This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 20th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The long-strange relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is difficult to square

with America's foreign policy aims, especially in Syria.

Emma Ashford, a visiting research fellow at the Cato Institute, says in general, so-called Petro States make bad allies.

So we're going to have four years into this area and civil war, and it doesn't show any signs

that it's going to end anytime soon.

U.S. forces are now involved in bombing in both Iraq and Syria with the rise of ISIS.

And there's been a lot of talk recently about what the U.S. should be doing in Syria, should it be doing more, should

it be doing less.

And my research shows that actually part of the reason we're in this situation is that some of

our closest allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Their actions over the last three, four years in Syria are part of the reason why the situation

is so dire.

All right, so how long has the United States had its, I think it's fair to say, odd at best relationship

with Saudi Arabia?

Well, the US relationship with Saudi Arabia has basically existed since World War II.

And the reason was the Saudis produced masses of amounts of oil to help fuel the Allied

war effort.

During World War II.

The relationship has continued to this day,

even though for about the last 10 years,

...