Sunday 17 July 2022

Biden Fails In Middle East

Joe Biden has been the perfect American President as in he hasn't done very much outside of his own borders, what he has been doing in America itself i'm not so sure, but outside of it he has been welcoming absent.
The 79 year old has climbed aboard Air Force 1 and landed in the Middle East where he predictably met with Israeli leaders then crossed into to say howdy to the Palestinians and then headed off to a potentially awkward meeting with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, awkward because in the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and with US intelligence concluding that Prince Mohammed approved the killing, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia 'a pariah state' and pledged that his foreign policy would be based on human rights.
Rather than swerve a meeting with the Saudi's altogether and entrench the pariah state message, the fist-bump greeting at the airport with MbS when Biden stepped off the plane didn't look particularly unfriendly and the American President seems to have come to the conclusion that America needs Saudi Arabia more than Saudi Arabia needs America.
Obviously Oil is high up the agenda but when Biden asked for Saudi Arabia to pump more to make up for the shortfall in the Russian output, MbS gave a vague promise to maybe do so if it was needed at some point in the future, so no movement there then but it isn't just the reserves under the Saudi Arabian desert which concerned the President, the Saudi's have a burgeoning relationship with both Russia and China who not only sell them weapons but have a good relationship and influence on Iran which America, under Donald Trump, recklessly threw away and have failed to regain and as Iran is the Saudi's main rival in the region, they see the Russia and Chinese as more beneficial to their aims.
With Interest rates rising in the USA, mostly due to the Oil price, and Biden seeing his odds of a second term as President disappearing down the drain, he has gambled that Oil trumps his Human Rights pledge and he has not only failed spectacularly, but has shown the likes of Mohammed bin Salman that they do what they like as long as it doesn't have a detrimental effect on the American economy.

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