At the beginning of the Cold War in 1950, with Saudi oil exports starting to flow, President Harry Truman extended an explicit American security guarantee to King Ibn Saud. “No threat to your Kingdom,” the president wrote, “could occur which would not be a matter of immediate concern to the United States.”3 That commitment, at the time aimed at preventing those resources from falling into Soviet hands, continued after the Cold War. The current extensive U.S. security engagement with the Arab
