The U.S.-Saudi relations (1945-early 21st century)

Introduction. The Middle East has attracted attention in all historical periods of human society. In ancient times, the region was one of the centers of the emergence of the first centers of statehood; in the Middle Ages, it stood out for the creation of large-sized empires; in modern times, it was penetrated by leading European colonial powers, and, finally, in modern times, it was characterized by an intensive process of formation of a significant number of young sovereign states that were actively seeking allies in the form of powerful world powers to strengthen their independence and modernize their socio-economic and political structures. The favorable geopolitical position of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict that broke out in 1948 initiated the active penetration of the United States and other world powers into it.

The materials and methods. The goal of the research is to analyze the formation and evolution of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia in the trade, economic, political, diplomatic and military-technical spheres. A number of methods were used in the research, in particular, problemchronological, periodization method, narrative, comparative-historical, historical-systemic ones, etc.

The research results. The evolution of US-Saudi relations from the second half of the 1940s to the beginning of the 21st century in the trade, economic, political, diplomatic and military-technical spheres has been presented using the analysis of domestic historiography on the topic of the article, as well as a number of American references in the English language. The study of the development of three conditional blocks of US-Saudi relations has made it possible to focus on segments of coinciding interests and issues on which there are discrepancies.

Discussion and conclusion. The rapprochement between the United States and the KSA after World War II was absolutely natural and justified, despite the significant differences between these states in cultural and civilizational terms. Saudi Arabia was attractive to the United States in terms of its geopolitical location, wealth of energy resources, and negative attitude towards communist ideology. The United States was a powerful military-political patron state for the KSA, with a developed economy, solid financial resources, and high technologies.

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