Despite rhetoric, U.S.-Saudi Arms deal shows that little has changed

After Saudi agents murdered Jamal Khashoggi and chopped up his body in 2018, Joe Biden said that the country’s government had to “pay the price” and be treated like the “pariah that they are.”

Back then Biden was merely a presidential candidate, but now that he’s in The White House things have predictably shifted. The administration is currently trying to sell the authoritarian regime $650 million worth of missiles and missile launchers.

There’s been a robust congressional effort to block this sale, with lawmakers citing Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record and brutal war against Yemen. In many ways these politicians are merely asking Biden to live up to his own rhetoric. Not only did he criticize the Saudi government on the campaign, he also promised to end the Yemen war upon being elected.

The congressional group aiming to halt the weapons sale wanted an amendment tacked onto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) explained that effort in a Guardian op-ed last week:

The US may not be able to stop all the violence it helped create, but it can stop enabling Saudi warplanes to bomb Yemeni civilians. Doing so will save lives – not only the Yemenis spared in Saudi bombing runs, but also by utilizing its leverage to pressure Saudi Arabia to lift the blockade on Yemen, which continues to block fuel and other essential imports into the country, pushing millions of Yemenis toward the brink of starvation. Lifting the blockade must happen immediately and be delinked from final peace negotiation talks.

We have proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to finally end all US support for the Saudi war effort. The House already passed this amendment for the third consecutive year. Given that this amendment simply codifies a prohibition on providing support for the Saudi war that already passed both houses of Congress in 2019 – legislation supported at the time by multiple officials now in the Biden-Harris administration – it is long overdue for this provision to be included in the final defense policy bill that is sent to the president’s desk.

The Biden administration put out a statement criticizing the amendment. They claimed that the weapons would only be used defensively and that blocking the transaction “would undermine the President’s commitment to aid in our partner’s defenses.”

On Tuesday night the House passed the NDAA and the Senate killed the amendment by a vote of 30-67. The majority of Republicans sided with Biden on the weapons sale, but so did a number of Democrats. This predictably included people like Sinema and Manchin, but some Senators who opposed the same kinds of sales under Trump are suddenly fine with Biden pushing them forward.

Take Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez. In 2019 he cleared the path for multiple resolutions opposing Trump’s weapons deals with Saudi Arabia in the UAE. Those were all vetoed, but Menendez even authored an op-ed in the Washington Post announcing that the fight to hold the Saudis accountable would continue in Washington.

According to Menendez the Trump vetos indicated that the former president was bound by his “loyalty to the Saudi royal family”, but assured readers that congress would “remain undeterred.”

“The world will not forget Jamal Khashoggi,” wrote Menendez. “His views and aspirations will one day become reality. There will be freedom of expression and respect for human rights in Saudi Arabia. And here in Congress, we will continue to demand accountability, press for justice and work to restore the integrity of our foundational institutions.”

Now, with a Democrat in power, Menendez is fine with Saudi Arabia getting a bunch of new missiles. What’s his justification for the change? Like the Biden administration, he claims that the weapons will only be used defensively.

“Make no mistake, the Saudi-led coalition bears the brunt of the responsibility for the devastation in Yemen. Yet I along with most members of this body have always supported the use of weapons systems in defense of civilian populations,” he said on the floor.

This position was echoed by Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, another prominent critic of Trump’s foreign policy who voted for the arms sale. “My position generally has been to support truly defensive weapons sales to the Saudis, while opposing sales that could be used in offensive operations, particularly in Yemen,” he told The Intercept.

Last month Sarah Lazare made quick work of this narrative at In These Times.  “So-called defensive weapons are part of a military apparatus that is enforcing a brutal blockade, shutting out aid for Yemen and creating a climate of intimidation and fear,” she writes. “The weapons transfer sends a message to Saudi Arabia, at precisely the moment it is refusing to lift its blockade, that U.S. support is unconditional. It enables Saudi Arabia to prolong its deadly incursions.”

“The notion that one can only support ​’defensive’ operations in a brutal war is absurd. The Saudi military does not have one hangar for ​’defensive’ aircrafts and a separate one for ​’offensive’ ones,” she concludes. “The pilots deterred from transporting people or goods into or out of Sana’a airport aren’t comforted by the fact that the Biden administration has decided to replenish only the weapons in the Saudi arsenal that are deemed ​’defensive.’ Saudi Arabia has been waging a brutal war with U.S. backing that is so difficult to defend that the Democratic Party turned against it when a Republican was in the White House. Now that a Democrat is back, members of Congress have the opportunity, once again, to take a firm position — not just in strongly worded letters, but by a congressional vote.”

Back to Chris Murphy for a moment. This week the Senator appeared on Pod Save America and declared that the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics does not go far enough and that we need “much more heavy-handed sanctions” against China. I guess the $650 million in missiles approach won’t work in this situation.

Anyway, the Pentagon budget that the House passed is $778 billion. Despite the ongoing pandemic and the withdrawal from Afghanistan, that’s $37 billion higher than last year’s. It’s also four times the price of Biden’s social policy bill.

The Taliban’s victory may have stifled some of the United States’ imperial designs, but it dealt no definitive blow to the military–industrial complex. Saudi Arabia is part of that equation and Biden’s election has done nothing to alter that fact.