Biden should insist on meeting with the king rather than his son, to avoid losing face and appearing to have succumbed to realpolitik amid the ongoing energy crisis, as other US presidents have done since the Second World War. The first step would be to neither endorse Mohammed bin Salman nor forget his crimes, such as the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the seven-year Yemen siege.
But Washington has plenty of other options to deal with the region's authoritarian rulers. It is understandable that the US now hesitates to use force to topple unwanted and unruly dictators, following its abysmal record in Afghanistan and Iraq. With US military aid, Saudi Arabia bombarded Yemen with air strikes but failed to achieve its objective, namely restoring a puppet government in Sanaa. US allies in the region did everything they could to abort this wave of democratisation and return to the status quo ante, with Saudi Arabia taking the lead by helping to restore military rule in Egypt and tightening its control over its own population.īiden should push Mohammed bin Salman to introduce small political reforms that could at least put checks on the crown prince's autocracy Yet, this flawed logic guarantees neither the flow of oil nor the security of Israel.ĭespite US military support for rulers in Riyadh and Cairo, among other capitals, the region exploded in 2011 with public demands for dignity, justice and democracy. For decades, successive US presidents have failed to learn lessons, clinging to the illusion that stability in the Arab world requires authoritarian rulers to control both the people and the resources for the benefit of the West and Israel.
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