President Joe Biden's senior Middle East advisor, Brett McGurk, is headed to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to secure a dangerous and ill-conceived security pact with the kingdom. This visit comes at a particularly awkward time, as Human Rights Watch recently released an account of gruesome rights abuses in Saudi Arabia—the murder of hundreds of Ethiopian refugees by Saudi border guards, which may amount to crimes against humanity.
While the administration now appears to be raising concerns about these revelations, it is not enough. So far, the administration has taken no concrete action against the regime for the killings, or for its efforts to block an investigation. In fact, the Biden administration appears undeterred in its quest to secure a deal with Saudi Arabia that may involve committing the U.S. military to defend the kingdom.
If there are to be any meaningful consequences for Saudi actions, Congress will have to step in.
The new revelations come during a period when Saudi Arabia's record of destabilizing actions and systematic human rights abuses—from its brutal war in Yemen to the murder of U.S.-resident journalist Jamal Khashoggi—have been treated as if they were ancient history. Whether by purchasing soccer teams and the PGA golf tour or signaling a willingness to normalize relations with Israel, the Saudi regime has been making prodigious efforts to sanitize its image and expand its power and influence.
The new Human Rights Watch report pierced through Saudi rehabilitation efforts and forces attention back on the ugly reality. The report documented Saudi border guards killing hundreds of migrants on the Saudi-Yemen border with explosive devices and close range gunfire.
The brutal killings are once again forcing a fundamental disconnect into focus: despite vowing to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" and to place human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, the Biden administration continues to provide arms sales, military training, and weapons maintenance to the Saudi military despite its abhorrent actions. And, on top of that, they are considering committing U.S. servicemen and women to fight in defense of Saudi Arabia in a NATO-like defense treaty.
Congress can pump the brakes on the ill-advised rush toward a quasi-U.S.-Saudi alliance. The archaic rules of the Senate combined with the dysfunctional politics of Washington usually mean that it is close to impossible to force a debate and vote.
Last spring, Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a resolution under 502B, which is meant to ban the provision of U.S. security assistance "to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."
This resolution would require a State Department evaluation of Saudi Arabia's overall human rights record as a possible prelude to a suspension of U.S. arms transfers to the regime. What is particularly powerful about this vehicle is that any senator can force a debate and vote on the issue, no matter what.
Senator Murphy's statement at the time of the resolution's introduction was as apt now as it was then: "The Saudi government tortures political dissenters, imprisons human rights defenders, brutally murders journalists, helps their citizens evade justice in the United States, and uses our weapons to commit war crimes. ... This resolution sets in motion a process that will allow Congress to debate the deteriorating human rights record of Saudi Arabia and how that should impact U.S. policy going forward."
This is precisely the moment for which such a resolution is designed to have maximum impact. A review of U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia in light of its human rights abuses and aggressive behavior is urgently needed before the Biden administration proceeds with plans to provide security guarantees to the regime in Riyadh as part of a possible normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saudi Arabia has proven to be an unreliable ally in the past—to put it mildly—and hitching U.S. security interests in the Middle East to such an erratic government is a potential recipe for disaster.
A few members of Congress seem to be ringing the alarm. Other members may not want to talk about it, but the beauty of the 502B procedural process is that if Senators Murphy or Lee want to press the issue, they can make the entire U.S. Senate go to the floor to discuss and vote on the urgent matter before us. Why are we still considering arming and defending the Saudis?
The time for this crucial debate is now, before the administration further cements U.S. security ties to a reckless, unaccountable regime that is more likely to embroil the United States in conflict than stabilize the Middle East.
Elizabeth Beavers is the vice president for public affairs at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the institute.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
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