It's Time to End the Toxic U.S.-Saudi Relationship

The U.S. may not be able to stop the Saudi government from committing these crimes, but it can certainly stop backing and arming the government that commits them.

Human Rights Watch released a new report on how Saudi forces have been killing Ethiopian migrants by the hundreds and possibly even the thousands over the last year and a half:

Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings, which appear to continue, would be a crime against humanity.

The report is the latest reminder of how brutal and abusive the Saudi government is. It is no secret that the government in Riyadh is despotic and cruel, but even by the standards of oppressive authoritarian governments the wanton mass slaughter of refugees stands out as truly appalling. It should be a wake-up call for the Biden administration. For months, Biden has been pursuing the terrible idea of a deal with Saudi Arabia that would involve a U.S. security guarantee for the kingdom, and this report shows the world what kind of government the U.S. would be pledging to defend and how they use the weapons that they receive from the United States. All negotiations with Saudi Arabia for increased U.S. support and protection must cease.

The Saudi government has spent the last five years in damage control and whitewashing mode in an effort to make the world forget about its atrocities in Yemen and its murder and torture of dissidents, but the story of the slaughter of the migrants on the border cuts through all of that propaganda. No matter how much money the Saudi government throws at professional sports leagues to improve the kingdom’s public image, the sordid and bloody reality of a repressive state ruled by a war criminal cannot be concealed for long.

The U.S. should not provide Saudi Arabia with weapons of any kind for any purpose. There should be no more U.S. arms sales to the kingdom. U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia have often been justified by claiming that the weapons will be used for “self-defense,” but from this report we can see very well what the Saudi government’s idea of self-defense is. The U.S. should have nothing to do with it. The U.S. may not be able to stop the Saudi government from committing these crimes, but it can certainly stop backing and arming the government that commits them.

There is a certain cynical kind of foreign policy practitioner that will look at the story of the murdered migrants and still somehow find an excuse to preserve and even deepen the U.S.-Saudi relationship. That relationship has been based on several myths and lies that fall apart under closer scrutiny. One myth is that the U.S. has important interests in the region that the Saudi government helps to safeguard, but this is wrong on both counts. The U.S. does not have important interests that need to be guarded, and even if it did the Saudi government has proven itself to be both inept and destructive. Another big lie that keeps the relationship going is that the U.S. needs to keep the Saudis in its orbit so that it does not “lose” them to China or some other patron. We should be so lucky to “lose” a client like this one.

The U.S.-Saudi relationship has been a burden on our country for decades. It is one of the reasons why our country was attacked in 2001. Our government’s support for theirs and its crimes is a disgrace in the eyes of the world. The relationship with Riyadh is also one of the main reasons why the U.S. has maintained a large military presence in the Middle East for most of my lifetime to the detriment of American interests. Let the Saudis try to find another patron as gullible and indulgent as Washington has been.

I have no illusions that the Biden administration is going to wise up at this late stage, but Congress and the public do not have to accept whatever bad bargain the president might make with Mohammed bin Salman. The U.S. should make no new security commitments in the Middle East, and it should be doing all that it can to disentangle itself from the terrible clients that it currently has. The U.S.-Saudi relationship should be the first on the chopping block. It is toxic and dangerous, and the U.S. would do well to be rid of it as soon as possible.