What's driving France and Saudi Arabia's deepening ties?

On 16 June, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. This marked MbS’s second official visit to France since July 2022.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler visiting France is an opportunity for Macron and MbS to discuss many issues of interest and concern to both Riyadh and Paris.

These include bilateral trade, business, and investment ties, counterterrorism, Lebanon’s situation, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and stability in the Middle East against the backdrop of Saudi Arabia and Iran’s 10 March diplomatic agreement.

Later this week, MbS will attend the New Global Financing Pact. This two-day summit, which Macron is hosting, will bring together approximately 50 heads of state and government with the aim of reaching a “new consensus” on facing climate change, poverty, and other global challenges.

"MbS's reception in Paris speaks to the depth of Saudi Arabia and France's multidimensional partnership"

Economic benefits for France

MbS’s reception in Paris speaks to the depth of Saudi Arabia and France’s multidimensional partnership. Security and defence are important to this relationship, with France’s “arms diplomacy” greatly contributing to the strength of ties between Paris and Riyadh. In 2021, French arms sales to the Kingdom stood at €780 million.

Yet, non-defence sectors are also bringing the two countries closer. One of France’s major incentives for bolstering relations with MbS and Saudi Arabia has to do with the Kingdom’s grandiose economic diversification agenda, Vision 2030. France seeks to capitalise on opportunities presented by Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation.

“There’s a realisation that [Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF)] is one of the largest public investment funds in the world,” Dr Nader Hashemi, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, said in an interview with The New Arab.

“Macron, as a leader of France and a representative of neo-liberal economic interests, wants to make sure that French businesses are at the front of the line to access those economic opportunities that are opening up in Saudi Arabia.”

France’s culture can give the European country a unique place in Vision 2030 while tourist ties between France and Saudi Arabia have the potential to grow within the context of the significant societal and economic changes taking place in the Kingdom.

“French culture is considered as very befitting to the cultural boom happening in Saudi,” Dr Aziz Alghashian, a fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told TNA. “In other words, a growing Saudi cultural space is an opportunity for French investment.”

Saudi foreign policy aims

It is difficult to analyse MbS’s visit to France without considering the current level of tension between the Biden administration and Saudi Arabia. For many US officials, Saudi Arabia’s deepening partnerships with Washington’s enemies and major geopolitical rivals is unsettling.

At a time in which Saudi Arabia’s strengthening relationships with China and Russia are causing much concern in the US, MbS’s visit to Paris can help Saudi Arabia makes its foreign policy more autonomous from Washington while generating hardly any controversy in the US and other Western countries that are among France’s allies.

“It’s considerably less risky than when MbS meets with Putin or goes to China because France is a NATO ally and Franco-Saudi defence ties are longstanding,” explained Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE.

“Saudi Arabia looks for new diplomatic and defence partners, finding relatively independent NATO countries like France to offset US influence is one of the least risky paths going forward.”

Under MbS’s leadership, Saudi Arabia has grown more assertive and willing to constantly remind Washington that the Kingdom is not any country’s client state. Saudi Arabia investing in its relationships with a diverse host of influential countries worldwide can better enable Riyadh to demonstrate that it has many actors to work with.

"The visit shows that Riyadh has other options, not only China, but among key US allies in the West. That gives the Saudis leverage in dealing with Washington"

By making his second visit to France in 11 months, MbS is sending a message to Washington that if he is not welcome in the US there are other Western liberal democracies that are more than happy to give MbS the red-carpet treatment while it is business as usual.

In the process, such an approach to foreign policy in an increasingly multipolar world helps Saudi Arabia gain leverage over Washington and convince the Biden administration that the US needs Saudi Arabia as much as the Kingdom needs America.

“The Saudis want Washington to take them more seriously, to see them as more than an afterthought on global issues, to be consulted only when energy prices are high, or as a source of revenue for American defence contractors,” Ferial Saeed, a former senior American diplomat, told TNA.

“The visit shows that Riyadh has other options, not only China, but among key US allies in the West. That gives the Saudis leverage in dealing with Washington. They are also diversifying their relationships on the merits, in response to an evolving global order in which the US could lose strategic dominance. They are hedging against getting geopolitically sidelined in the future,” added Saeed.

MbS wants Washington to know that US business interests are at stake. Put simply, if the Americans fail to play by the rules laid out by the Saudi leadership, the US will lose out while countries like France and China reap huge benefits from Vision 2030.

“MbS is sending a message to Washington: Another Western liberal democracy has rolled out the red carpet and there’s been no serious discussion [about] MbS’s human rights record [being] an obstacle to being hosted by a major world power,” said Dr Hashemi.

“I think he wants the exact same thing in Washington. He wants the Biden administration and Congress to basically do what Macron has done for MbS in the context of France: Ignore the human rights record, focus on the business interests and the strategic [partnerships] that exist.”

Lebanon

France and Saudi Arabia both have vested interests in Lebanon and want to work together to further their interests in relation to the Mediterranean country.

Paris and Riyadh share concerns about an institutional power vacuum in Lebanon following the failure earlier this month of lawmakers in Beirut to elect a new president. As the French presidency put it, any continued absence of a Lebanese president “remains the major obstacle to resolving the country's severe socio-economic crisis”.

France and Saudi Arabia both have their own forms of influence in Lebanon, giving Paris and Riyadh opportunities to coordinate their strategies toward the country in a bilateral manner, which has already been happening over the years.

Macron’s government is clearly looking to MbS to play a role in terms of helping Lebanon move past its current situation. Looking ahead, Dr Alghashian believes that more than any other file in the Middle East, Lebanon is where France and Saudi Arabia can be expected to work together most closely.

“Both have a stake in the stability of Lebanon, or at least, not making it worse. However, the Saudi-French cooperation over Lebanon speaks to the changes in international actors’ involvement in the region. While the US is still the main international actor in the region, it is clear that US involvement has its limits. We have seen that in the case of China's involvement in the Saudi-Iran deal, and we can anticipate French involvement with Lebanon - with a regional blessing and support,” said Dr Alghashian.

"France seeks to capitalise on opportunities presented by Saudi Arabia's economic transformation"

Ukraine

The conflict in Ukraine fits into the picture too. Against the backdrop of Saudi Arabia’s chief diplomat visiting Iran on 17 June, which occurred several months after Riyadh and Tehran signed their renormalisation agreement in Beijing, MbS discussing the Ukraine war while visiting Macron in Paris speaks to the Kingdom’s assertiveness in diplomacy.

Saudi Arabia is showing how it is an important actor on the international stage. The Kingdom will remain relevant to countries in the West and all over the world while also demonstrating its willingness to work on regional and global issues with virtually all governments regardless of their history of relations with Riyadh. Reportedly, France is hoping that the Kingdom can leverage its relationship with Russia in ways that are constructive vis-à-vis Ukraine.

“I think the visit with France shows a lot about how maybe European countries are realising that disagreements about human rights, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a host of issues are not sufficient to completely stop the relationship,” explained Dr Courtney Freer, a fellow at Emory University, in a TNA interview.

“I think also potentially because the war between Ukraine and Russia will likely continue for a bit, there is this willingness to reach across to the Saudis.”

While the Biden administration has signalled its frustration with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states not siding with Kyiv against Moscow beginning in February 2022, the French leadership seems to be signalling that Paris does not necessarily find non-Western states’ neutrality toward Ukraine as so problematic.

Welcoming MbS to Paris and discussing the Russian-Ukrainian conflict illustrates this point. “This visit potentially shows that the fault lines between the West and the Middle East are not necessarily so severe and clearly drawn,” added Dr Freer.

“Macron is also positioning himself as the Western leader with entrée and credibility in the Global South and who is comfortable with nonalignment,” explained Saeed in an interview with TNA. “Closer ties to Saudi Arabia fit into this strategy.”

The significance of MbS's visit to France

Tensions between Macron and MbS related to the Jamal Khashoggi affair seem to be mostly irrelevant now that nearly five years have passed since that gruesome murder. The Saudi leader visiting France is “yet another sign of MbS's full-scale reputational rehabilitation” in the post-Khashoggi period, said Bohl.

“With the exception of some Scandinavian states, I think we should expect that Saudi Arabia is back to business as usual across Europe.”

France and Saudi Arabia’s relationship is set to continue flourishing down the road. There is no doubt that many human rights organisations will continue viewing Macron’s warm reception of MbS as a moral failure on the part of a prominent Western leader.

"Human rights organisations will continue viewing Macron's warm reception of MbS as a moral failure on the part of a prominent Western leader"

Paris’s relationship with Riyadh will continue to anger groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. But France is focused on many of its interests that Saudi Arabia can help advance without letting human rights prevent Paris from moving closer to the Kingdom.

“The French are willing to maintain [this relationship with Saudi Arabia] for the economic benefits obviously for the defence industry but also related to Vision 2030 and the Saudi bid to host Expo 2030,” Dr Freer told TNA.

“I think at this point the French have realised that Saudi Arabia can’t be ignored as a global actor and potentially see that rather than taking the approach of, say, the Biden administration, which is essentially keeping them at arm’s length, why not try to have a closer relationship with the Saudis, try to work with them, and potentially benefit economically, also potentially try to work together on some geopolitical issues?”

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics.

Follow him on Twitter: @GiorgioCafiero