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This article examines the origins of the US-Saudi parton-client relationship that developed during the 1940s. It concludes that the emergence of this relationship was due to a combination of domestic and external threats facing Ibn Saud's regime, on the one hand, and the United States'desire to gain access to secure and adequate supplies of petroleum, on the other. Consequently, a relationship was born which was essentially based on the exchange of oil for US security assistance.