Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman took his time before congratulating U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on his recent election victory. This wasn’t a fluke: Over the course of the past four years, the crown prince led a fruitless bombing campaign in Yemen, may have gotten away with murder, and initiated a secret program with China to process uranium. Progressive members of the U.S. Democratic caucus will soon urge Biden to abandon the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, but Biden should resist this plea; abandoning allies rarely leads them to better behavior. Instead, Biden should form a coalition of Western allies and Middle Eastern states—including Saudi Arabia—that gives the United States more leverage to prevent the kingdom from acquiring nuclear weapons and violating human rights.
Republican and Democratic members of Congress are fed up with Saudi Arabia. Last year, President Donald Trump vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have blocked arms sales to the country in response to its bombing campaign in Yemen. Every Democrat in Congress who voted supported the bill, but, notably, so did Trump allies such as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. In his criticism of Saudi Arabia, Biden has gone even further than most members of Congress. In November 2019, during a Democratic primary debate, Biden said he “would make it very clear we were not going to … sell more weapons” to Saudi Arabia, which would “make them … the pariah that they are.”
