Leadership personality, power, and economic interdependence. Panel data analysis of the foreign policy behavior between Saudi Arabia and the United States from 1965 to 2005

Based on this study, the most important variable that drives the foreign policy behavior between the United States and Saudi Arabia toward cooperation is military power which could be understood when considering the hegemony of the United States in the region and the Saudis need for security. Leadership personality is the second most important variable in driving the foreign policy behavior between the two countries toward conflict or cooperation. Also, Crisis events such as Gulf War, and the terrorist attack of 9/11 are important in driving foreign policy behavior between the two countries toward conflict or cooperation. Finally, oil price is important in driving the foreign policy behavior between the two countries toward conflict. Hence, it seems to me that the future foreign policy behavior between the two countries will depend mostly in the change in these variables, and observing this change could enable scholars to anticipate the outcome.;The findings of this study indicate that realism theory has provided us with the most important variable which is the military power. Also, realism provides us with another important variable which is the energy consumption. It seems to me that energy consumption is more related to the wealth especially when considering the importance of oil prices for the two countries. Thus, within the debate in the field of international relations, this study has found that the explanatory power of military power and wealth tends to be among the most important variables in explaining the foreign policy behavior between the United States and Saudi Arabia. This finding could be also applicable to the foreign policy behavior between the United States and other counties in the region. Other important finding in this study is that leadership personality is the second most important variable in explaining the foreign policy behavior between the two countries, which seems to invalidate one basic assumption of realism which is its call for ignoring the impact of factors inside the states such as leadership personality. Thus, this study argues that leadership personality is a main variable that need to be investigated in order to understand the foreign policy behavior between the United States and other countries in the region.