Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) “approved an
operation … to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” according to
a scathing new report from Joe Biden administration. Yet the President says the
US will not sanction the Saudi government, cognizant of the fact that any
direct punishment could risk Saudi Arabia’s cooperation in confronting Iran.
Biden is grapple with the reality that Saudi Arabia is
needed to achieve certain US objectives in the Middle East. This is a change
from Biden’s criticism of Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail. The Khashoggi
affair highlights a persistent oddity in the US foreign policy.
The Trump administration was reluctant to confront Saudi
Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi. Beyond revoking the visas of some Saudi
officials implicated in Khashoggi’s death, Trump did nothing to punish the
kingdom for Khashoggi’s torture, assassination and dismemberment. Trump and
other White House officials reminded critics that Saudi Arabia buys billions of
dollars weapons from the US.
Biden has taken a
slightly tougher line, approving the release of the intelligence report that
blames MBS for Khashoggi’s murder and sanctioning 76 lower-level Saudi
officials. Saudi Arabia isn’t the only nation to get a free pass from the US
for its terrible misdeeds. The US has for decades maintained close ties with
some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.
Ever since the United States emerged from the Cold War as
the world’s dominant military and economic power, consecutive American
presidents have seen financial and geopolitical benefit in overlooking the bad
deeds of brutal regimes. Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran was a close
US ally. Shah Reza Pahlavi ruled harshly, using his secret police to torture
and murder political dissidents. President Nixon hoped that Iran would be the
“Western policeman in the Persian Gulf.”
After the shah’s overthrow, the Reagan administration in the
1980s became friendly with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The US supported him
with intelligence during Iraq’s war with Iran and looked the other way at his
use of chemical weapons. And before Syria’s intense bloody civil war – which
has killed an estimated 400,000 people and featured grisly chemical weapon
attacks by the government – its authoritarian regime enjoyed relatively
friendly relations with the US Syria has been on the State Department’s list of
state sponsors of terrorism since 1979. But US presidents i.e. Nixon, Carter,
Bush and Clinton visited President Bashar al-Assad’s father, who ruled from
1971 until his death in 2000.
Why Saudi
Arabia matters
Before the alleged assassination of Khashoggi by Saudi
operatives, the 35-year-old crown prince was cultivating a reputation as a
moderate reformer. He has made newsworthy changes in the conservative Arab
kingdom, allowing women to drive, combating corruption and curtailing some
powers of the religious police. Still, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s
most authoritarian regimes.
Saudi Arabia ranks just above North Korea on political
rights, civil liberties and other measures of freedom, according to the
democracy watchdog Freedom House. The same report ranks both Iran and China
ahead of the Saudis. But its wealth, strategic Middle East location and
petroleum exports keep the Saudis as a vital US ally.
President Obama visited Saudi Arabia more than any other
American US president – four times in eight years – to discuss everything from
Iran to oil production.
American realpolitik
This kind of foreign policy – one based on practical,
self-interested principles rather than moral or ideological concerns – is
called “realpolitik.” Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Nixon, was a
master of realpolitik, which drove that administration to normalize its
relationship with China. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had ended
in 1949 when Chinese communist revolutionaries took power. Then, as now, China
was incredibly repressive. Only 16 countries – including Saudi Arabia – are
less free than China, according to Freedom House. Iran, a country the US wants
Saudis to help in keeping in check, ranks ahead of China. But China is also the
world’s most populous nation and a nuclear power.
Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, sought to exploit a growing
rift between China and the Soviet Union. Today Washington retains the important,
if occasionally rocky, relationship Kissinger forged with Beijing, despite its
ongoing persecution of Muslim minority groups. American realpolitik applies to
Latin America, too. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the U.S. regularly
backed Central and South American military dictators who tortured and killed
citizens to “defend” the Americas from communism.
US not ‘so innocent’
US presidents tend to
underplay their relationships with repressive regimes, lauding lofty “American
values” instead. That’s the language former President Barack Obama used in 2018
to criticize Trump’s embrace of Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir
Putin, citing America’s “commitment to certain values and principles like the
rule of law and human rights and democracy.” But Trump defended his
relationship with Russia, tacitly invoking American realpolitik. “You think our
country’s so innocent?” he asked on Fox News.
The US has maintained close ties to numerous regimes, and
still does, who’s values and policies conflict with America’s constitutional
guarantees of democracy, freedom of speech, the right to due process and many
others.
