Chapter 6 mainly examined the quasi-alliance among Britain, France and Israel in the Middle East. Based on the declassified archives of the United States, this chapter examines the quasi-alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and takes the bilateral relations as an example to test the formation, management, efficacy and termination of quasi-alliance. As early as 1967, Liska, a researcher of alliance theory, predicted that as a tool to contain and balance other countries, alliance would develop from a formal alliance with written covenants to a vague alliance without written covenants. This was tested in the quasi-alliance relations between big and small countries during the Cold War. In the 1970s, some western scholars found that “Lebanon pursues neutrality, but historically it has supported the West; Saudi Arabia has declared a policy of neutrality, but it has leased land to the US military as an air base. Policy-makers have never seen the principle of nonalignment as an obstacle to non-alignment or isolation from international affairs.” This is an earlier qualitative study on the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

During the Cold War, the US-Saudi quasi-alliance was regarded as the model of security cooperation between the western industrialized countries and the Third World countries. The great differences between the two countries in political systems, ideologies, cultural traditions and core values, to a certain extent, prevented a formal alliance between the two countries. Nevertheless, the two countries had established a “special relationship”, a security community that has lasted for decades. As pointed out in a State Department cable of May 2, 1966, the United States and Saudi Arabia had not signed a common defense treaty, just as the United States had not signed a common defense treaty with other countries in the Near East. However, at a press conference on May 8, 1963, President Kennedy pointed out that the United States firmly opposed the use or threat of force by countries in the Near East, implying that the United States was responsible for the security of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom was not a formal ally of the United States, but the US president had repeatedly claimed to defend its territorial integrity and regime security.