As I see it | Joe Biden’s values-based foreign policy tanks when it comes to US-Saudi ties

Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, but facing an oil crisis, the US president sought Riyadh to increase output

US president’s promise to ‘uphold universal rights’, has been questioned as Washington has deepened ties with less-than-liberal Southeast Asian nations

Reading Time:2 minutes

Riyadh and other top oil producers agreed last week to a deep cut in production to boost crude prices, in a move denounced by the United States as a concession to Moscow that would hurt the global economy. Photo: AFP/HO/SPA/File

Published: 8:00am, 21 Oct 2022

For a taste of how flimsy the US Democratic Party’s mantra of values-based diplomacy is, one needs to look no further than recent dealings between President Joe Biden’s administration and Saudi Arabia.

Biden came to power promising to re-centre American foreign policy in the country’s democratic values and heritage of “upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity”.

This approach, administration officials had said, would be far removed from the transactionalist diplomacy practised by Biden’s successor, Donald Trump.

Sceptics, of which I was one, gave Biden the benefit of the doubt throughout the first year of his presidency, even as his administration sought to deepen ties with less-than-liberal Southeast Asian partners like Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.

In these engagements, while administration officials did raise rights issues, they did so hastily, as if it were a box-ticking exercise. The practice of values-based diplomacy was far from evident.

Then came Biden’s July visit to Riyadh. As a presidential candidate, he took a hardline position on the oil-rich kingdom, and promised to make it an international “pariah” for the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.