When he campaigned for the presidency last year, then-candidate Joe Biden was unequivocal in his denunciation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a tyrant who orchestrated the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
By invoking MBS as a symbol of the Trump administration’s reliance on a geopolitics of cynicism and appeasement of regional despots, Mr. Biden vowed that when it came to human rights and foreign policy, the contrast between the two administrations would be more than rhetorical.
Last week, the Biden administration declassified the U.S. intelligence report long suppressed by the Trump administration that implicated MBS’ intelligence network in the brutal murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.
“Are you going to give me drugs?” Khashoggi asked his torturers just before gasping the universal gasp of civilian vulnerability: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” The transcript of the murder also captured the exchange between the killers describing the next steps in the process: “Joints will be separated,” one of the agents said. “If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished.”
The killers were better at disposing of Khashoggi’s body than evading responsibility for eliminating one of the Saudi regime’s most prominent critics. Turkish and American intelligence services quickly determined that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s detention, confirming his reputation as a hot-headed thug who would fit comfortably in the ranks of the brutal young capos on “The Sopranos.”
After an international outcry that threatened his future legitimacy once he took over, eight Saudi men who were part of the hit squad were put on trial and five sentenced to death for their roles in a killing the government initially denied took place, but later prosecuted as a “rogue operation.” The death sentences were quickly commuted to 20 years in jail because Khashoggi’s family “agreed” to the more lenient sentences.
After a short stint as an international pariah who, inexplicably, still had friends in the Trump White House, MBS was once again welcome at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he assured the world’s elite that he was a reliable bulwark against Iran, an implacable foe of Islamic terrorists and a guarantor of stable oil prices.
And, yes, MBS assured them, he was always in the market to buy any advanced weapons system a Western democracy was willing to sell to keep the humanitarian crisis in Yemen going.
Still, no one dreaded the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election more than the Saudis. They believed if Mr. Biden was serious about his campaign promises to hold MBS responsible for Khashoggi’s death along with other crimes against humanity that could be traced to the regime, they could expect a long chill in American/Saudi relations.
Mr. Biden was elected. Weapons deals were canceled. The U.S. withdrew its military support of the Saudis’ Yemen operation. The Khashoggi report was declassified. Additional members of MBS’ inner circle had sanctions imposed on them including frozen bank accounts and the ability to travel. Riyadh braced for an even bigger rupture to relations between the two countries.
Everything proceeded as expected except the one thing the regime dreaded above all else — the sanctioning of MBS himself. No punishment beyond symbolic slaps on the wrists were levied by Washington.
By the time Mr. Biden got on the phone with the elderly King Salman last week, it was clear the administration had decided that MBS, his murderous son, was too big to depose without risking an uprising by elements within that society that the regime is constantly putting down.
America’s fear of destabilizing a “friend,” which might result in a cascade of unintended consequences in that region a la Libya, has given MBS the diplomatic cover he needs. However high-minded the rhetoric gets during a political campaign about human rights and tackling injustice, it always boils down to the realpolitik of American interests in the long run.
As MBS probably suspected all along, he’s still useful to Washington. Despite his complicity in so much evil in the region, not a single sanction has been announced against MBS personally by the Biden White House because of the awkwardness of imposing sanctions on the crown prince among dozens most likely to become head of state at his father’s inevitable passing.
This, obviously, is not the moral-clarity-imbued foreign policy voters were promised last year. Despite the Biden White House’s insistence that the relationship with the Saudis can expect constant “recalibration” as long as MBS is a major player in the regime, this looks nothing like the “accountability” anyone expected for the murder of an American journalist.
What is it about Democrats that makes many of them lose their nerve once the campaign is over and they’re actually sitting in the office they fought for so tenaciously? Why the willingness to compromise on principles they once insisted — or at least implied — were bedrock values?
Mohammed bin Salman, who will quickly rival the equally young dictator of North Korea as the world’s most reviled leader, benefited from both the opportunistic corruption of the Trump administration and the moral triangulation of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy team. Given even binary choices between right and wrong, the Biden foreign policy team is just as likely to pick what’s expedient or symbolic over the right thing if that’s perceived as projecting “weakness.”
Last week, Mr. Biden continued a presidential tradition of late of launching military airstrikes without consulting Congress. This time American forces bombed targets in eastern Syria believed to be harboring Iranian-backed militias. Seventeen militia members were killed.
Some Democratic leaders quickly pointed out that the Biden administration’s failure to consult Congress has the same stink of presumption that permeated the unilateral military actions of the previous three administrations.
The Biden White House responded that it was payback for Iranian proxies launching drone and missile attacks on Saudi airports and shooting rockets at a U.S. airbase in Iraq that injured an American soldier and killed a Filipino contractor.
It is more of the tit-for-tat that the “best diplomatic minds” of every other generation seem never able to overcome in the drift toward war. More rationalizations and justifications for shooting missiles into the dark to kill enemies who may or may not be there sound familiar regardless of whether Biden, Trump, Obama or Bush do it.
Meanwhile, Jamal Khashoggi remains, at best, a symbol of aspiration for an administration that promises it will hold his killer accountable the second it becomes convenient to do so. It may take awhile, but at least the administration’s intentions are good ...
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631. Twitter @Tony_NormanPG.
First Published: March 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m.
