community of nations. Now, the United States has carried out a very limited military operation. If Iran’s regime will not change its behavior, some argue that the next step should be regime change. But that would create a whole new raft of risks for regional instability. While foreign powers can support domestic efforts, far better the regime change is carried out by the Iranian people themselves.

How often have the Fleet Street sophists cried out that every adversary is the new Hitler and every compromise another Munich? Yet do they really understand what happened there? Chamberlain went to Munich with two objectives, the first necessary and the second noble. He sought to buy time for Britain to rearm and in this he was highly successful: the acceleration of aircraft production in 1938 and 1939 proved crucial to winning the Battle of Britain. At the same time, he gambled to give peace a chance and avoid repeating the carnage of the First World War. He lost that bet, but at the time no one could have been completely certain of Germany’s intentions. Had Hitler proven trustworthy, we would perhaps never have heard of Winston Churchill.

Unlike Chamberlain at Munich, Donald Trump is not trying to rearm for a looming conflict with Russia. He is trying to normalize relations with a nuclear-armed power. While Ukraine is important, so is Russia’s cooperation on many other issues, such as containing Iran’s nuclear program, stabilizing Syria, and shaping global energy markets. Above all, Trump is seeking to reverse the strategic own goal of driving Russia into the arms of China with ceaseless NATO expansion.

Nor is Trump trying to avoid a new war. He is trying to end one by stating obvious facts: Ukraine cannot win back lost territory without massive American assistance; the US is not going to go to war with Russia so that Ukraine can join NATO; and the longer the war goes on, the more territory Ukraine will lose. The terms of a negotiated settlement have been equally obvious for years. These are: a neutral Ukraine, a plebiscite to determine if Russian-speaking regions wish to remain part of Ukraine, and international assistance to rebuild the country. These terms will be easier to accept once Europe recognizes that while Russia started the war, it was provoked by NATO expansion. Just as the US could not tolerate Russian missiles in Cuba or Chinese control of the Panama Canal, Russia could not accept its only warm water naval base at Sevastopol being handed over to NATO and the US navy.

The “stench of appeasement” has not returned to Munich, as former defense minister Ben Wallace claimed in The Telegraph. The situation is better understood as a replay of the 1945 Yalta Conference, where Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt determined the political future of Europe and Ukraine’s current borders. In 1919, the victorious allies had transferred the Austrian city of Lemberg to Poland; at Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to transfer the renamed Polish city of Lvov to the Soviet Union, where it became the Ukrainian city of Lviv. On neither occasion were protests from the Austrians or Poles heeded, because in the real world, one can seldom win back at the conference table what has already been lost on the battlefield. If you wish to draw analogies, at least get them right: the war in Ukraine is probably going to end with Ukrainian borders being redrawn, just as they were at Yalta.

Nor are we watching the death of the transatlantic alliance. Europe is unlikely to choose a world order led by China. And the US is unlikely to abandon the most successful alliance in history. That is why Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called American security cooperation indispensable. And it’s why President Trump wants to quickly reach an Anglo-American trade deal. That does not sound like a dying relationship.

The transatlantic relationship does, however, need to change. The unipolar moment upon which the rules-based order rested is over. The US now faces serious rivals and can no longer play the benevolent global hegemon. In 1945, the US produced 28% of the world’s GDP. Today, it is still the single most powerful nation on earth, but its share of global GDP has fallen to 13%. The world has returned to a situation where several great powers have spheres of influence and compete with each other. Any student of history will acknowledge that this is simply a return to normalcy.

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In this changing world, the most significant threat to the US comes from China, not Russia. This requires America to pivot towards Asia. It means reducing America’s presence in Europe in order to increase deterrence in Asia, and it means building naval rather than land-based forces. America’s Asian allies, including Australia, Japan, and South Korea, understand this and have increased defense cooperation considerably. They appreciate that, far from encouraging China to attack Taiwan, America’s pivot towards Asia makes defending Taiwan more credible.

This shift in relative power will require changes in Europe. For too long the American horse has pulled the European security cart while smiling politicians rode along tossing coins to their voters. Now, they need to get down and start pushing. Russia is essentially a European problem. And given the EU has 10 times Russia’s GDP, there is no reason Europe cannot defend itself in any but a nuclear confrontation.

In this evolving landscape, Britain must choose whether to be a spectator or a participant. Americans recognize that Britain has contributed far more to collective security than other European nations. Vice President JD Vance’s comment about “random” countries that have not fought a war in 30 years was directed very accurately at other nations of the so-called “coalition of the willing”, not at Britain. Nevertheless, the entire British Army could not fill Wembley stadium. The Royal Navy, once the most formidable in the world, now has more admirals than war ships. While recent efforts to increase Britain’s defense budget are a good start, there is a long way to go. A flag and a national anthem will no longer guarantee any nation a place at the negotiating table.

In 1914, the lights went out in Britain in part due to a jingoistic press, which stoked widespread anti-German sentiment and demonized Kaiser William II. It would be a shame to repeat that mistake today, and Keir Starmer is trying not to. While many European leaders are acting like jilted lovers, Starmer grasps that America remains indispensable to European security. He is preparing his nation for greater effort — and in that sense he does resemble Churchill.

By now it is obvious that Ukraine is not winning the war. Nato has provided many billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine including Patriot missiles, HIMARS and ATACMS missiles, Abrams tanks, F-16 aircraft, and now Storm Shadow missiles. None of this has produced a successful Ukrainian offensive. Instead, the conflict has become a war of attrition that relentlessly drains Ukrainian manpower and Nato arsenals. A nation of around 35 million people with a GDP of around $180 billion cannot hope to defeat a nation with a population of 150 million and a GDP of $2 trillion. The harsh reality is that Ukraine has as much of a chance of defeating Russia as Belgium would of defeating Germany, no matter how many Western weapons they receive.

The fall of Assad is not necessarily a sign of Russian weakness. In 2016, Russian air power, not ground forces, helped the Syrian army maintain control of the country. In 2024, a demoralised Syrian army dissolved without a fight. With Assad’s own army disbanding, there was little Russian air power could do to rescue him. At the moment, Russia’s two bases in Syria remain in Russian hands and their future is unclear. What is clear, however, is that Putin has kept his eyes on Ukraine, where Russian forces continue to take as much territory as possible before any potential negotiations begin.

Nor will economic sanctions change the war’s outcome. Beginning in 2022, Western nations imposed on Russia the most extensive sanctions regime seen since the Second World War. All in all, several thousand sanctions were placed on Russian individuals, businesses, and government institutions. This caused only a mild recession in 2022 which was quickly turned around. Instead of collapsing, the Russian economy has grown rapidly. Russia’s GDP grew by 3.6% in 2023, and is estimated to grow at the same rate this year. Ironically, the Russians have done better than those imposing the sanctions. In 2023, the US economy grew only by 2.5% while the German economy actually shrank, and the EU as a whole grew by less than 1%.

We should also remember that not losing the war is far more important to the Russian people and leadership than it is to Britain. Russians believe they are fighting a war for survival against a corrupt, godless, and implacable West. When Leopard tanks arrived in Ukraine, the headlines in Moscow read “German tanks again on Russian soil”. Every Russian parent who has lost a son to a German tank or a British missile is now demanding victory and revenge. What’s more, if Russia is defeated, President Vladimir Putin will not survive politically — the more Putin fears losing, the more he will escalate. If he falls from power, he will not be replaced by liberal democrats, but by even more hard-line Russian nationalists.

The justifications for Britain supporting Ukraine have always been questionable, but very seldom questioned. Instead, a jingoist media has consistently understated the risks involved while encouraging support for the war based upon three assumptions: Russia’s invasion was unprovoked; Ukraine is a democratic, long-unified nation worth defending; and Ukraine can win the war. Each of these assumptions is badly flawed.

The truth is, Russia was provoked. Why, Russian leaders ask, does a purely defensive alliance need to expand its membership? What is wrong with formal Ukrainian neutrality similar to that provided by the Austrian State Treaty of 1955? Why was Nato giving Ukraine a wide range of weapons, training, and intelligence long before the Russian invasion?

Ukraine in Nato would mean the US Navy in Sevastopol and American missiles 300 miles from Moscow. For a nation that has long based its security on trading space for time, that is a problem. Yet since the end of the Cold War, Nato has added 16 new members and moved 1,000 miles closer to Moscow and repeatedly voiced its willingness to welcome Ukraine as a new member. The logic of Moscow’s concern should be clear to anyone familiar with America’s own reaction to Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Russia’s leaders have repeatedly made their concerns clear. Twenty years ago, the American ambassador in Moscow advised the then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that: “Ukrainian entry into Nato is the brightest of all red-lines for the Russian elite (not just President Vladimir Putin). In more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything but a direct challenge to Russian security.”

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Western intelligence agencies warn us that if Putin is not stopped now, his next move could be to invade Western Europe. Might these be the same intelligence agencies who told us Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear bomb? Or who tell us daily how the poorly trained, ill-equipped and overstretched Russians will soon be defeated? In more than two years, the Russians have not managed to capture Kharkiv, much less Kyiv. The EU alone has three times the population of Russia, and 10 times the GDP. With the United States included, the military disparity between Nato and the Russian Federation becomes overwhelming in all but nuclear weapons. The idea that Putin plans to invade Europe is simply silly.

Then there is the question of whether Ukraine is worth defending. Ukraine is hardly a flourishing democracy. Rather it is a corrupt, one-party state, with extensive press censorship. Opposition parties have been suspended. Religious freedom has been restricted. Young men are forbidden to leave the country. Even before the war, the US Congress formally condemned Ukrainian nationalist groups such as the Azov Brigade as “white supremacist neo-Nazis”.

Nor is modern Ukraine a longstanding historic, geographic, or linguistic unit. The Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions were annexed to Ukraine by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin in 1922, specifically to make Ukraine less Ukrainian. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev added the overwhelming ethnically Russian Crimea to Ukraine by administrative fiat only in 1954. Unlike Canada, which found ways to meld anglophone Protestants and francophone Catholics into one nation, Ukraine failed to embrace pluralism. Ukrainian nationalist governments in Kyiv rejected a federal model with autonomy for Russian-speaking regions. They rejected calls for adopting two official languages throughout the nation and went so far as to ban the use of Russian in administrative and commercial matters, even in predominantly Russian-speaking regions. As a result, many ethnic Russians and Russian speakers living in the country do not identify with Ukrainian nationalism and never have.

The recent deployment of Britain’s advanced Storm Shadow missiles in the Ukraine war represents a significant escalation in the provision of Western military aid to Kyiv. It has strengthened Britain’s commitment to Ukraine, but it has not slowed Russian’s grinding advance westward. More importantly, it has intensified Britain’s conflict with Russia. Moscow understands that unlike previous weapons delivered to Ukraine, Storm Shadows require direct foreign involvement in their targeting and guidance procedures. For some Russians, this means that Britain and Russia are already at war. The possibility of this situation spiralling out of control through miscalculation is what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would refer to as a “low-probability high-impact event”.

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By David Rundell

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has invested heavily in nuclear armaments; today, it possesses roughly 10% more warheads than the United States. Some of these can be mounted on hypersonic missiles against which there is no effective defence; others travel on unmanned submarines designed to swamp coastal cities with enormous radioactive tidal waves. The Russian Sarmat missile carries the equivalent of 600 Hiroshima bombs.

Such weapons have never been used, and their effect on populations and the climate are unknown. What is certain, however, is that a modern nuclear exchange would not resemble those of the Second World War. Comparing today’s nuclear weapons with the bombs dropped on Japan is like comparing a Mini with a Tesla. A single Sarmat could depopulate London and the home counties. Is there anything at stake for Britain in Ukraine to justify taking such an enormous risk?

Anyone truly concerned about the Ukrainian people should want this war to end as quickly as possible. The nation has already lost 20% of its territory. Nearly a third of its population has fled or been displaced. Thousands more have perished, and much of its infrastructure lies in ruins. The situation reminds one of Vietnam, where villages were burned in order to “save” them from the Communists. And yet the price of peace is affordable. It can be negotiated on the positive principles of Ukrainian neutrality, funding for reconstruction and self-determination for ethnic Russians.

This would be in Britain’s own interests too. Should the Exchequer be paying the pensions of Ukrainian civil servants when British pensioners have lost their fuel allowance? Moreover, history offers many examples of nations sleepwalking into wars that prove far more destructive than anticipated. Britain entered the First World War to defend Belgium and the Second World War to defend Poland. Launching Storm Shadow missiles to defend Ukraine will not defeat Russia, but it could well produce another confrontation far greater than initially foreseen. After successfully defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy warned against ever again forcing Russia to choose between national humiliation and nuclear war. We should heed his advice.

Today, as the dust settles, the global community cannot afford to let this threat escalate. The Houthi attacks, combined with the worsening Israel-Iran confrontation, have raised oil prices and forced 20% of the world’s container ships to avoid the Red Sea — instead taking the far longer route around the southern tip of Africa. Increased insurance rates and freight charges will soon be passed on to consumers. There is a clear need for international action to restore freedom of navigation — yet the West finds itself with few good options.

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But before we go to war with the Houthis, or launch further strikes, it is probably a good idea to understand exactly who they are. “Houthi” is a derogatory name for Yemen’s Ansar Allah or Supporters of God movement, which was founded in the Nineties by Hussein al-Houthi and, since his death in 2004, led by his brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi. Hussein was a gifted orator whose message found many listeners in Yemen’s neglected and impoverished northern Sa’dah province, where most inhabitants belong to the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam. The Houthi brothers called for a Zaydi religious revival, opposition to Yemen’s central government, and hatred of Israel. Their signature chant remains “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, God is Great”.

In 2011, when Arab Spring protests brought Yemen’s government down, the Houthis seized control of Sa’dah province. Then, in 2014, they joined forces with the deposed dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh to overthrow the internationally recognised transition government of Abdu Rabbu Hadi. With Saleh’s help, they advanced from their homeland in the north all the way to Aden in southern Yemen in just two months. Then the Houthis turned on Saleh and killed him. The United Nations condemned the Houthi’s coup and human rights violations, while also authorising the inspection of vessels bound for Yemen in order to confiscate weapons.

Today, the Houthis nominally control most of Yemen, where they have imposed a vicious police state — although much of the country is in fact ruled by local tribes and war lords. The multinational naval blockade has caused great suffering in a nation that imports most of its food, fuel and medicine, and rampant corruption in Houthi-controlled ports has made delivering foreign assistance difficult. Thousands of Yemenis have died from fighting, disease and malnutrition; millions have been made homeless and unemployed. The Yemeni people are not looking for another war.

Iran did not create the Houthis but, recognising them as fellow Shia Muslims, it has long provided the movement with funds, arms, training and advice. And for more than a decade, Iran has aggressively used the Houthis — along with other paramilitary proxy militias, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — as a vehicle to expand its influence in the Arabian Peninsula and undermine its traditional rival Saudi Arabia.

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Yet Washington also bears some responsibility for today’s Houthi crisis due to its failure to maintain its longstanding security partnership with Saudi Arabia. In 2015, the Saudis tried to prevent the Houthi takeover of Yemen. They had numerous reasons for doing so: they wanted to limit the smuggling of weapons, drugs and people across their southern border; they did not want al-Qaeda terrorists fleeing from Saudi Arabia to find a haven in Yemen; and they did not share the Houthi’s view that much of southern Saudi Arabia should belong to Yemen. Above all, the Saudis did not want Iran to expand its influence in Yemen.

The Saudi effort was largely confined to an air campaign which at various times relied on American weapons, refuelling and intelligence. Like all bombing campaigns, this resulted in civilian casualties — remember that more French civilians died on D-Day as a result of the pre-invasion allied bombardment than allied troops died on the Normandy beaches. While it seems unlikely that the Saudis spent expensive munitions deliberately targeting school buses, such incidents prompted harsh criticism of Riyadh, the termination of some US military assistance, and eventually the effective end to their campaign.

Washington’s tepid support for the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis caused the Saudis to doubt the credibility of US security commitments, especially when threats to cut off arms sales became almost routine. And American hesitancy to supply the Saudis with drone technology forced them to turn to Italy and China. When the Biden administration removed the Houthis from the list of designated terrorist groups and withdrew Patriot air defence systems from Saudi Arabia, the Saudis had even more reason to doubt America.

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The Saudis soon found themselves in a difficult situation, wishing to devote financial resources to economic development rather than an endless war in Yemen. With Washington appearing to ignore their security concerns and facing persistent Houthi missile attacks, the Saudis changed course. In 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, renewed diplomatic relations with Iran, reopened his country’s Embassy in Tehran after seven years and welcomed a series of high-level Iranian officials to Riyadh. The reconciliation between Tehran and Riyadh was brokered by Beijing, not Washington. Part of this process involved a ceasefire in Yemen which continues today.

It would have been much wiser for America to have supported Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates when they were willing to commit their own troops to defeat the Houthis. Now, these two states benefit from a fragile peace with Iran and are not interested in a renewed confrontation with Iran’s proxies in Yemen. As a result, although the Saudis and Emiratis have a long history of cooperation with the US Navy, they have politely declined to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US-led attempt to protect Red Sea shipping. They are even less likely to participate in any offensive actions against the Houthis.

The broader problem is the emergence of a multipolar global order in which the United States is no longer the controlling superpower. In 1990, when America successfully led an international coalition to liberate Kuwait from Iraq’s invasion, Russia supported Operation Desert Storm, China remained neutral, Saudi Arabia underwrote the costs and Israel stayed on the sidelines. None of that is likely to happen today if the United States goes to war against the Houthis. Indeed, both Russia and China abstained from voting for Wednesday’s UN resolution demanding a ceasefire.

America’s hands have been also tied by the war in Gaza. By claiming that their attacks are made in support of the Palestinians, the Houthis have transformed themselves from pirates into resistance fighters. Much of the world agrees with them that Israel should withdraw its forces from Gaza, which has made forming a multinational coalition against them difficult: not wishing to be accused of supporting Netanyahu, the rest are happy to free ride.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s quest for regional hegemony is also influencing events in the Red Sea. Without Iranian missiles and drones, the Houthis’ attacks would be much less effective. However, dealing with Iran is a long-term problem. The immediate issue for the West is protecting commercial shipping in the Red Sea. There are no good solutions: doing nothing poses serious risks for global trade; taking offensive action against the Houthis risks igniting a larger war that could jeopardise Middle East oil production.

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Most probably, the war in Gaza will end, and when it does, the Houthis’ justification for their attacks will evaporate. If they continue after the war is over, most nations will regard them as dangerous terrorists. Yet, once started, a war with the Houthis may not end quickly or easily. Before beginning another “as long as it takes” conflict, Washington should consider less risky options: expanding a formal convoy system such as the one used to protect Kuwaiti tankers during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) appears to be the least bad option, at least initially.

And with this, there is no reason why protecting freedom of navigation in the Red Sea should be the sole responsibility of the United States, Britain and a few willing partners. Most of the cargoes transiting the Suez Canal are bound for Europe and Asia, not the United States or Great Britain. Many nations, including China, Japan, Korea and Germany, do not want their trade disrupted by Houthi attacks on commercial shipping. Nor do they want their energy supplies disrupted by a large-scale war to eliminate the Houthis. They have very tangible interests in finding a peaceful solution to the Houthi problem.

Transforming Prosperity Guardian into a truly multinational operation would increase its effectiveness, reduce its costs for each participant and isolate the Houthis. Perhaps more important, it would demonstrate clearly that all options short of war had been tried and thus help to justify any offensive military action in the eyes of global public opinion.

But creating a more multinational operation is a political and economic problem, not a military one. Finding a solution is a job for creative diplomats, not admirals. Support for a more multinational operation need not involve sending ships: statements of public support condemning maritime terrorism would help, so would financial contributions and logistical support. The justification to emphasise is that the war in Gaza and piracy in the Red Sea are two different issues and that secure global trade is in everyone’s interest. Before we enter yet another easily expandable armed conflict, we should use diplomacy to convince the rest of the world of this.

President Roosevelt told King Abdulaziz how the Jews of Europe had suffered indescribable horrors at the hands of the Nazis: eviction from their homes, destruction of their property, torture of their families, and mass murder. Could the king help with their resettlement?

The king replied that the Jews and their descendants should be given the best “lands, flocks and wells” of the Germans who had oppressed them. When the President said that the Jews did not trust the Germans and had no desire to stay in Germany, Abdulaziz replied that if the Allies did not think they could control the Germans, then why had they fought such a costly war? Certainly, he would never leave a defeated enemy in a position to strike back in the future.

When the President tried again, he received a similar reply: “Amends should be made by the criminal, not by the innocent bystander. What injury have the Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? It is the Christian Germans who stole their homes and lives. Let the Germans pay.” Had Roosevelt not dropped the issue, the meeting might well have ended acrimoniously.

Today, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish people has once again come under scrutiny. A historic peace deal between Saudi and Israel has been put on hold since the outbreak of war in Gaza. And the week before last, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called for an “immediate halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza”.

Yet Saudi leaders have always been pragmatists. Two years after the meeting on the USS Quincy, King Abdulaziz’s son, the future King Faisal, led the Saudi delegation to the United Nations, where he tried to prevent the partition of Palestine. He failed, and the United States successfully mobilised support for partition. But although King Abdulaziz was angry and disappointed by Washington’s recognition of Israel, he never threatened the American air base or oil concessions in Saudi Arabia. He placed too great a value on promoting regional stability and maintaining strong relations with the US to risk a diplomatic confrontation.

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For most of the last 75 years, Saudi Arabia has tried to stay out of Arab-Israeli wars and promote reconciliation. In 1948, the Saudis contributed two companies of infantry, which fought under Egyptian command. In the Six-Day War of 1967, a Saudi brigade moved slowly towards Jordan, arriving only when a ceasefire was about to be declared. And during the 1973 Arab-Israel War, Saudi Arabia sent one brigade to join the Arab Foreign Legion with strict instructions not to become involved in the fighting. By the time it reached Damascus, the hostilities were over.

King Abdulaziz (1875-1953) was always more worried about his Hashemite rivals in Jordan and Iraq than about Israel. His son, King Faisal (1906-1975), regarded Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, not the Jewish state, as the greatest threat to his kingdom. And today, Saudis are far more concerned with threats from Iran and it proxies in Yemen and Iraq than they are with Israel.

After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Arab leaders met in Khartoum, where they adopted their reflexive “Three Noes” with regard to Israel. “No recognition, No negotiation and No reconciliation.” With the exception of Egypt, this remained their unanimous, unwavering and unhelpful position for the next 15 years. Only in 1981 did the then Saudi Crown Prince Fahd (1921-2005) put forth a fresh proposal by which “all states in the region should be able to live in peace”. Fahd’s plan did not explicitly recognise Israel, but it implied that this was possible after the creation of a Palestinian state and a return to Israel’s 1967 borders.

That was a radical proposal 42 years ago. A watered-down version of Fahd’s plan was adopted in 1982 by Arab leaders meeting in Morocco. Known as the Fez Plan, it remains the Arab League’s policy to this day. President Ronald Reagan called it “the single largest step towards peace on which the Arab World has been able to agree”.

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In 2002, then Crown Prince Abdullah (1924-2015) repeated the Saudi offer to Israel to the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman: “full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with UN resolutions, including Jerusalem, for full normalisation of relations.” The following month Abdullah presented his plan to the Arab Summit in Beirut, where a modified version was unanimously adopted. The Beirut Plan differed from the Fez Plan in that it explicitly stated the conditions under which the Arabs would “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over and sign a peace agreement with Israel”.

At both Fez and Beirut, the Saudi proposals were more forward-leaning than the eventual Arab consensus. In both instances, however, the Saudis led the effort by taking political risks and spending financial capital to convince other Arab leaders to go as far as they did. Neither proposal was fully acceptable to Israel or the United States. However, they remain the most constructive plans put forward by the Arabs to date. King Salman has reaffirmed them more than once.

On top of its own initiatives, Saudi Arabia has almost always supported American efforts to negotiate an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The only notable exception was its breaking off of diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1979 after President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords with Israel. Yet even when Riyadh followed the Arab consensus in severing ties with Cairo, the Saudis did not completely cut off financial aid to Egypt, or expel thousands of Egyptian guest workers from their country.

In 2020, the Trump Administration orchestrated the Abraham Accords, through which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco all normalised relations with Israel. Riyadh implicitly supported the deal by allowing Saudi journalists to write op-eds praising it. It is unlikely it would have materialised had the Saudis strongly objected and Riyadh implicitly supported the settlement by allowing Saudi journalists to praise it.

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In recent years, the benefits for Saudi of making peace with Israel have significantly increased, while the costs have appeared to decline. The latter were largely political: older Saudis who grew up with Nasser’s Arab Nationalism continue to regard unwavering support for Palestine as an essential part of their Arab identity. As the guardians of Mecca, the Saudis cannot ignore widespread sympathy for Palestine in the Muslim world. Nor can they remain indifferent to the status of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

Yet peace with Israel would be a massive boost to Saudi Arabia’s national security. It would improve Saudi Arabia’s relations with its most important security partner, the United States — and reduce opposition to those relations among the Saudi public. What’s more, peace would strengthen Saudi Arabia’s hand against Iran, which since the 1979 Iranian Revolution has challenged Saudi leadership in the Muslim World and sought to extend its influence in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Despite the recent Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, Saudi and Israeli leaders still share many reasons to resist Iran’s pursuit of regional hegemony and nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have another goal in common: suppressing radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Isis, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Like the Shi’a revolutionary government in Tehran, many radical Sunni Islamist groups seek to destroy both Israel and the Arab monarchies. Having suffered from numerous al-Qaeda attacks themselves, the Saudis understand the threat of jihadist militants. They have a long-strained relationship with Iranian-backed Hamas, as well as its junior partner, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Saudi authorities have arrested or deported Hamas supporters in Saudi Arabia and would quietly welcome the organisation’s demise. This gives Saudi Arabia and Israel further grounds for cooperation.

The two nations also have economic interests in common. MBS has staked his political future on the success of Vision 2030, an ambitious development programme that aims to diversify his economy away from oil. But his reforms won’t succeed if the Middle East is consumed by a major war, and therefore it is in his interests to promote lasting peace with Israel.

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Furthermore, to succeed, Vision 2030 will require foreign direct investment, technology transfer, increased non-oil trade, and even more tourists — all of which Israel has in abundance. Another goal of Vision 2030 is the creation of a local defence industry. Saudi Arabia has a defence budget larger than Britain or Germany, but today nearly all its weapons and military equipment are imported. The new General Authority for Military Industries wants to change that — and Israel, with its sophisticated defence industry, is well-placed to help.

Ironically, the terrorist attacks of October 7 have made a Saudi-Israeli peace deal both more desirable — and even more difficult. Those who thought that regional peace could be established without addressing the plight of the Palestinians have been proven wrong. Instead, pro-Palestinian sympathies have been reignited across the Muslim world. It is now unthinkable for any Saudi leader to embrace peace with Israel before meaningful progress is made towards establishing a Palestinian state.

With the terrorist attacks of October 7, Hamas has managed to derail efforts to establish Saudi-Israeli peace. And yet, Saudi Arabia and Israel remain united in their desire to avoid a larger regional conflict, eliminate terrorism, and reinvigorate that peace process.  The case for rapprochement remains compelling and their leaders remain interested in it. But in an increasingly multipolar world, it will require a determined, coordinated, multinational effort to comfort the injured, reassure the fearful, calm the angry and remove the remaining political obstacles to peace.

But the question remains: what does MBS want? At the heart of all Saudi foreign and domestic policy is the instinct to preserve the Al Saud dynasty. The monarchy has sought to achieve this in three ways: by providing security for the Saudi people, by promoting economic development, and by protecting Islam. Foreign policy has played an important role in meeting all three objectives.

Towards this end, King Salman and his son MBS have been racing to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and bring its social policies more in line with global norms. Though this transformation plan, known as Vision 2030, clearly indicates a shift in tactics, the overall strategic objectives of Saudi foreign policy remain largely the same as ever.

Saudi foreign policy cannot be properly understood without a grasp of its volatile regional politics, characterised by hostility between Sunni and Shia Muslim states and, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Saudi Arabia has borders with eight different nations and must defend two long coastlines with limited manpower. In previous decades, Egypt, Iraq, and Israel have stirred up trouble for the Saudis; today, the most likely threats come from Iran, Yemen and the likes of Al-Qaeda and Isis.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, an aggressive, terrorism-sponsoring regime, is an unfortunate neighbour to have. It has challenged Saudi interests in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen through the use of violent proxy forces such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, and its large missile forces sit within easy range of Saudi Arabia’s critical oil and desalination facilities. At times, it has even sought to delegitimise the Sunni Saudi administration of Mecca and disrupt the Hajj. But above all, many in Riyadh fear Tehran’s continuing efforts to enrich uranium.

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Yemen, an impoverished country with a population nearly as large as Saudi Arabia, poses a whole other set of problems. Riyadh has long been concerned about drug and weapons smuggling out of the civil war-stricken country, as well as illegal immigration. But now it fears that Al Qaeda forces pushed out of Saudi Arabia have reestablished themselves in Yemen. On top of this, Houthi insurgents in the country, who are armed and funded by Tehran, and harbour irredentist claims to southern Saudi Arabia, are threatening to establish an Iranian-aligned government on its southern border.

Yet it was Al Qaeda, not Iran or Yemen, that has come closest to overthrowing the Saudi government. Between 2003 and 2007, Al Qaeda launched a terrorist campaign that killed dozens of Saudi citizens and more than 100 Saudi police officers. It targeted oil facilities, government offices, and even the American consulate in Jeddah where five employees were killed. The Saudis are determined not to let this happen again, doing its utmost to challenge Al Qaeda’s ideology and prevent the establishment of foreign training camps and operations bases.

Faced with such threats, where does diplomacy fit in? Throughout its history, Saudi Arabia has relied on powerful friends for support. It is unlikely the nation would ever have been established without British political, financial, and military support in the aftermath of the First World War. And since the Second World War, American support has proved vital, especially when Egypt threatened Saudi Arabia’s border in the Sixties, and when Iraq did the same in the Nineties. Likewise, British and American counterterrorism assistance helped to defeat Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

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Saudi foreign policy has also made astute use of its abundance of oil. No nation exerts greater influence on the price of oil — and therefore global energy prices — than Saudi Arabia, and it uses this to gain influence abroad. Not only has oil allowed this militarily-weak nation to maintain a global network of dependent customers, but its vast oil income means it can effectively distribute large amounts of cash to allies quickly and quietly. In their eyes, it is Riyadh’s ability to influence oil prices and finance its friends that has made it worth defending.

Yet oil money isn’t the only source of Saudi foreign influence: control over Mecca and Medina as well as the annual Hajj pilgrimage give it a unique position in the Muslim world. Like the Ottoman Sultans before them, Saudi kings have adopted the title Protector of the Two Holy Mosques, one of the most respected accolades in Islam. In the past, Saudi Arabia explicitly used religion to confront secular Arab nationalism in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as during the atheist Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Today, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Islamic Development Bank and the Muslim World League are all based in Saudi Arabia and are often used to promote its interests abroad.

When Salman bin Abdulaziz became King of Saudi Arabia in 2015, his mastery of diplomacy was immediately put to the test. At that time, the Arab world was in a state of chaos not seen since the 13th-century Mongol invasions: the continued existence of Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen were in question; Isis had become the first terrorist organisation with its own capital city and oilfields, and Iran-backed Houthi insurgents had just seized Yemen’s capital of Sanaa and were on the verge of capturing the entire country.

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Yet Saudi Arabia’s traditional foreign policy tools were in poor condition. The Saudi budget was deep in the red, with oil prices ending the year below $40 a barrel. And Riyadh was alarmed by the alacrity with which the Obama administration had abandoned Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak to the Arab Spring and withdrawn from Iraq. Those decisions had handed one of Saudi’s neighbours over to the Muslim Brotherhood and the other to Isis and Iran. On top of that, King Salman’s plans to modernise the economy and reform its society had placed him at odds with many conservative religious scholars. All of this was made worse in 2018 when the assassination of Khashoggi turned MBS into a global pariah.

Over the past few years, King Salman and his son have sought to revive Saudi’s fortunes. They have not abandoned the three traditional principles of Saudi foreign policy, but they have, however, significantly changed how they rely on allies, influence energy markets, and promote Islam.

Most obviously, in an increasingly multipolar world, the Saudis have adopted a multi-partner foreign policy. For much of its history, the kingdom was firmly aligned with the West economically and politically. While those relations remain important, they are no longer exclusive. Today, China is the kingdom’s largest trading partner, and it is the Chinese who have more recently developed the kingdom’s railroads, ports and telecommunications networks. Last year, Riyadh and Beijing officially raised the level of their relations to that of strategic partnership.

Elsewhere, in an effort to increase their influence over global energy markets, the Saudis have created a new partnership with Russia known as Opec Plus. Saudi energy policy always seeks to keep oil prices as high as possible without driving its customers into recession or promoting the development of alternative energy sources. Now, their expanded cartel has brought together the world’s two largest oil exporters. It has allowed Saudi Arabia and Russia to weather the Covid crisis and maintain higher oil prices than either could have done individually. It has also allowed Saudi to effectively remain neutral in the Ukraine war: it has provided financial aid to Kyiv, but still purchased discounted Russian oil for its own use.

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Finally, the version of Islam Saudi Arabia promotes has also shifted in recent years, becoming more tolerant of both other Muslims and other religions. At home, women can now drive and the religious police have largely disappeared. The sermons preached in Mecca have become less conservative and less anti-Shia, while rabbis and priests are allowed to quietly conduct their own services. Overseas, Saudi missionaries have become less active and less strident while Saudi charities have become much more tightly controlled.

The results of these tactical adjustments have been overwhelmingly positive. Doubting American resolve in deterring Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Riyadh has sought closer ties with Tehran, in a deal that was brokered by Beijing. As a result, the war in Yemen has largely come to an end, thus securing the kingdom’s southern border and freeing up resources for its economic development. The Saudi-Russian energy alliance, meanwhile, has clearly helped elevate oil prices, bolstering the sovereign wealth fund which has eroded the blowback from Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Saudi relations with Iraq, Qatar, Pakistan, India and Turkey have all also improved, while security and economic relations with Israel have also quietly grown.

Ultimately, though, Riyadh has no intention of abandoning its close relations with the West, which remains the source of most of its military equipment. Just this month, Washington and Riyadh jointly sponsored a conference in Jeddah seeking to end the war in Ukraine. It is increasingly clear, however, that the Saudis are seeking to diversify their security relations. All the signs suggest that Saudi Arabia is following a more independent, Saudi-first foreign policy, one which doesn’t see any qualms with having Russia as a partner on the one hand, and Britain on the other.