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The Biden administration faces increasingly heavy reliance on its human rights record as the emergence of a belligerent Russia and an increasingly powerful China place new, often contradictory demands on President Biden’s promise to put American ideals at the center of US relations with the world.
Biden’s talks with Middle East leaders this week will offer a stark display of the competing considerations between that pledge and what officials describe as an existential “great power” race — most vividly in the president’s meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. whom the US government has blamed for the brutal 2018 murder of journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi.
The choreography of the meeting with Saudi King Salman and his royal entourage will be closely watched: Will Biden, who as a candidate vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” state, and the 36-year-old prince, now the de facto ruler of the kingdom’s leader, spoke a to one? Will they pose for a photo?
“It has to be said that President Biden shaking hands with Mohammed bin Salman during his trip to Saudi Arabia this month will be quite a searing sight, not only for Khashoggi’s family, but for human rights defenders in the region and all around the world,” said Michael Breen, president of Human Rights First.
However, the visit comes amid competition in the region with China. Beijing has vowed to deepen ties with Saudi Arabia, while the Gulf kingdom, amid a lingering rift with the United States, has increased its arms purchases from China and explored denominating some of its massive oil sales to China in yuan. potentially threatening the dollar’s supremacy.
U.S. officials have also been frustrated by what they see as lukewarm support from the Gulf for the West’s campaign to isolate Russia over Ukraine, including decisions by some countries to abstain from U.S.-backed measures at the United Nations. Also, rising energy prices have cushioned Russian President Vladimir Putin from the effects of sanctions, and Saudi Arabia and other producers have been reluctant to do much to boost production.
Khashoggi has become a — possibly secondary — item on the agenda, analysts say.
“In the case of Biden, I’m afraid he’s essentially saying, ‘Let’s forget about Jamal Khashoggi; let’s forget about the crackdown on all local activists in Saudi Arabia; let’s forget about bombing Yemeni civilians for a slightly cheaper tank of gas,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “It sends a catastrophic message.”
But a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said Biden did not see a tension between values like human rights and more solid American interests, and argued that they could actually reinforce one another. another. “It changes the meaning of how you do diplomacy and how you set priorities,” the official said.
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Declaring that the United States was “back,” Biden took office promising to restore global cooperation and put American ideals such as the rule of law at the heart of America’s engagement with the world. Some of Biden’s top aides, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, have extensive experience with refugee and human rights groups.
And advocates have credited the Biden administration with taking steps to reverse some of President Donald Trump’s actions, restoring U.S. membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council and providing new levels of support for the International Criminal Court in its efforts to bring down Russia under responsibility for possible war crimes following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Biden also rejected Trump’s embrace of autocrats, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
But these advocates also say Biden’s actions are a far cry from his rhetoric in other areas, arguing that high-level engagements with the leaders of India, Egypt and Cambodia create the appearance of justifying abuses in those countries. They warn that the urgency officials have placed on building a global alliance to counter Moscow, as well as the administration’s growing focus on stemming China’s rise, risks further diluting that agenda.
Officials billed the Middle East trip as a chance for Biden, who Republicans blame for high fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections, to discuss energy security with top producers and deepen ties with nations key to deterring Iran. They say the visit also aims to help end the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015, causing widespread civilian suffering.
Before landing in the coastal city of Jeddah for a meeting of regional leaders — where Biden is also expected to hold talks with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, who has presided over a period of intense repression in the Arab world’s most populous country — Biden will visit the West Bank and Israel, itself attacked by human rights groups for its treatment of the Palestinians.
Before the trip, Biden said basic freedoms would be on his agenda, but emphasized what the administration sees as geopolitical realities.
“We must resist Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to compete with China, and work for greater stability in the next region of the world,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “To do these things, we need to engage directly with countries that can affect these outcomes.”
While Saudi Arabia has eased some social and gender restrictions under the crown prince’s influence, it continues to jail activists and critics, punish family members of people accused of crimes, and deny rights to minorities and women. The government has also been accused of using surveillance technology to monitor and threaten critics and activists living abroad.
Leading Democratic lawmakers, citing Putin’s reliance on high oil prices to help finance his invasion of Ukraine, complained in a letter to Biden last month that “the oil-rich kingdom’s refusal to stabilize global energy markets helps finance Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine while inflicting economic pain on ordinary Americans.”
Saudi dissidents called the visit a betrayal. Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, asked Biden to cancel the trip, which she said would encourage the prince. In a letter last month, more than a dozen rights groups urged Biden to condition any meeting with the crown prince on Saudi concessions, including the release of detained dissidents and activists and an end to politically motivated travel bans.
“Certainly those are things that the United States can at least expect to happen as a result of these talks,” said Breen of Human Rights First.
The administration defended its record, pointing to the declassification of the US government’s assessment of Khashoggi’s assassination by a team of Saudi agents at the country’s consulate in Istanbul. He also imposed sanctions and travel bans on a group of Saudis in connection with the assassination — but not specifically on the crown prince. The kingdom convicted five men of the murder but denied any involvement by the prince.
US officials say the visit is in line with their broader approach to human rights, arguing that their engagement with leaders has produced real victories for the people of the region, despite Saudi Arabia’s dismal record on democracy and basic rights.
Without Saudi engagement, they say, they would not have made progress toward ending the war in Yemen, a goal that would have huge consequences for civilians in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia that Houthi forces have targeted with missile attacks. Without Egypt’s involvement, they say, it would not be possible to end the conflict in Gaza in 2021. They also point to the central role Qatar and the United Arab Emirates played in evacuating thousands of Afghans after the Taliban seized power last year. year.
“Face-to-face diplomacy is critical with your friends, with your enemies, with all countries in between,” the official said.
The administration has framed lower gas prices as a rights issue in the United States and beyond, citing inflation and the potential for recession and job losses.
While officials say Biden had been planning a trip to the Middle East even before the conflict in Ukraine sent world food and fuel prices soaring, they also acknowledge that the war, as a senior administration official put it, “has led to foreground the importance of the Middle East, everything from sea lanes to energy.
“That’s the reality,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “So that affects the conversations we have with those countries.”
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Rights groups say the shifting calculus caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine is not unique to the United States. They point to the European Union’s recent gas deal with Egypt, designed to help the continent reduce its dependence on Russian energy, and say the bloc failed to respect the rule of law in providing funds to Poland and Hungary at a time when their support is crucial to push back against Moscow.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, outlining his philosophy last year, said no administration can claim to make human rights the only factor in its foreign policy. “Nobody could ever sit here and say with a straight face that we’re going to have a 100 percent scorecard on this, and I’m not going to say we can,” he said.
“On the one hand, you can say, ‘Well, you haven’t considered human rights enough.’…
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