Nearly two-and-a-half-years since Washington Post contributor and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi was assassinate in Istanbul’s Saudi embassy Oct. 2, 2018, U.S. intelligence agencies declassify an intelligence report for public consumption blaming 35-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. While there’s nothing new in the U.S. intell report, it does put the CIA’s seal on attributing Khashoggi’s death to an organized plot authorized by Bin Salman. Bin Salman has taken responsibility for Khashoggi’s death but has denied that he authorized the gruesome targeted killing in which Khashoggi was subdued by a 15-man Saudi hit squad, anesthetized and dismembered with a bone saw, before disposal at an unknown location. Khashoggi was a well-known Bin Salman critic, writing in the Washington Post for years about the young Crown Prince;s crackdown on Saudi society.
Saudi officials repudiated the declassified U.S. intel report, essentially stating the obvious, something accepted by Western countries but not stopping countries from doing business with the Kingdom. Biden’s been pushed to confront Saudi Arabia, if for no other reason than to prove he’s different than his predecessor, 74-year-old former President Donald Trump. Trump never questioned the official Saudi explanation that a rogue elements within Bin Salman’s nation security agency planned and orchestrated Khasoggi’s targeted assassination. Trump rejected demands by Congress to halt billions in arms sales to the Kingdom over Khashoggi’s murder, realizing, no matter what the truth, it was more an internal Saudi matter than something to interfere with U.S.-Saudi relations. Trump recognized that, no matter what Bin Salman’s culpability, it wasn’t worth alienating the young Crown prince.
Biden had a busy month in U.S. foreign policy picking an ill-advised fight with 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden has many demands for Putin, including letting 44-year-old dissident Alexi Navalny out of prison and returning Crimea to Ukraine. Whether recognized as unrealistic or not, Biden has made the demands, threatening new sanctions on the Russian Federation unless Putin heeds European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel’s threats to sanction Moscow unless they the release Navalny from prison and return Crimea to Ukraine. Unlike Trump, that wasn’t willing to compromise U.S.-Russian relations, Biden seems willing to push Putin to the breaking point, potentially ending U.S. or EU Russia diplomatic relations. Raising the Khashoggi affair adds insult-to-injury to U.S.-Russian relations.
Picking fights with world leaders, especially ones as powerful as Putin and Bin Salman, hurts U.S. national security, regardless of all the pressure by U.S. news outlets to confront both leaders. Yesterday’s attack on Iraq-based Kataib Hezbollah bases in Syria raised tensions in Syria, prompting the Syrian press to ask whether or not Biden follows the “law of the jungle.” Under former President Barack Obama, Biden already spent billions of dollars supplying arms-and-cash to Syrian rebel groups with the stated objective of toppling Bashar al-Assad’s Damascus regime. Obama and Biden lost the proxy war against Bashar al-Assad after Putin decided Sept. 15, 2015 to join the fight in Syria to preserve al-Assad’s regime. Yet with all the complications in Syria, wouldn’t Biden would be a lot better off having Putin as an ally, not an adversary of U.S. foreign policy.
Whatever conclusions any U.S. intel report comes to, it doesn’t mean that it’s right or precludes other explanations. World leaders saw what happened Feb. 5, 2003 when former Secretary of State Colin Power told the U.N. Security Council that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed a dangerous arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intel agencies got it wrong, when the U.S. military found after toppling Hussein no weapons of mass destruction were found. That same intel agency accused Trump of serving the Kremlin as a Russian asset, claiming that Russia titled the 2016 U.S. election to Trump. So, when it comes to U.S. intel assessment, they’re subject to the same fallibility that concluded Saddam posses WMD and Trump was a Russian asset. There’s no guarantee that U.S. intel agencies get it right. Saudi officials repudiated the U.S. intel assessment that Bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s hit.
Biden’s attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hurt U.S. national security, making the region and world less safe. Bombing Syria four weeks into his presidency makes you wonder if he’s repeating the same mistakes as the Obama administration that spent billions of tax dollars trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. After eight years of proxy war, Obama and Biden found out what happens when you wage war on innocent civilians, killing 500,000 and displacing 12 million more to neighboring countries and Europe. Threatening new sanctions on Putin, Biden looks content cutting off diplomatic relations with one of the world’s three superpowers, including the U.S., Russia and China. Biden accomplishes nothing trying to pressure Russia or Bin Salman to acquiesce to U.S. foreign policy other that make the world less safe.
