Biden’s Commitment to Press Freedom Faces a Test
When President Joe Biden travels to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Palestinian territories in July, he should keep two names in his mind at every step: Jamal Khashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh. Both spoke truth to power, and both were killed in the course of their work as journalists. And though they were killed in drastically different circumstances, both represented the promise of a different Middle East.
The Biden administration says that it centers its foreign policy on the battle between democracy and autocracy, and on the need for a rules-based international order. The reality, however, is that the United States has not-so-democratic allies and outright-autocratic friends. The key for the U.S. is to make sure that it uses its leverage not to preach, lecture, or condescend, but to engage in a wider conversation, convincing these countries of the necessity and the benefit for all of abiding by basic universal values. Biden’s trip, then, is about more than the price of a barrel of oil, regional cooperation, the threat from Iran, or even the release of individual dissidents.
How Biden handles the killings of Khashoggi and Abu Akleh is a test, not just of his promise to support rule of law and accountability, but of his ability to better balance values and realpolitik. Whether Biden succeeds matters not simply for America, the Middle East, and the relationship between the two, but for America’s relationship with the world.
The worst possible approach would be for the U.S. to
