Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo
Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a G20 session with other heads of state in Buenos Aires, November 30, 2018.
The Biden administration is continuing its efforts to isolate the Putin regime. The decision to ban Russian oil and gas was so telegraphed that prices dropped after the news on Thursday. But the benchmark remains high, around $115 per barrel at the time of writing, leading the administration to press forward with negotiations to restart the Iran nuclear deal and even reach out to Venezuela. These efforts appear to be bearing fruit—negotiations are ongoing with Iran, and Venezuela released two American prisoners on Tuesday in a show of good faith.
Biden is also pushing to reframe zero-carbon energy as protecting national security. “To protect our economy over the long term, we need to become energy independent,” his comms team recently posted on Twitter. “It should motivate us to accelerate our transition to a clean energy future.”
However, the rest of his diplomatic push is not going so well. Biden has been personally trying to convince Saudi Arabia’s dictator Mohammed bin Salman and the leaders of the United Arab Emirates to increase oil production, so as to keep a lid on prices. On Tuesday, not only did they both decline to reconsider their previous agreement with Putin to restrict supply, they contemptuously refused to take a phone call from Biden—and did take one from Putin.
Now, the UAE has reportedly since reversed course, announcing that it supports an increase in production. But the Saudi regime has said no such thing. It’s time America stopped putting up with this ridiculous abuse.
The apparent proximate cause of bin Salman’s annoyance is the fact that people keep criticizing him over the gruesome assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In a recent (typically credulous) interview with The Atlantic, bin Salman insisted that he didn’t do it. “It hurt me and it hurt Saudi Arabia, from a feelings perspective,” he said.
This is almost certainly a crock. We have audio and visual evidence, provided by the Turkish government, of a team of Saudi assassins entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and Khashoggi seemingly being cut to pieces while still alive. The CIA, which is not exactly known for its hostility to dictators, concluded that bin Salman ordered the assassination personally. We also know that like most dictators, bin Salman is hypersensitive to criticism and prone to violence, and Khashoggi was a famous critic and Saudi exile. Means, motive, opportunity, it’s all there.
It is just patently obvious that bin Salman thinks he can push around the American government however he wants. And it’s not hard to see why. The Saudi government has been dumping oceans of cash into the Washington, D.C., lobbying trough for decades, and firms from one side of K Street to the other, of all ideological stripes, have been eagerly gobbling it up.
Moreover, after bin Salman consolidated power in a ruthless palace coup in 2017, he went on a PR tour in the U.S., where he was met with jaw-dropping credulousness in a way that revealed our elites at their very worst. He was warmly embraced by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates, among many other political and business leaders. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, and The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg all gave him respectful interviews.
Bin Salman might be forgiven for thinking that the American foreign-policy and business elites are so preposterously corrupt and/or stupid that they can basically be “bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.” But undoubtedly one motive for so many of the liberals who bought into his dime-store reformer shtick was the desire to believe that there was some nobler purpose behind the Saudi-U.S. alliance beyond narrow self-interest.
There isn’t. From its very start in the 1940s, the alliance has always rested upon a cynical deal, that America will provide diplomatic and military cover for a brutal, fossilized Saudi regime, so long as the monarchy enables America’s addiction to cheap oil. The only reason for America to tolerate the relationship is for moments like these, when the country needs the spigots turned on. But now, in this pinch, bin Salman is refusing to live up to his end of the bargain. America and the world are facing a gigantic oil supply crunch as a reaction to a totally unjustifiable war of aggression, and the Saudi dictator is thumbing his nose at us.
No self-respecting great power would tolerate this kind of behavior from a client state, and especially not one requiring so many grim compromises with its stated values. Saudi Arabia won’t cut America a break? Fine. Let’s withdraw all support for its endless quasi-genocidal war in Yemen, restart the Iran nuclear deal, and pull back American forces protecting its oil infrastructure, just for a start. If bin Salman doesn’t get the message, there are more pointed options that are easy to imagine. It’s a matter of basic national dignity.
Over the medium term, this whole wretched story further underlines the importance of the green transition away from fossil fuels. Cheap Saudi oil is against even a slightly enlightened conception of America’s national interest. Climate change, of course, poses a clear and present danger to American society and humanity as a whole. As much of that oil as possible should be kept in the ground.
Moreover, keeping gas prices low so Americans can drive around filth-spewing 6,000-pound SUVs and trucks means we reap a daily harvest of asthma diagnoses and grisly pedestrian deaths. A slower, more efficient, more walkable America would be both healthier and less reliant on the goodwill of murderous foreign dictators.
But even if you believe that middle-class commuters must be pacified in the name of political expediency, if at the moment of desperation the Saudis won’t deliver, it’s time to disentangle this ugly compromise.
