The global transition from the post-Cold War order, whereby US hegemony is gradually displaced by multipolarity, is producing so many simultaneous and complex geopolitical shifts that it’s hard to keep track of them all, let alone grasp their far-reaching consequences. Evidently a new one can be added to the list: the abrogation of Saudi Arabia’s longstanding oil-for-security consensus with the United States – an agreement that’s otherwise stood the test of time since the seminal meeting between FDR and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud aboard the USS Quincy in 1945.