Biden Should Be Reading Riyadh the Riot Act, Not Kissing the Crown Prince's Ring

A state conducting a truly pragmatic foreign policy would stop indulging a client state that routinely fails and embarrasses its patron as often Saudi Arabia does.

David Ignatius previews Biden’s trip to kiss Mohammed bin Salman’s ring:

Biden plans to visit Riyadh in late June, after a stop in Israel to meet with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The president is making a mistake by meeting with the crown prince, if for no other reason than that the U.S. stands to gain nothing from it. Saudi Arabia has demonstrated in the last few months just how useless it is to the United States, and over the last decade it has proven itself to be an increasing liability in many ways. Ignatius dutifully recites the litany of reasons why the kingdom is supposedly so important, and one of the items he includes is that “Saudi Arabia is an ally in a common effort to contain Iran’s destabilizing actions in the region.” That might be interesting if Saudi Arabia were a U.S. ally (it isn’t) and if it had been successful in “containing” Iranian activities in the region (it definitely hasn’t), but the reality is that almost everything the kingdom has done abroad has played into Iran’s hands and increased Iran’s influence.

Even if one were inclined to overlook Saudi crimes for the sake of “containing” Iran, the Saudi government simply doesn’t deliver what its supporters and sympathizers promise. A state conducting a truly pragmatic foreign policy would stop indulging a client state that routinely fails and embarrasses its patron as often Saudi Arabia does. Washington treats Saudi Arabia as if it were a spoiled rich kid that always needs to be bailed out, but as everyone knows this just encourages them to engage in more of the same reckless behavior on the assumption that the U.S. will step in to make its problems go away. There is no room in a pragmatic foreign policy for bailing out perennial screw-ups.