Biden Visits Saudi Arabia

Biden Visits Saudi
Arabia
The U.S. president is due to meet Gulf leaders in Jeddah
before a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman.
By Colm Quinn, the newsletter writer at Foreign Policy.
U.S. President Joe Biden arrives in Israel

U.S. President Joe Biden descends from Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport during Biden's
visit to Israel on July 13. AMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGES
JULY 15, 2022, 5:25 AM
Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, looking at Biden’s Saudi

Arabia visit, the future of U.S. climate policy, Britain’s
next prime minister, and more news worth following from
around the world.
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Biden’s Saudi Reset

U.S. President Joe Biden leaves Israel today for the final leg of his
Middle East tour, stopping in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah for
talks with Gulf leaders followed by separate meetings with Saudi
King Salman and his heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Similar to Biden’s optimistic early domestic agenda, Biden’s
approach to Saudi Arabia has been forced to evolve, as the fallout
from war in Ukraine and a sluggish recovery from the coronavirus
pandemic make Riyadh’s oil wealth more important for
Washington.
Biden famously pledged to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” during a
campaign debate, and he took some of that energy into office: He
declassified a U.S. intelligence report linking Mohammed bin
Salman to the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, froze U.S.
offensive arms sales to the kingdom (for now), declared an end to
U.S. support for Saudi operations in the war in Yemen, and—much
to the crown prince’s annoyance—has only dealt with King Salman,
the current head of state if only in name.
Mohammed bin Salman, for his part, has not tried too hard to cozy
up to a man he seems to have wished had lost the 2020 election. He
has reportedly snubbed Biden’s calls, shouted at U.S. National
Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and (so far) refused Biden’s pleas to
pump more oil to help bring down prices. He’s also more than
hedged his bets on U.S. politics: The fund he oversees has invested
$2 billion in a company run by Jared Kushner, former President
Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
So if there is no love lost between the two men, today will show how
much the crown prince wants to invest in the relationship. Although
the two are expected to meet later today, we should see a
declaration of intent the moment Biden steps off Air Force One.
It’s not yet known who is due to greet Biden off the plane, but such
matters of protocol carry significance: In 2016, when then-U.S.
President Barack Obama was welcomed on the tarmac by the
governor of Riyadh, it was considered a major snub. Trump, by
contrast, was received by King Salman himself on his 2017
presidential visit.
For Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute,
Biden’s controversial visit is just the price of being a superpower,
and the Saudis are too powerful to freeze out. Writing in Foreign
Policy earlier this week, Maksad explored what Biden can gain from
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations—including helping push back
Chinese influence and cajole them into investing some of their oil
profits in the United States.
It’s also, as FP columnist Steven A. Cook wrote last month, a lesson
in the limits of U.S. policymaking. “Biden may have been sincere in
his desire to incorporate values in his foreign policy,” Cook wrote,
“but the bottom line is that there is little he can do to compel
authoritarians bent on political control to respect human rights, and
even less so when said authoritarians are sitting on top of a lot of
oil.”
About that oil. Are Biden’s conversations in Jeddah going to bring
down gas prices? Probably not. That’s not down to Biden’s powers
of persuasion but due to the limits of Saudi Arabia’s oil production
capacity. French President Emmanuel Macron let that fact slip on
camera at last month’s G-7 summit, telling Biden that the United
Arab Emirates was at “maximum” production while the Saudis
could only increase “a little more.” In an ironic twist, the poor global
economic outlook has helped U.S. gas prices plunge by almost 40
cents per gallon since a $5 a gallon average four weeks ago.
Time for a rethink? U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, writing in Foreign
Policy on Wednesday, called for an updating of the Washington
consensus that realpolitik should reign in the U.S.-Saudi
relationship. “When the chips are down, the realists argue, we need
Riyadh to pick us—and continue to supply oil at an affordable price
for our economic well-being,” Murphy writes.
“Well, since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, the chips have
been undoubtedly and firmly down. And not only has Saudi Arabia
failed to deliver—for all intents and purposes, it has picked the
other guys.”
Murphy argues for Biden not to shy away from the issue of human
rights. He calls on Riyadh to release dissidents from prison and
back down from pursuing them abroad, and to pursue peace, not
just a cease-fire, in Yemen. “Because if nothing changes,” Murphy
writes, “we will continue to bear a significant moral and strategic
cost for our close alliance with the kingdom while getting too little
in return.”

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Biden Visits Saudi

U.S. President Joe Biden arrives in Israel

JULY 15, 2022, 5:25 AM

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, looking at Biden’s Saudi

Biden’s Saudi Reset

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