A Fatal Abandonment of American Leadership
The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi has shocked many in the United States, but it should not come as a surprise. Indeed, it is a logical outgrowth of the policies that the Saudi leadership has been pursuing for the past two years, and the support that it has found for its approach in the Trump White House and parts of the American establishment.
In April 2016, President Barack Obama was making his final visit to Saudi Arabia. He sat opposite King Salman, a septuagenarian battling illness who tended to sit stoic and staid throughout meetings. Despite the king’s poor health, the two of them went back and forth on various issues, many of which included disagreements—on the Iran nuclear agreement, the counter-ISIS campaign, Yemen, Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On several of these issues, Obama counseled the Saudis to pursue dialogue with the Iranians instead of sliding further into the sectarian war that was engulfing the region. Then Obama raised human rights.
The Saudis had recently executed 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite sheikh, and imprisoned a high-profile blogger critical of the kingdom. In blunt language, Obama protested these actions, and warned the king that Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record was going to bring greater international isolation, since the United States and Europe wouldn’t defend the Saudis’ actions internationally. The sustainability of the U.S.-Saudi relationship was potentially at stake. I was sitting in a long row of U.S. officials along one side of the room and noticed one of the Saudis opposite me stirring irritably in his seat. It was the deputy crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman—widely known by his initials, MbS.
I sat in hundreds of bilateral meetings during eight years in the White House, and I never saw anything quite like what happened next. Usually, no one, he said. He argued that the Saudi public demanded vengeance against criminals, and those who had been beheaded had to be killed for the sake of stability in the kingdom. He dismissed any concerns about jailed bloggers and journalists. With condescension, he offered to arrange for Obama to get a briefing on Saudi justice.
