One cease on President Joe Biden’s Center East journey is in Saudi Arabia, the place he’ll apparently meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, identified additionally as “MBS.” You realize, the identical MBS who ordered Jamal Khashoggi — a U.S. everlasting resident who lived in Virginia — to be killed. (Murdered and dismembered, to be particular.)
On the marketing campaign path in 2020, Biden declared, “the times of cozying as much as dictators are over” and vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” That, after all, was earlier than we wanted extra oil. Like, actually, actually wanted extra oil. (By no means thoughts that Saudi Arabia received’t have the ability to drive costs down a lot.)
Because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions and embargoes, the world oil market has been turned the other way up and inflation and excessive gasoline costs threaten Democrats within the midterm elections. As a nation, it appears we’d slightly help brutal dictators to get low-cost oil than stand by our ideas.
There are, after all, quite a few realpolitik causes to remain cozy with Saudi Arabia, however these causes are getting tougher to abdomen within the face of hundreds of useless youngsters in Yemen, murdered journalists and continued repression within the Kingdom of Head-Lopping.
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