No More Appeasement for the Saudis

The U.S. simply doesn’t get enough out of this transactional arrangement to justify continuing it.

Bobby Ghosh thinks Biden should go begging the Saudis for forgiveness:

At the moment, the burden of mending the relationship rests mainly on Biden.

The reasons why the U.S.-Saudi relationship has frayed have little or nothing to do with Biden. The sad truth is that Biden has mostly been far too accommodating to Saudi preferences since he took office, and he has done almost nothing to back up his use of the “pariah” label when he was a candidate. The crown prince is tetchy because the president won’t meet with him personally, but beyond that Biden has denied him very little.