THE TRUMP administration, members of Congress, and many media pundits often speak and act as if the United States must choose between acting in its own interest and respecting deeper moral values. That’s a false choice.
Events on the world stage in recent months have offered abundant reminders that the United States’ cozy and corrupt relationship with Saudi Arabia and its tyrannical royal family is a bipartisan moral failure with real costs in human lives. In the name of perceived national interests, the U.S. has long engaged in an amoral realpolitik throughout the world, especially regarding the Middle East. In 2019, this includes Trump’s defiant support for Saudi Arabia, despite rising dissension in his own political party.
In recent months, some in Congress and throughout civil society are more openly questioning the U.S. relationship with the Saudi Arabian leadership, for two major reasons.
The first is the four-year-old military campaign in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia and materially supported by the U.S. that has created the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis. By November, the war had caused—by Save the Children’s estimate—85,000 Yemeni children to starve to death. Sufficient food is arriving to Yemen, but the economic devastation caused by the Saudi-led campaign makes it impossible for many parents to buy enough food to feed their children, and conditions on the ground make distributing emergency food aid extremely difficult.
The second reason the U.S.-Saudi alliance has come under strain is the horrific murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October. Intelligence assessments have concluded that Khashoggi’s murder was directed by the Saudi regime, almost certainly with the direct knowledge of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Shamefully, the Trump administration has repeatedly cast doubt on its own intelligence community’s assessment of bin Salman’s complicity and explicitly made the cynical argument that the U.S.-Saudi alliance—including the ongoing U.S. support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen—is too valuable to jeopardize over Khashoggi’s murder.
PERHAPS THE MOST often cited justification for the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia is U.S. reliance on Saudi oil. This has long been a misguided argument on moral grounds—the idea that we should look the other way on grave moral transgressions by other countries if they produce consumer goods to feed America’s materialist appetites is as bogus regarding Saudi Arabia as it is in the U.S.-China relationship. It’s also an outdated argument, as the U.S. imports only 9 percent of its oil from Saudi Arabia, an amount that has declined significantly since its peak in 2003.
The more persuasive explanation for U.S. reluctance to distance itself from Saudi Arabia is the U.S. desire for a strong ally in the region to provide a check on Iran’s power. Again, this is a misbegotten argument and always has been.
Throughout history, the U.S. has backed brutal and repressive regimes for various reasons, from convenient locations for military bases and access to natural resources such as oil to the desire to counter the influence of the Soviet Union or other geopolitical foes. But in almost every case, the U.S. has faced real repercussions for choosing allies based on expedience rather than a shared commitment to moral values.
One painful example is Iran, where U.S. support for the shah’s brutal regime from the 1940s through the 1970s, done for similar amoral reasons, created the anti-American sentiment that boiled over in the hostage crisis during the Iranian revolution, a sentiment we are still reckoning with today. The U.S. desire to contain Iran since 1979 led to the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and support for Saudi Arabia that continues today. Supporting Saddam backfired when he invaded Kuwait, and the bases the U.S. established in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm inflamed anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia, which helped Osama bin Laden recruit for al Qaeda and carry out 9/11. Actions have consequences.
The examples are nearly endless, and the point is this: When the United States makes immoral choices to support oppressive regimes and factions, often based on corporate interests, there is nearly always a heavy and long-lasting price to pay, sooner or later. Will we ever learn that the costs to our country and to its soul are simply not worth paying?
THE HORROR OF the entirely human-created starvation in Yemen and the brutality with which the Saudi regime punishes dissent should spur long overdue soul-searching by our elected leaders, in both the executive and legislative branches.
For Christians and other people of moral conscience, some values are not negotiable; choices based on greedy corporate interests or other unethical motives often have dire repercussions, at home and abroad.
Jim Wallis is the founder and former president of Sojourners. He is the inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. His latest book is The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
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