Saudi Crisis Shows the U.S. Needs a New Way to Deal With Dictators
Washington has to recognize the downsides of alliances with nations that quash democracy and human rights.
Time to close the arms bazaar?
Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The disappearance of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi has precipitated a new crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations. Yet that crisis has also revived a much older dilemma in American strategy: How to deal with allies that also happen to morally abhorrent, even murderous, dictatorships.
The basic predicament has been around for over a century. As the U.S. established its dominance in the Western Hemisphere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it often cooperated with local strongmen who could provide some semblance of stability. Throughout the Cold War, containing communism required working with partners that were far from morally pure — dictators who ruled key allies such as South Korea, Turkey, Portugal and Greece at various points, as well as a clutch of Latin American and Middle Eastern despots.