MBS, which stands for either "Mohammad Bin Salman" or "Mr. Bone Saw" depending on who you ask, kind of slid off a lot of people's radars. He poses an interesting question now for the ethical conduct of American foreign policy, because Biden is actually scheduled to meet him in late June.
So, Mohamad bin Salman was linked by an official director of national intelligence report to the killing of Washington Post journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi.
As some of the first moves that Biden made upon assuming office, on February 26th, America ended its support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, stopped sales of some precision-guided munitions to the Saudis, and then sanctioned "the Saudi Rapid Intervention Force and Former Deputy Head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency" for Khashoggi's murder. We stopped short of hitting MBS himself; this looks to have been a pragmatic decision on the Biden Administration's part.
In a somewhat startling turn of events, it ends up being necessary to fact-check Jenn Psaki on this. Psaki said, in defense of not hitting MBS with sanctions himself, that:
“Historically, and even in recent history, Democratic and Republican administrations, there have not been sanctions put in place for the leaders of foreign governments where we have diplomatic relations – and even where we don’t have diplomatic relations."
This is not actually true. We literally just hit Putin himself with sanctions, and he's a head of state for a foreign government we have diplomatic relations with. It wasn’t true before then, either. As CNN's fact check notes:
"Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who has studied sanctions, said Psaki’s Sunday assertion “is too broad” given the list of leaders against whom the US has indeed imposed direct sanctions. He added, “What Psaki meant to say is that the US seldom if ever sanctions the leaders of countries regarded as important US allies, nor does it sanction the leaders of nuclear adversaries.”
The list of leaders against the US has hit with direct sanctions includes:
- Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who were sanctioned by President Donald Trump;
- North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Libyan then-dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who were sanctioned by President Barack Obama;
- Myanmar’s then-leader Than Shwe, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who were sanctioned by President George W. Bush.
There is some complexity about who qualifies as a leader of a foreign government. Iran’s official head of government is the President, but the ultimate authority is, as the title suggests, the Supreme Leader. Saudi Arabia is still officially led by King Salman, but the crown prince, his son, is the de facto ruler."
This is fine, it's not like Psaki is Kayleigh McEnany or Sean Spicer or something just up there lying their asses off with a straight face day-in, day-out. And she’s going to be on MSNBC now, anyway (which, congrats, by the way).
I'm 100% OK with giving Psaki a pass here. Good people get things wrong sometimes, that's different than lying on purpose.
Regardless, there is a certain pragmatist logic to the decision not to hit Mr. Bone Saw himself, some of it compelling. It comes down to oil prices, more than the amount of weapons that Saudi Arabia buys from the U.S.
Quoting David Ignatius:
"Ideally, from Washington’s standpoint, the kingdom would break with Russia in the so-called OPEC-Plus producers’ cartel — and agree to produce more oil and support a similar production boost by the United Arab Emirates. That would ease oil prices, boost the global economy and undermine Russia all at once — giving Biden a boost he badly needs."
I understand it from The Washington Post's viewpoint, and in their shoes, I'd probably feel the same way - that this is letting Mr. Bone Saw "get away with it".
I'd think of it this way instead: there's a lot of time to get justice for Khashoggi, that is not a time-sensitive mission. A time-sensitive question is something like easing economic pressure on America and reducing Putin's leverage with fossil-fuel exports which is helping him conduct an ongoing genocidal war, right now; and the international repercussions of that war include “hybrid-war” aspects with economic impacts, like oil prices.
I don't think it's as much political as it is a national-security issue, frankly.
And there’s plenty of time to still get Mr. Bone Saw - and the people around him - in other ways.