By Peter Apps
When it comes to defining America’s quandary on Saudi Arabia, U.S. President Donald Trump’s description is mercenary in the extreme. If Washington doesn’t stay close to Riyadh and sell it arms, he told reporters in the Oval Office this weekend, the Saudis will turn to Moscow or Beijing instead. Given that, he seemed to be suggesting, the United States should just keep its plans for a $110 billion arms deal and the 450,000 jobs he says it would bring.
He has a point – and one that also speaks to the broader geopolitical and moral issues at stake. Across the Middle East, from Turkey to Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and beyond, the more the United States attempts to inflict its will on often increasingly autocratic governments, the more they simply turn elsewhere. The messy aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring – in which…
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