The Ties That Blind

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has cast a deep shadow over Washington’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. The ever-changing story about how Khashoggi died undermines the Saudi government’s already weak credibility and is illustrative of its extensive record of humans-rights abuses and outright war crimes.

Washington’s solicitous, even enabling, posture toward Saudi Arabia cannot disguise the fact that the Kingdom has never been a reliable U.S. ally. Unfortunately, U.S. leaders are far too willing to make moral compromises when security threats are modest. Abandoning essential moral standards and values for the defense of lesser interests is never justified. Yet that is precisely what the U.S. has done with Saudi Arabia for decades.

The chapters contained in The Ties That Blind were first published in Perilous Partners (2015). Combined with a new introduction, this book documents the many instances in which U.S. and Saudi interests diverged, and shows that the case for terminating the toxic U.S.–Saudi alliance—indefensible on both strategic and moral grounds—is more clear and urgent than ever before.