Reining in Saudi’s prince of the blood

The Washington-Riyadh relationship was due for repairs. Due in part to former President Barack Obama’s effort to disengage from the Middle East, by the time Trump took office, the U.S.-Saudi relationship was already on thin ice.

As King Salman ailed, power struggles emerged in the royal court and international concern about the protracted Saudi-led war in Yemen grew. The war started in March 2015 under the leadership of Salman’s son, Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, or “MBS.” The Saudis reportedly waited until after military operations began to notify the Obama administration. The United States eventually began to provide the Saudi-led coalition with limited military support, but the goals of this war, initiated in desperation as the Iranian-backed Houthis made gains in neighboring Yemen with little pushback from Washington, were never clear and congressional discontent increased in concert with the civilian death toll and humanitarian impact of widespread famine in Yemen.

Despite these trends and the tough campaign rhetoric, the Trump administration made shoring up relations with the Saudis key to its early foreign policy. In his first international trip to the 2017 Riyadh summit, the administration touted Trump’s speech there as an “address to the Arab world,” echoing the billing of Obama’s June 2009 Cairo address. Then-Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir reciprocated, saying, “This is the beginning of a turning point in the United States and the Arab and Islamic world.”

A year later, the Trump administration’s main Saudi interlocutor, now Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, spent three weeks touring the United States. He drank coffee at a Starbucks with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, visited the campus of Google with founder Sergey Brin, and dined with a host of celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The crown prince sat next to a beaming Trump in the Oval Office, with the president brandishing an oversized poster listing the weapons systems the Saudis agreed to purchase. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” the crown prince touted his domestic reforms, the most notable of which was allowing women to drive. When asked by Norah O’Donnell whether women were equal to men, the crown prince responded: “Absolutely, we are all human beings and there is no difference.”

During a visit to Riyadh in late 2015, while working as a Senate staffer, a colleague of mine and I met with activist Samar Badawi at the compound that houses the American Embassy. In her mid-30s at the time, Badawi was a diminutive woman in a head-to-toe abaya.

Despite her relative youth, Badawi was a groundbreaking Saudi women’s rights activist, precisely the person who should have benefited from the reforms touted by the crown prince several years later. At a young age, she challenged the male guardianship system, filing a suit against her father for physical abuse, and won. She subsequently fought for women’s suffrage and for the right of women to drive, vote, and run in local elections.

Badawi hasn’t engaged in her activism alone. Her brother Raif is a dissident who, when we met, was languishing in prison after a round of flogging for the offense of advocating secularism.

Samar Badawi had been feted by international leaders for her bravery, receiving an International Women of Courage award in 2012 from the U.S. State Department and meeting with former first lady Michelle Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The international support she received brought consequences at home. Samar Badawi cycled in and out of prison, and by the time we met her, she was under a travel ban, unable to leave the country, in part because the Saudi authorities feared the international attention it would bring to her and her brother’s situation.

She asked little of us that day other than ongoing vocal and moral support from prominent members of Congress. A few months later, we learned Samar Badawi had again been called in for questioning by the Saudi Ministry of Interior. The staffer and I who met Samar Badawi that day in Riyadh worked with our bosses to get the State Department to intercede on her behalf. Thankfully, her stay in custody was short and she and her two-year-old daughter, who had been forced to accompany her to the police station, were allowed to return home.

Two years later, a few months after the crown prince’s public relations tour, Samar Badawi was targeted again, casting doubt on the claims of reform being highlighted to a Western audience. Even as Saudi women took to the streets for the first time to drive on their own, prominent female activists, including Samar Badawi, were rounded up as the crown prince consolidated his grip on power. When Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted her concern about Samar Badawi’s arrest, the crown prince and the Saudi regime lashed out at the Canadian government for its “overt and blatant interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom.” The Saudi ambassador to Ottawa was recalled. The government withdrew Saudi students from Canada, and the regime imposed restrictions on Saudi-Canadian trade. Remarkably, the Trump administration declined to take sides in the matter, issuing a statement that implied that the United States was a neutral party rather than a government that had lauded Samar Badawi’s work in the past.

Samar Badawi and other women’s rights activists remain behind bars to this day. In November, Human Rights Watch reported that the detained female activists had been subject to torture, including electric shock, whipping, and forcible hugging and kissing. As a result, at least one of the women reportedly attempted to commit suicide multiple times.

The United States has close security partnerships with many leaders who abuse and mistreat people like Samar Badawi. Yet the responsibility of global power requires striking a balance between our interests and ideals and those of our partners, while at the same time not ignoring flagrant human rights abuses.

This is a balance that the Trump administration appears to have little ability to strike. Whether it is the crown prince in Riyadh, the Sisi regime in Egypt that has detained thousands of political prisoners, or U.S. partners such as Bahrain, where a tweet or blog post leads to extended jail time, the United States has remained purposefully silent. The president’s pandering to the Saudis and the broader Arab world, despite the corrosive actions of many of these partners, appears to be a mixture of ideology and practicality.

The Trump administration believes the national interest is served by disengaging from the Middle East and relying on local proxies to advance U.S. interests. The Saudi crown prince was key to the administration’s efforts to further a desired peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as reducing the American footprint in the Middle East. When Trump announced he was withdrawing troops from Syria, he argued his election came, in part, as a result of promising to get out of “endless & costly foreign wars.”

The administration’s national security policy documents embrace a framework of great-power conflict focused on Russia and China, while deprioritizing American engagement in the Middle East. In a late 2017 trip to Israel, the officials and experts I met with spoke openly of an emerging “post-American Middle East.” Obama started the trend, and the Trump administration was accelerating it. Israel has experienced the consequences acutely, with Russia and Iran now on their northern border preparing to fill the void.

Yet it was just such a void that led the Saudis to enter into the Yemeni civil war in the first place. The Obama administration withdrew from Iraq, “led from behind” in Libya, and watched while hundreds of thousands of Syrians were slaughtered in a civil war that destabilized the region and eventually threatened Europe and the United States. Despite differing approaches toward Iran, the assumption by both the Obama and Trump administrations was that Arab partners would bear most of the burden in dealing with the consequences of U.S. policy toward Tehran. On the surface, drawing back from the Middle East and handing off to local proxies appeals to Americans tired of fighting a war for over 17 years with no end in sight. But the Obama experiment in “leading from behind” in favor of “nation-building at home” has repeatedly shown that U.S. partners are wholly incapable of addressing the region’s core challenges.

Despite this record, soon after U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton took office as Trump’s national security adviser, reports surfaced he was phoning the Egyptians and other Arab partners asking them to send troops to Syria. Trump himself occasionally tweets that others needed to step up, but little tangible Arab military support in Syria materialized.

The reason is most of the Gulf states remain bogged down in Yemen, but the Arab partners also have a history of pocketing the latest U.S. military weapons and technology with no intention of using them other than the occasional national day parade. There have been reports of Sudanese, Colombian, and even American mercenaries carrying out much of the fighting in Yemen for the Gulf coalition. The coalition has even reportedly hired child soldiers from other conflict zones like Sudan, leaving Saudi and Emirati forces to direct the units from a safe distance away. Before the Khashoggi murder, administration officials touted plans for a Washington summit to announce an “Arab NATO.” Under current circumstances, any such grouping of countries would be an alliance in name only, given the moribund state of most Arab militaries and their proclivity to outsource significant military missions that involve significant risk.

These hard facts do little to rein in Gulf leaders’ regional ambitions. Beyond Yemen, the Saudi crown prince and his allies in the UAE picked a fight after Trump’s visit in May 2017 with Qatar, hiring Russian cyber-hackers to target the other side and weaponizing the U.S. media to circulate disinformation about opponents. The crown prince then attempted to insert himself into Lebanese politics, temporarily kidnapping Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and forcing his eventual resignation, which Hariri later rescinded.

On my trip to the region in 2015, one of the crown prince’s peers in another ruling family bragged to me that the Yemen campaign would be wrapped up in a matter of weeks and that Arab forces would race the Russians to capture Raqqa on behalf of the United States. Raqqa was liberated two years later with little support from the Gulf states’ militaries. Almost four years after the war’s beginning and thousands of deaths later, it’s difficult to point to the strategic progress being made. The actions of the Saudis and their Gulf partners have given the repressive clerical regime in Tehran a public relations bonanza they could have only dreamed of as they slaughtered their citizens in the streets in 2009, just as the Trump administration was attempting to turn up the economic and political pressure on Tehran.

What the Trump administration fails to recognize is that its policy toward the Middle East, including its blind support for the Saudis, is undermining its own stated goals. Strategy documents promising “great power competition” ring hollow in Moscow and Beijing if the United States is ceding a key region to proxies unable to pull their weight. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia are also watching as the United States abandons its allies in Syria and leaves Israel to fend for itself, leaving a festering mess on Europe’s doorstep. The beneficiaries of this Middle East policy will be Russia, China, and Iran — the very powers the administration claims to be attempting to challenge.

Given this, what are America’s options for dealing with the Saudis? The crown prince and the other Gulf leaders appear to be going nowhere soon, having weathered the Arab Spring of 2011 better than their secular counterparts. Iran, under the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, extended its regional aggression, threatening U.S. allies and interests. Even as Trump is trying to disengage from the region, Tehran or renewed terrorist threats may very well pull the United States back in just as the Islamic State foiled Obama’s 2011 pivot away from the Middle East.

To be relevant to the future of the region, the United States needs to be willing to accept and support a sustained military footprint, even in Syria. Expanded Russian, Iranian, or Turkish influence in Syria’s future is not in Washington’s (or Israel’s) best interest. Iran’s regional aggression cannot be contested through economic pressure alone.

Ironically, given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation over Syria, the ISIS-only strategy promoted by the U.S. military was part of the problem. Prior to the president’s withdrawal announcement, U.S. goals in Syria were often unclear. Senior administration officials stated contradictory aims regarding that presence. It’s not clear that the number of forces the president had been convinced to retain were sufficient for anything other than a narrow counterterrorism mission. This undefined and undiscussed deployment also risked undermining tenuous American public support for engagement in the Middle East if significant casualties had been incurred.

Yet withdrawal from Syria was not the way to correct these flaws. America’s interests in the region extend well beyond whether the caliphate is destroyed or on life support. Disengagement will only create vacuums exploited by those who threaten our way of life. Even if the administration continues on its trajectory of Middle East disengagement, it must realize that an unrestrained Saudi Arabia, unable to correctly assess its capabilities, is a significant threat to U.S. interests in the region and not a reliable partner to fill the void.

Congress is vital here. The legislative branch has been slow to try and rein in the excesses of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Congress has the tools and authority capable of correcting the U.S. approach toward Riyadh. Much of the legislative debate thus far has been focused on the war in Yemen, which has had horrific humanitarian consequences. However, framing the challenge solely as a war powers issue is not the right approach. No matter how bad the Saudi strategy in Yemen is, Iranian expansionism in the country through Tehran’s proxies, the Houthis, is a threat to America’s interests. We cannot wash our hands of Yemen and assume that disengagement will result in a better outcome.

Instead, members of Congress concerned about the Trump administration’s approach to Riyadh should tackle the fundamental underpinnings of its strategy. Human rights do matter to U.S. national security. If the Saudi crown prince wants to reform the kingdom, we should demand he does so honestly, not superficially, and with verifiable results. Human rights need to be at the center of U.S. engagement with Riyadh just as administration officials claim it is at the center of our concerns with the Iranian regime.

Sanctions should be extended well beyond those involved in the Khashoggi murder to include those involved in the ongoing detention and torture of political dissidents and prisoners like Samar and Raif Badawi. U.S. officials should downgrade contacts with their counterparts until these activists are released, just as the administration did to successfully secure the release of detained American pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkey.

U.S. military assistance should also come with conditions, based on Saudi behavior. Trump likes to question the utility of American foreign assistance and talk about countries having to earn that assistance. Why should America’s Arab partners be treated any differently? Members of Congress often instinctively attempt all-or-nothing solutions, attempting to end all U.S. assistance or deciding they don’t have any leverage, so why bother trying? Congressional foreign-policy power is most persuasive when it boxes in the executive branch by setting commonsense boundaries for U.S. policy.

The essential tool to do that is through funding. Congress can pass legislation placing conditions on future arms sales and other military assistance. It should state what the United States expects from the Saudi contributions to the partnership and what actions it considers inconsistent with a cooperative relationship. If the president or his successors are unable to certify these requirements are being met, U.S. assistance would be halted. Such a move would likely garner significant bipartisan support.

Finally, the United States should be careful about emboldening a reckless Saudi crown prince who has shown a blatant disregard for international norms. One key Saudi ask is for U.S. nuclear technology for a supposedly civilian nuclear program. Discussions regarding granting the kingdom such technology should halt unless Riyadh shows the grown-ups are once again in charge.

Key to this approach is a reassertion of leverage in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The administration has overstated the economic benefits of the partnership for the United States. Just as the Trump administration has shrewdly played hardball with other U.S. partners, it should demand more of the Saudis and other Gulf partners and not give away the store for nothing in return. The Saudis, Egyptians, and others always threaten to look elsewhere for strategic support. Such threats became a frequent refrain from Egyptian defense officials to those in Congress trying to reform the U.S.-Egyptian security partnership. For all the high-profile trips to Moscow, few end in significant deals. Buying American maintains an allure that Moscow or China cannot compete against.

Another critical component of that leverage is willingness to put boots on the ground rather than just money. Trump has highlighted the need to hold U.S. allies more accountable for what they contribute to the alliance. Why are America’s Gulf allies exempt from this demand? More than one thousand soldiers from America’s NATO allies have died fighting America’s war in Afghanistan. How many Saudis, Egyptians, or Emiratis have been killed fighting side by side with American forces since the attacks of 9/11? Why should the Saudis be treated any differently than the Germans or the French at this point? Why should American taxpayers continue to have to pay the strategic bill for Saudi incompetence and recklessness?

Such an approach does not commit the United States to endless war in the Middle East. Instead, it offers some hard-headed realism about what is required to protect U.S. interests in a region where America has sacrificed thousands of lives and trillions of dollars over the last 17 years. We must demand more of Riyadh, both in its domestic and foreign policy. The fate of Samar Badawi and other Saudi activists like her must be central to U.S. policy toward the kingdom going forward. It would put the relationship in a stronger position in the coming decades and help avoid the blowback the United States is now facing because of its unconditional support for a crown prince who has gone from being the face of modernity to one of medievalism and, in the process, empowering America’s enemies.

Differentiating between friends and enemies has become difficult in the Middle East, as we’ve attempted a rapprochement with Iranian mullahs who sponsor terror and witnessed regimes toppled by countervailing mass street movements. Placing all of America’s cards on a reckless dictatorial regime is precisely the sort of strategic blunder that candidate Trump correctly warned against in 2016. America has leverage in the U.S.-Saudi relationship to shape Saudi behavior. It just needs to be willing to use it.

Jamie Fly is a senior fellow and director of the Future of Geopolitics Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He previously served as counselor for foreign and national security affairs to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., from 2013–2017.