| The midterm elections, the next OPEC+ meeting and Xi Jinping’s trip to Riyadh will seal the fate of an 80-year partnership. The US and Saudi Arabia have reached one of the lowest ebbs in their 80-year partnership. Three upcoming events will be key to determining whether this is just another of the periodic spats that have punctuated the relationship, or if Washington and Riyadh are developing irreconcilable differences. The dispute was triggered by an Oct. 5 decision by the Saudi-led OPEC+ group, which includes Russia, to lower production and prevent the continued fall in the price of oil. President Joe Biden’s administration regarded this as the breach of a private understanding with de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudis, however, say they had agreed to prevent the price from rising too high for the West, but not to keep it from falling unacceptably low for their needs. This disagreement builds on 15 years of gradually accumulated mutual mistrust. Fortunately, cooler heads seem to be prevailing. While the White House promised outraged congressional Democrats it would “reassess” relations and impose “consequences” on Saudi Arabia, no major or irreversible actions have been taken. A meeting of the US-Gulf Arab working group on Iran has been postponed, and no Biden administration officials attended last week’s Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh (although many leading US financial companies were represented at the highest levels). So far, that’s about it. For its part, Saudi Arabia has moved to rebut criticisms that it was siding with Russia against Ukraine: voting at the United Nations to condemn Moscow’s annexation of Ukrainian territories, and providing $400 million in humanitarian assistance to Kyiv. Yet nothing significant has yet been done to repair the damage, either. There are three inflection points on the horizon: US midterm elections on Nov. 8; the next OPEC+ meeting, on Dec. 4; and an anticipated visit to Riyadh by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. American annoyance has been widespread and bipartisan, but congressional Democrats are particularly infuriated, worried that voters will punish them for inflation caused in part by high energy prices. In the days leading up to the production cut, the Biden administration tried to persuade Saudi leaders to at least wait on a month — until after the midterms — but failed. If Democrats lose control of Congress, the hunt for culprits will ensue. It’s nonsensical to think Saudi Arabia would base a crucial economic strategic decision on US domestic politics. It was far more about keeping the nation on course for its long-term economic transformation away from fossil-fuel dependence. Yet if the Democrats are trounced, it may be much harder for the Biden administration to hold off on a major reprisal before the next OPEC+ meeting, potentially setting off a vicious cycle. That meeting presents an important opportunity to reset relations. On Dec. 5, seaborne imports of Russian crude oil to Europe will end, potentially creating an energy crisis as sinking temperatures mark the beginning of a long, cold winter. This presents a double opportunity for Riyadh. It can take care to coordinate sufficiently with Washington to begin to reverse the impact of the perceived betrayal in October, so that there are no unpleasant surprises. By helping to offset the cutoff of Russian crude by increasing their own production, or that of OPEC+, it can present itself as coming to the aid of the Europeans while making it clear that it is not in any sense siding with Russia against Ukraine. But there is also a double danger. It’s reasonable to interpret the current dispute as resulting from mutual misunderstandings, but that won’t be possible in December. Everything is now in the open, and there will be no excuse for a failure to or anticipate consequences. Moreover, while Saudi leaders have expressed shock at the accusation of betrayal, if they do nothing to help in December it will be much harder for them to convince anyone in the West that they aren’t effectively siding with Moscow. The final major challenge is a long-awaited visit by Xi to Saudi Arabia, likely to occur before year’s end, which will inevitably raise hackles in Washington. He’s likely to get the red-carpet treatment afforded former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in contrast to the low-key reception Biden received in his trip to Jeddah earlier this year. Though Biden wanted the simple reception he got, Republicans, and possibly Democrats, are sure to highlight the distinction. More dangerous are the deliverables invariably associated with such a high-level state visit. Last week China and Saudi Arabia agreed to move forward with an agreement to cooperate on nuclear energy. Anything that smacks of a strategic or military gain for Beijing in the Gulf region will not sit well in Washington. Forewarned is forearmed. These three significant hurdles need careful handling, and that means dialogue and coordination to avoid any further major misunderstandings between Riyadh and Washington. Otherwise, what thus far has been an avoidable argument could begin to turn into a mutually damaging rupture. |
Monthly Archives: October 2022
Partition, pragmatism and missed opportunities between Israel and the Palestinians
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/179836/
Two scholars examine, from Jewish and Arab perspectives, the historic United Nations vote on the partition of Palestine on Nov. 29, 1947, which ultimately led to the creation of the Jewish State of Israel.
The Palestinian national movement has long been accused of “never failing to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” But how much have Palestinians really contributed to their predicament through a refusal to compromise? When and how might they have acted differently?
Of course, no people this large, territorially defined and with a well-established national consensus can legitimately be denied self-determination because they have made strategic mistakes. Basic human rights aren’t dependent on good judgment. If they were, who would ever really qualify?
In practice, however, human individuals and collectivities are not the objects of history. Rather, they are subjects with agency. Palestinians tend to speak as if they simply need to be “given” their rights. In reality, there’s much they need to do and not do, not to “earn,” but to actually secure, their freedom.
Core among the Israeli litany of supposed Palestinian “missed opportunities” is the rejection of the 1947 United Nations partition plan. If only the Palestinians had agreed, it is alleged, there would now be two states and would never have been a conflict, “Nakba” or refugee crisis.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is plainly not open to ending the occupation in the foreseeable future, it’s worth revisiting that decision — not because past errors mean Palestinians somehow deserve to live as noncitizens under foreign military rule and have their land colonized, but because it is important to forming a wise Palestinian policy.
No one can be sure how such a counterfactual scenario would have played out. The Jewish community had the military power to enforce the establishment of its state. The size and capabilities of the military forces meant that the combined Jewish forces were virtually certain to defeat not only the Palestinian, but also the collective Arab militaries. Many complex and contingent factors were always going to determine how far that success might run. But, that overall victory would fall to the Jewish community, even though it felt vulnerable and threatened, is evident even on paper.
It can’t be known whether Jewish groups would have found the proposed United Nations partition borders, and the status of Jerusalem as an international city, acceptable, even if the Palestinians had agreed to them, given that they had the objective military power to unilaterally alter that equation. To this day, Israel, most unusually, will not clarify what areas, precisely, it considers part of its national sovereign territory or not. It’s therefore questionable whether the partition borders would have been acceptable to the Jewish state in the long run, particularly given the way in which Israel has pursued settlements in the occupied territories.
Nonetheless, in hindsight, it would obviously have been wise, given the outcome of the 1948 war, and, even more, the subsequent decades, for Palestinians to have at least tried to secure what they could diplomatically. However, this wasn’t obvious at the time. To the contrary, all of their behavior indicates the Palestinians had radically different expectations. They didn’t believe a Jewish state in Palestine could be established over the objections of a vast majority of its inhabitants, and with the opposition of the surrounding Arab countries. And when the Palestinians who became refugees fled or were expelled, almost all of them believed they would return home in a matter of weeks.
Palestinian rejection of partition was also based on moral and legal arguments, particularly the objection to the U.N. disregarding the passionate wishes of the large majority of a small country, as Arabs were about 1.4 million of the 2 million residents of mandatory Palestine in November 1947, when the partition resolution was adopted. Even in the proposed Jewish state there would have been an Arab plurality, despite the proposed U.N. borders being gerrymandered in a geographical crazy-quilt in order to include a maximal number of Jews and a minimal number of Palestinians. Finally, the Jewish minority of about one-third of the population was going to be granted not merely 55 percent of the territory, but some of the choicest areas.
Although it plainly would have been wise for Palestinians in 1947-48 to at least try to accomplish as much as possible by agreeing to the U.N. partition proposal, it’s virtually unimaginable that any national group could have demonstrated the foresight and determination to accept what necessarily seemed to them profoundly unjust, indefensible and even, from their sincere point of view, actually rationally inexplicable. Palestinians obviously made a mistake, but, in all honesty, what community in its situation would ever have acted differently?
Insistence on a checklist of national demands (which has been constantly downgraded) has been a consistent feature of — and disaster for — the Palestinian movement. A pragmatic track record beginning in 1947 would have gained the Palestinian movement a tremendous amount of international legitimacy and sympathy without actually losing them any more than they have lost anyway by insisting on more than they could accomplish at every given moment.
In fairness, however, it should be acknowledged that the Palestinian national movement has had at least one moment of enormous pragmatism, characterized by a vast concession that most Israelis don’t even recognize as a concession at all. When the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel in 1993, after two decades of painful movement toward embracing a two-state solution, Palestinians made what, for them at least, looks like the mother of all concessions. By downgrading their national goal to establishing a state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, they effectively abandoned political claims on 78 percent of what they universally regarded as their country. Unfortunately, the peace process that this recognition initiated has not resulted in an end to the conflict or the occupation.
There is no peace because both sides have made multiple proposals but neither has ever accepted the other’s terms. Israel’s effective PR machine has ensured its supporters have a strong narrative about Israeli peace proposals not accepted by the Palestinians. But few understand why the Palestinians turned them down. More important, most know nothing about the multiple Palestinian proposals rejected by Israel.
Palestinians would certainly have been well served historically, as they would today, by adopting a more pragmatic approach. Consistent overreaching has cost them dearly and never accomplished anything. But it’s hard to imagine a less pragmatic, or more overreaching, approach than Israel’s current policy of maintaining a de facto greater state that renders itself neither Jewish nor democratic, and hence not really “Israel” at all. Who is standing firm against partition now, and why?
Pragmatism, it would seem, can even become a victim of its own successes. Imagining oneself as either too weak or too strong apparently renders real pragmatism the most difficult of choices. All the more reason to adopt and protect it as a guiding national ethos.
Donald Trump is leaving the justice department no choice but to indict him
Whatever happens in the US midterm elections next month, a truly historic American political earthquake is almost certainly coming: the federal indictment of former US president Donald Trump. There are at least six major investigations that could produce such charges, but it seems almost inevitable that the Justice Department must indict the former president regarding the unlawful removal and retention of government documents, including some of the most secret and sensitive in existence.
It is not just that attorney general Merrick Garland adheres to the principle that no one is above the law. For whatever reason, Mr Trump appears to actually wish, and be working hard, to get indicted.
The case arises from hundreds of government documents, all of which belong to the public and by law must be held by the National Archive, unlawfully removed by Mr Trump when he left the White House. For months, the Archive sought to retrieve them, but got nowhere.
The Archive turned to the Justice Department, which succeeded in recovering some documents and securing an affidavit from one of Mr Trump’s attorneys attesting that, after a thorough search, all remaining documents were returned.
There is at least one FBI informant in the former president’s inner circle since authorities were alerted to the existence of large numbers of other government documents, some highly secret, still at Mr Trump’s Florida residence. The FBI then famously executed an August 8 search warrant and retrieved hundreds of additional documents, including from Mr Trump’s desk.
Had Mr Trump surrendered the documents at any time during the first 16 months of the saga, he would surely have been given a pass unavailable to any other private citizen or former official and the issue likely considered resolved. But it strongly appears he deliberately sought to retain and conceal the documents and deceive the authorities.
In February, Mr Trump instructed one of his attorneys, Alex Cannon, to swear under oath that all the documents had been returned. He refused because he suspected, correctly, that it was not true.
Another Trump employee, Walt Nauta, has reportedly admitted to the FBI that Mr Trump instructed him to move boxes of the documents out of a storage room to other parts of his Florida hotel shortly after the documents were subpoenaed by a grand jury in May. Mr Nauta reportedly denied moving the boxes until he was confronted with security camera footage secured by the FBI that shows him doing so.
This is plainly what prosecutors were referring to when they wrote in their August search warrant affidavit that “government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.” That effectively accuses Mr Trump, backed up by apparently very strong evidence, of trying to hide the documents from the government.
According to the New York Times, Mr Trump told his aides late last year he might be willing to exchange the documents he retained for FBI files regarding the investigation into possible dealings by his 2016 presidential campaign with Russian operatives. He was told that was a nonstarter because he had no right to the documents in his possession, which therefore could not be treated as bargaining chips, and that there was no baisis for the Justice Department to hand over any files to a private citizen.
In the waning days of his presidency, Mr Trump had been sternly warned on numerous occasions by key aides, including White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, that all presidential records, including those he was keeping in the White House residential areas, needed to be immediately surrendered to the Archive.
Senior Justice Department officials have reportedly bluntly told Mr Trump’s attorneys that they strongly suspect that he continues to unlawfully retain government documents despite almost two years of this drama. The former president maintains numerous residences, and dozens of empty folders marked as containing classified information were discovered during the August search. The government may well be aware of specific documents that remain missing.
Moreover, the Archive has told Congress that the former Trump administration has not surrendered many known presidential record items.
As this extraordinary and unprecedented conduct developed over the past two years, some of Mr Trump’s aides reportedly came to fear that he was intentionally seeking to bait the Justice Department into searching his property. It now looks like he is actively trying to provoke an indictment.
Not only does it strongly seem that he personally directed the removal, retention and apparent concealment of these documents, and ordered his attorneys to falsely assure the government that he had returned all of them, at his recent rallies he is surrendering the last possible defence to these major felonies, which would be the claim none of this was intentional.
It has long been reported that Mr Trump repeatedly told his aides of the documents, “it’s not theirs, it’s mine.” At an October 9 rally, Mr Trump demanded the government “should give me back immediately everything they’ve taken from me [when the search warrant was executed on August 8], because it’s mine.”
This is the clearest possible statement of intent. He took the documents, retained them, concealed them, falsely claimed to have returned them, and intended to keep them in perpetuity – or strike a bargain with them – and may well be still hiding more, “because they’re mine”.
This all means that it is simply no longer reasonable for the Justice Department to fail to charge Mr Trump in this matter with obstruction of justice, probably violating the Espionage Act, and certainly “the wilful and unlawful removal of government records with the intent to conceal or destroy such records.”
What’s most perplexing is why, at almost every step, Mr Trump seems to have systematically cut off any avenue of retreat for the Justice Department, making it clear he was personally and deliberately responsible for all of these apparent unlawful actions and, by publicly insisting that “they’re mine” and demanding the immediate return of all the documents, even trumpeting his motive.
Mr Garland has no choice, because Mr Trump has left him none. Is it possible the former president believes being put on trial for these major felonies will be politically, personally or financially beneficial? That seems preposterous, but for whatever reason he appears determined to stand trial on these very serious charges.
How the US and Saudis Can Get Past the OPEC+ Dispute
Washington feels betrayed. Riyadh doesn’t understand why. A resetting of the Carter doctrine could restore trust between them.
The sudden crisis in US-Saudi relations is one of the worst — yet most unnecessary — in a partnership that has lasted almost 80 years. While it’s understandable that Americans are outraged at a decision by the Saudi-led OPEC+ group to cut petroleum production and bolster prices, both sides have failed to understand each other’s perspectives.
Viewing the production cut through the prism of the Ukraine war — Russia is part of the OPEC+ coalition — Washington feels betrayed. President Joe Biden’s administration believed that it had assurances Saudi Arabia would not raise prices, especially with Europe facing a cold winter and a lack of Russian natural gas. Washington, along with the United Arab Emirates, unsuccessfully urged the Saudis not to take this step.
The US perception is that Saudi Arabia instead sided with Moscow, given that high oil prices will strengthen the Russian economy against sanctions. The Saudis have also stumbled into US domestic politics. Democrats in general have a negative view of Saudi Arabia, bluntly expressed by candidate Joe Biden in 2019 when he threatened to treat the country as a “pariah.” Democrats in Congress are now threatening Saudi Arabia with harsh reprisals and want to downgrade the relationship with what they see as a faithless ally.
This attitude is partly rooted in the perception that the Saudis are aligned with Republicans, especially former President Donald Trump. They assume Riyadh is attempting to put its thumb on the scale to help Republicans in next month’s congressional elections and even set the stage for a Trump comeback.
The Saudis have a very different point of view. The official line is that it is “just an economic decision” — but it’s more than that. It’s a strategic move in the broadest sense, yet not aimed against Washington and even less toward Moscow. Saudi Arabia is attempting an epochal socio-economic transformation in short order. The country has a few decades to use its remaining oil revenue to remake itself into a society that can function without relying on petroleum exports.
It had a long-term policy of seeking to maintain oil at $100 a barrel, which Washington was comfortable with for a long time. In recent months, the price per barrel was steadily dropping, and the OPEC+ move was designed to maintain an $80 per barrel minimum and, the Saudis hope, sustain it at $90 per barrel, consistent with their development plans.
The Saudis weren’t thinking about Ukraine — like many people in Asia and Africa, they don’t think in absolute terms of being pro- or anti-Russian — although that was certainly shortsighted. And it’s frankly narcissistic for Democrats to imagine that the Saudis are adjusting their national grand strategy around the upcoming midterm vote. Once the Trump administration declined to respond to the devastating Iranian drone and missile attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities in September 2019, any lingering sense that Republicans were the answer for Saudi concerns evaporated.
Americans are shocked because they expected Saudi Arabia to be more attuned to US imperatives. Saudis are taken aback because they don’t see why anyone is surprised or any of this is a big deal.
It’s not just incompatible perceptions at work. There’s an underlying deficit of trust. The US wants and expects Saudi cooperation, above all on energy pricing. Saudi Arabia wants and expects US security support, but feels its protector is shifting its attention to Europe and especially China.
But the countries do still need each other. Only the US can provide Saudi Arabia the security it requires. And the Saudis are the only plausible regional partner for the still-strategically crucial US dominance in the waterways of the Persian Gulf, which constitutes one of Washington’s most potent forms of leverage over rivals like China.
After tempers cool, the US needs to formulate a new security commitment to Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. This would effectively update the 1979 Carter doctrine — a pledge to rebuff any nation that attempts to dominate the Gulf by force — and respond to contemporary threats like the 2019 missile attacks. And that agreement, of course, would be contingent on the Gulf Arabs renewing their commitment to US interests and Washington’s global as well as regional strategies.
Without such a new commitment, this long-lasting alliance is likely to deteriorate into a transactional relationship that is much less useful to both sides.
The next OPEC+ meeting, on Dec. 4, gives the Saudis an important opportunity to adjust the pricing decision. It’s essential they do that in coordination with Washington, as a first step toward repairing a partnership that has lasted so long because it offers so much.
Why the U.S.-Saudi Crisis is So Bad and So Unnecessary
https://agsiw.org/why-the-u-s-saudi-crisisis-so-bad-and-so-unnecessary
Lack of trust has left Washington and Riyadh misreading each other’s intentions to the point of creating a crisis where none should have ever existed.
The eruption of angry recriminations between a broad coalition of bipartisan political leaders in the United States – especially congressional Democrats – and the Saudi government and its supporters is one of the most bitter and potentially damaging in the 80-yearlong partnership between the two countries. It is also probably one of the most unnecessary and avoidable of the numerous rifts that have punctuated the relationship dating back to at least U.S.-support for Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the resulting Saudi-led oil embargo. At first glance, the proximate causes of the current contretemps are seemingly less severe than the 1973 crisis or the post-9/11 tensions and controversies, both of which continue to leave traces in the collective memory and political culture on both sides. However, underlying today’s tensions is a profound lack of trust that has been developing for almost 20 years, and which has personal, ideological, and partisan aspects, as well as distorting fallout from the Ukraine crisis, that will complicate the necessary repair work to restore a relationship that continues to be essential for both sides.
The proximate cause of the current anger is the decision by the Saudi-led OPEC+ group of OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers, which includes Russia, to initiate production cuts in order to stop, and slightly reverse, a steady decline in the price of oil per barrel on international markets. The problem is that both Saudis and Americans feel shocked and betrayed by each other’s actions and reactions, demonstrating not just a lack of trust but also a mutual incomprehension, which suggests that the two sides have not been paying sufficient attention to each other’s imperatives and perspectives. Rebuilding trust is never easy, but the underlying fundamentals of the partnership remain strong, so if national interests and reason prevail, it will happen over time. However, it’s imperative that tempers cool and further erosion of trust is prevented through the resumption of purposive and mutually respectful dialogue, beginning with consultations ahead of the next OPEC+ meeting scheduled for December 4.
Why Americans, Especially Democrats, are Furious
Saudis are taken aback by the enraged reaction of the United States to the production cut agreement, but they really shouldn’t be surprised. One of the main aims most Americans wanted out of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Middle East trip in July – although he said it was mainly about security and not energy pricing – was to ensure that Saudi Arabia helped keep the price of oil low to apply pressure on the Russian economy and help Europeans access affordable alternative energy resources during the upcoming cold winter months. The Biden administration reportedly believed that it had received assurances that Saudi Arabia would make such efforts, and it clearly regarded the new OPEC+ production cut announcement as a betrayal of those assurances. Moreover, the administration also reportedly strongly urged Riyadh not to enter into such an agreement with Russia and the other members for at least a month in the days before the recent meeting. In close coordination with the White House, the United Arab Emirates dispatched its national security advisor to Saudi Arabia urging the country not to take this step at this time. All these entreaties were unsuccessful. So, the administration regards this decision as a reversal of a Saudi commitment.
Moreover, the Western world has effectively divided into pro-and anti-Russia camps, with perspectives on international relations largely defined by the Ukraine war. There is an expectation that the entire international community should similarly choose sides, and that anything other countries do that affects any aspect of the Ukraine war reflects such an orientation. However, most of the developing world in Asia and Africa, including the Middle East, has not viewed the Ukraine war as the kind of definitive, transformational moment in international relations that the West does.
A typical U.S. interpretation of the oil production cut agreement has been that Saudi Arabia is siding with Russia in the confrontation with the West over Ukraine. What’s important about the agreement has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia or its economy, what resonates instead is that it strengthens the Russian economy, undercuts sanctions, and undermines Russia’s international isolation. Because, along with most of the West, the United States views the Ukraine war as a battle to salvage international law and order that is virtually between forces of good and evil, this supposed alignment with Moscow is viewed as intolerable faithlessness by a long-standing partner.
The timing of the decision, a few weeks before the crucial U.S. midterm elections, has also led many Americans – especially congressional Democrats and their allies – to suspect that Saudi Arabia is effectively intervening in U.S. domestic politics on behalf of Republicans and even former President Donald J. Trump. Many Democrats have still not forgiven Saudi Arabia for the warm welcome it gave Trump on his first overseas trip and have assumed that Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, are strongly aligned with Republicans and especially the Trump faction. The idea that an international partner would seek to aid Republicans in the upcoming elections, in hopes of strengthening their hand in Congress, and even promote a potential second Trump term, has fueled an apoplectic response by many Democrats, especially in Congress.
Many Democrats maintain a long list of grievances with Saudi Arabia in addition to its supposed strong alliance with Trump, including the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the war in Yemen, and a range of human rights abuses. They were more comfortable with what Biden said as a candidate in 2020 about treating Saudi Arabia as “a pariah” than they were with his administration’s slow and careful, but deliberate, measures to rebuild ties culminating in his Middle East trip in July and his conciliatory fist bump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Long primed to see Saudi Arabia as an unworthy, unreliable, and unsavory partner, congressional Democrats have demanded and threatened a range of damaging reprisals against Riyadh. The Biden administration, however, has said Saudi Arabia will face serious consequences but that it will determine them in the future, seeking to mull over the situation and allow tempers to cool. Beyond the issues of the moment, and the cool-to-frosty relationship between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman, some analysts also detect waning Saudi interest in coordinating on oil with the United States, as it has become a major oil producer in its own right.
Why Saudis are Taken Aback and Also Feel Betrayed
Americans were shocked by the Saudi move, although they ought to have seen it coming and understand its actual context. The key factor for Washington is the Ukraine war. OPEC+ is a forum for OPEC member producers, led by Saudi Arabia, and non-OPEC producers, primarily Russia. The structure of the relationship is primarily based on the 2020 oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, in which Riyadh demonstrated decisive ability to be the swing producer. Saudi Arabia is loath to give up this hard-fought and dearly won dominant position in a functioning de facto cartel.
From the Saudi perspective, the oil market cannot be stabilized without an agreement among these producers. Otherwise, the price would be determined by unpredictable and even chaotic forces as different producers increase and decrease production of this fungible commodity according to their own agendas. While the Saudis had committed not to let the price of oil rise sky high, they insist they always intended to maintain the price at an acceptable level and prevent its looming collapse. In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia watched the price of oil per barrel steadily sink. And apparently, Riyadh felt a national security imperative to intervene to prevent and modestly reverse the slide.
For many years Saudi Arabia had maintained that the appropriate price of oil was between $80 and $100 per barrel. And Washington was comfortable with such an arrangement as well, particularly as fracking became profitable in the United States. The Saudi purpose in OPEC+ is to maintain a minimum price of $80/bbl with the hope of stabilizing it at $90/bbl. While Saudi spokespeople are maintaining that this is a “purely economic” decision, in fact it operates at the highest level of national grand strategy – although this is not how it is understood in Washington.
Under King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has engaged in a remarkable and in many ways unprecedented effort to rapidly transform the social and economic conditions in a large and populous state through top-down guidance. The Saudi leaders know that they have merely a few decades left of major oil revenue in which to use hydrocarbon resources as the basis for a transformation to a viable post-hydrocarbon economy. This is urgent, risky, and cannot be postponed.
So, for the Saudi government, issues involving oil pricing are viewed through the lens of their highly ambitious and extremely fragile development and economic transformation agenda. Clearly, they did not view the OPEC+ agreement, essentially between themselves and the Russians, primarily through the lens of the Ukraine war – although arguably they should have understood how it would look to the Western world, especially Washington. They saw it through the lens of their own urgent domestic economic agenda and did not view it as siding with Russia, let alone betraying Washington or throwing Ukraine to the wolves.
This is almost entirely unappreciated and unrecognized in Washington. But what many Americans don’t seem to understand is that they are angry at Saudi Arabia for not taking a major hit to help the West in supporting Ukraine. Neither point of view is irrational and both are objectively correct. Saudi Arabia is indeed acting in its interests and in a manner that has been traditionally held as legitimate for oil pricing goals that have also been long regarded as reasonable. At the same time, the Saudi move does help strengthen the Russian economy and undermine a campaign of sanctions against and international isolation of Moscow. Differing imperatives and agendas produce differing perspectives that have resulted in both sides misunderstanding and misinterpreting each other’s intentions.
The December 4 OPEC+ Meeting is a Crucial Opportunity for a Reset
The current crisis is unnecessary because it is primarily based on these misunderstandings, but they reflect a lack of effective communication and a deep deficit of trust. The lack of trust between Riyadh and Washington is remarkably high and has developed steadily for at least the past 15 years. That’s why a Saudi move to maintain oil at $80/bbl, a price that rationally ought to be perfectly acceptable to the United States, and traditionally has been, has become a major flashpoint.
Americans expect Saudi cooperation, especially on oil pricing, and they feel they haven’t gotten it at the time of deep tensions and great vulnerability, particularly in Europe – and above all immediately before the looming midterm elections. And in many instances in the past, the Saudis have consulted with Washington and in essence cooperated on oil policy. Saudis expect U.S. support for their fundamental national security, including helping their urgent effort to create a viable post-hydrocarbon future, and they feel they haven’t gotten it at a time of their own deep vulnerability. U.S. inaction following the September 2019 missile and drone attacks widely believed to have been conducted by Iran against Saudi Aramco facilities was a key inflection point for Saudi Arabia and probably doomed any remaining hopes that Saudi Arabia had that Republicans or Trump would provide the solution to better relations with Washington and improved national security. The conviction among Democrats that Saudi Arabia is attempting to intervene in the midterm elections on behalf of Republicans or Trump is solipsistic. The Saudis are not adjusting oil prices according to the U.S. political calendar. What they are doing, though, is ignoring the political calendar as they move to adjust oil prices and prevent them from falling to what are, from their point of view, unacceptably low levels. In the context of such a close and crucial partnership, Saudi inattention to the U.S. political calendar constitutes a solipsism of its own.
The UAE has also played a serious role. Abu Dhabi reportedly communicated Washington’s concerns about a potential production cut to Riyadh in the days before the OPEC+ emergency meeting, and it, too, apparently expressed reservations. However, once the meeting was convened, the UAE eventually went along with Saudi Arabia and, by virtue of consensus, Russia as well. Yet immediately after the decision was made, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow offering to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. He was warmly and enthusiastically welcome by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is constantly looking for ways to break out of his suffocating international isolation.
The UAE move was bold and reflects a newfound dynamism in Emirati international engagement that potentially carries certain risks. Traditional UAE foreign policy was characterized by caution, reflecting its role as a mid-level power. In recent years, the UAE has increasingly taken on international roles that break from that caution. However, in this case the trip to Russia was closely coordinated with the United States and was part of a U.S.-led international effort to press Putin on nuclear dangers arising from the Ukraine war.
The Biden administration has not reacted hastily or incautiously to the oil production cut. It was clear about its dismay over the OPEC+ decision, mainly directed toward Saudi Arabia. And it assured its congressional allies that Biden would “reevaluate” the relationship with Saudi Arabia and that the country would face “consequences” for the decision. However, he has not yet taken any actions that would constitute reevaluation or consequences, preferring to let tempers cool. For its part, Riyadh has assured Washington that it will vote against Russia at the United Nations and condemn its annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories.
Despite the deep-seated lack of trust that has built up for decades, the United States and Saudi Arabia still need each other for national interest imperatives. Saudi Arabia ultimately requires an external guarantor of its security, and only the United States can play this role under current circumstances. The kingdom is ill-equipped to go it alone in a dangerous world and region. Yet the Gulf and its energy resources remain central to the global economy, especially in South and East Asia. The powerful U.S. military presence in the Gulf region, and the waterways through which the lifeblood of the global economy passes every day, remains one of Washington’s key assets with friend and foe alike.
The United States may not be dependent on Middle East energy, but China certainly is, to Washington’s profound anxiety and displeasure. So even in the context of a “pivot to Asia” or an emphasis on “great power competition,” primarily with China, the Gulf region, with its vital energy resources and strategic waterways, remains a crucial competitive advantage for the United States and a major source of leverage, particularly with South and East Asian powers. To that end, the United States needs a primary local partner, and only Saudi Arabia can plausibly play that role, given that Iraq is barely functional, Iran is an anti-status quo and revisionist power, and the other Gulf states lack the strategic depth, in terms of population, geography, and economic size that the Saudis command.
Despite these strong fundamentals, over the years Saudi Arabia has come to distrust the U.S. commitment to its security and will to act, while continuing to issue dictates and set its own agenda without regard to Saudi interests and imperatives, treating it, as some Democrats have bluntly said in recent days, as “a client state.” Meanwhile, the United States has come to view Saudi Arabia as an untrustworthy, ineffective, and yet intolerably ruthless partner, one whose values are incompatible with Washington’s and that provides little of value. Since neither side views itself in this manner, there should be every reason to convince the other that they are mistaken.
Insofar as there are elements of truth in these perceptions, they are also, for the most part, inaccurate. If the United States really were abandoning the Gulf Arab countries and region, it would not be maintaining the huge military footprint and presence that it has. Instead, it would have radically drawn down, to widespread applause from the U.S. public. If Saudi Arabia truly were disinterested in U.S. considerations, it would connive with Russia to drive the oil price far above $80/bbl and cooperate with Iran and others in selling oil in other currencies (thereby costing the United States billions per year), and both sides would have stopped their extensive military and intelligence cooperation throughout the Middle East. And, in fact, under the hood of the vehicle, a great deal of cooperation has been going on. Although, the United States has reportedly canceled a meeting of a U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council working group on Iran that is seeking to develop a more integrated set of regional air and missile defense systems that Washington has been heavily promoting for Gulf Arab and other Middle Eastern partners.
The existence of this working group, and many other similar unsung elements of U.S.-Saudi and U.S.-GCC cooperation, is a useful reminder that, behind the scenes, a great deal of useful cooperation has continued and grown throughout the years. There are numerous reasons that the U.S.-Saudi relationship has flourished for almost 80 years despite being punctuated with minor and major tremors and rifts. But it has always repaired itself because neither side has entered the relationship out of altruism or mutual infatuation. Both sides have acted entirely in their national interests, and the reasons for doing so remain as powerful now as they have ever been. Therefore, the relationship should, and likely will, be repaired.
However, given the lack of trust that has developed on both sides, that is going to take some work. Fortunately, there is a major opportunity in the next OPEC+ meeting. The meeting is set for December 4, just as the cold European winter will be setting in. At that point, many things will have been clarified. Hopefully, Saudi Arabia will be more satisfied with the stability of the price of oil. The midterm election results will be in, and if Democrats perform well, particularly by maintaining control of the Senate, they will be a lot less upset about what they have perceived as intended meddling. Even the trajectory of the war in Ukraine could be somewhat clearer by then. At any rate, that meeting presents an excellent opportunity for Saudi Arabia, without any appearance of coercion or undue pressure, to undertake a new pricing structure that is acceptable to the White House and Congress.
The key is coordination. However inadvertently, Riyadh has ignited the current crisis and, therefore, it ought to take the initiative to rectify the misunderstanding by closely coordinating its position on December 4 with Washington. Beginning to fully appreciate the depth of anger in Washington, on October 12 the Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the United States had requested a one-month delay in the decision but that would have had “negative economic consequences.” However, it insisted the decision was not “politically motived against the United States of America,” that Saudi Arabia was not siding with Russia and that while it wouldn’t accept any “dictates,” it views “its relationship with the United States of America as a strategic one that serves the common interests of both countries.”
Words need to be reified by deeds. Fortunately, the December 4 OPEC+ meeting provides an opportunity for Riyadh, if it wants to take it, to correct the impression that it is somehow siding with Russia against the United States and Ukraine or that it does not take U.S. imperatives into consideration. And Washington needs to reciprocate by demonstrating how serious it is about Saudi national security interests, including its urgent national economic transformation project. U.S. and Saudi goals are not contradictory or in tension, and their long-term aims – all based on regional and international security and stability – are broadly compatible. There’s certainly no rational basis for a meltdown over energy pricing that ought to be mutually acceptable as long as there is sufficient consultation, coordination, and sincere attempts to understand each other’s imperatives.
Come November, will Americans be voting on the right issues?
Voters are more often drawn to issues that politicians can’t control in the short run, rather than those they can.
One of the strangest midterm elections in US history is in its final stretch, with just a month to go. The campaign would typically be a de facto referendum on the new president, rather than a preview of a looming rematch between Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump.
The race has involved a dramatic shift to the extreme right by much of the Republican Party aligned with the former president. And that has produced a set of candidates who are loudly campaigning on racist and Christian nationalist positions that, until now, would have been regarded as outrageous and disqualifying, including among doctrinaire conservative.
Mr Trump won’t be on the ballot, but his presence is pervasive, although many Republican candidates who won primaries because of his backing are of a remarkably low caliber.
The former president and his fixation on 2020 – in a recent speech he boasted about the size of the January 6 rally that degenerated into the attack on Congress, clearly glorying in the moment – give Democrats solid prospects of retaining the Senate and an unlikely but not impossible shot at keeping control of the House of Representatives.
Democrats are also hoping that the Supreme Court ruling last year eliminating any constitutional protection for abortion-rights will help drive turnout. The ruling seems to have had a bigger impact than initially expected, but its full effect remains untested.
Conventional wisdom holds that the two issues most Republican candidates are emphasizing – the surges in inflation and crime – are more powerful and emotive than the Democratic themes of abortion-rights and protecting democracy from persistent attacks by Mr Trump’s movement. Yet as Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman notes, if that’s true voters would be exhibiting a lamentable lack of understanding about what elected officials can effectively address.
Rising crime rates – primarily state and local concerns – result from a complex set of socio-economic factors. And while there are theories, baseless or not, that the Biden administration’s spending may have made inflation worse, it is a macro-economic and global phenomenon strongly linked to international catastrophes such as the pandemic and the Ukraine war. Moreover, Republicans under Mr Trump exhibited no greater fiscal prudence than Democrats under Mr Biden.
The public may well be eager to punish Mr Biden and his party, but their policies did little, if anything, to drive these negative trends. And there’s very little, if anything, that a new member of Congress, or even a cadre of them, could do that would have much impact on either problem.
By contrast, abortion rights and protecting democratic processes are immediately within the grasp of Congress, as well as state and local officials. These key Democratic themes may be widely seen, possibly including by much of the public, as more “abstract” and “theoretical” but in fact they are precisely the kind of concerns that elected politicians can and will address, one way or another.
In many key elections, however, it’s not just Republicans shouting about inflation versus Democrats shouting about abortion. There’s also the wave of unheard-of weirdness, extremism and incompetence on the Republican right.
Republican Georgia Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, a former football star, is campaigning on a total abortion ban, even for rape victims. He’s also been heavily critical of absentee fathers, especially in his own African-American community.
It was tricky enough when he was shown to have lied, even to his own staffers, about having children with four women and to be a stereotypical absentee father. Then a woman explained that, after he got her pregnant, he paid for her abortion, and, when it happened again, he urged her to have a second abortion. She refused and had one of his sons. Given the documentary evidence she has provided, the truth of her story is evident.
Mr Walker nonetheless categorically insists none of this is true and that, moreover, he has been “born again” and forgiven by God, which seems a contradiction. And he’s demonstrated neither repentance nor truthfulness, supposedly the bedrocks of such divine grace.
For anti-abortion zealots, Mr Walker’s former paramour should be a heroine, since she apparently refused his entreaties to have a second abortion and gave birth to their now 10-year-old son, who he has apparently deigned to meet on a mere three occasions.
The response of his supporters has been remarkably blunt. From state party leaders to rank-and-file voters, countless Georgia Republicans have said, in effect, that they don’t care if this is true, or if he’s lying to them, or anything except putting him in the Senate to reliably vote with fellow Republicans. Mr Walker’s campaign reports a significant uptick in donations following the revelations.
The race remains very tight with his Democratic opponent, incumbent Senator Rafael Warnock, maintaining a slight edge.
Most striking is the rise of “Christian nationalism” – the American equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood – on the Republican right. This joins other themes like a resurgent QAnon conspiracy cult, 2020 election denial and support for, or even participation in, the January 6 insurrection, and a shocking resurgence of openly vicious racism.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a first-term Georgia congresswoman whose QAnon-inflected radicalism has catapulted her into overnight party stardom, has repeatedly called herself a Christian nationalist and is an ardent proponent of the racist anti-immigration “great replacement theory.”
The paranoid and chauvinistic narrative that “they” want to dispossess “us” doesn’t stop with immigrants. In one of the most overtly racist speeches by a major US politician in many years, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville conflated Democrats, criminals, and “people who want reparations” – an obvious reference to African-Americans – “because they want to take over what you got.”
Along with immigrants and African Americans, Jews aren’t being spared. Republican Pennsylvania governor candidate Doug Mastriano, another avowed Christian nationalist with close ties to racist and anti-Semitic extremists, said that his opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, demonstrated “disdain for people like us” because as a child he attended a Jewish school.
Such toxic candidates for Congress and governorships of major states are a key reason Democrats have a better chance in the midterms than expected. Even if this shockingly radicalized ascendant Republican faction ultimately fails, it is already doing tremendous damage to American political culture.
The results in states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan – where Republicans are running extremists and inept, manifestly unsuitable, candidates for vital governance roles – will do much to measure and shape the viability of the emerging, refashioned Christian nationalist and aggressively racist Republican Party.
Ginni Thomas’ bizarre activism highlights the credibility crisis facing the Supreme Court
Radicalization, politicization, lack of accountability and ethical improprieties are destroying the court’s legitimacy.
Testimony last week before the January 6 congressional committee by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, highlighted the increasing politicisation of the court as its new term begins this week. That poses unprecedented challenges for the court itself, the rest of the government and the US system as a whole.
The court is no longer a trusted arbiter – if it ever fully was – of US constitutional law. Neither is it, as Chief Justice John Roberts claimed, using a baseball analogy, an umpire “calling balls and strikes”. Instead, it’s now the primary lightning rod in the US political landscape, especially since former president Donald Trump is a private citizen.
The court has become the epicentre of right-wing radicalism, in many cases out of step with public opinion. Though Mr Roberts complains it’s unfair to cast doubt on the court’s probity simply because one doesn’t agree with its opinions, in fact the court is behaving in a highly unusual manner. Controversial and ground-breaking rulings of the past were usually undertaken unanimously, or at least overwhelmingly. Now it’s a matter of 5-4 or, at best, 6-3.
The affair of Mrs Thomas is a good indicator of how bizarre things have become.
She was summoned before the committee because of numerous text messages she exchanged with then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, communications with Republican officials in key swing states urging them to overturn the election of Joe Biden and, especially, her apparently extensive interactions with attorney John Eastman, alleged architect of the primary coup plot involving slates of false electors from key states.
Her text messages with Mr Meadows – that he provided to the committee and were made public in March before he abruptly ended his co-operation – reveal a right-wing activist untethered from reality.
She draws heavily on conspiracy theories, including this extraordinary regurgitation of QAnon delusions: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” To this deranged delusion she added: “I hope this is true.”
She seems to have been particularly focused on a conspiracy theory that “watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states”. She told Mr Meadows that “we are living through what feels like the end of America” and that the election was “the greatest heist of our history”.
But perhaps the most chilling comment for the wife of a Supreme Court Justice was her insistence the country is at war and “the most important thing you can realise right now is that there are no rules in war”.
The only thing that has been revealed about her committee testimony is that she apparently remains convinced that the election was somehow “stolen” by Mr Biden, although it is unclear which of many potential implausible conspiracy theories she currently embraces.
But does it matter what the spouse of a powerful person says and does? It certainly can, especially in the case of a judge.
While she insists she never discusses her political work or any of his pending cases with him, there’s plenty of wiggle room in her phraseology – and, besides, there are apparently no rules in war. Both spouses have described themselves as “one being”, and as being each other’s “best friend”. And in one of her text messages, she specifically mentions having discussed election-related issues with “my best friend”.
Mr Thomas has already failed to recuse himself in a Supreme Court ruling in which he was the only justice to oppose allowing the committee to access the trove of documents including these text messages involving his wife.
Given what is now known about her extensive involvement, at least as a cheerleader, in the extensive effort to overthrow the election, Mr Thomas is duty and honour bound to henceforth recuse himself from all related cases. After all, she would most likely not have had the attention of Mr Meadows were she not his wife.
But there is no reason to believe that he will live up to that ethical obligation. And there are virtually no ethical rules binding on Supreme Court justices.
Mr Thomas is a key member of the five (occasionally six) member right-wing majority that has been gutting precedent and smashing its own “originalist” or “textualist” approaches in order to reach ideologically and religiously driven conclusions overturning the long-established right of women to an early-term abortion, prohibiting states from restricting loaded firearms in public places, and a raft of other decisions that are based on personal preferences and not the law or the Constitution.
The next term could be even worse.
The radical majority appears poised to eliminate affirmative action programmes to counter racial discrimination, gut the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency, authorise discrimination against sexual minorities in the name of religious beliefs, destroy one of the last remaining effective parts of the 1964 voting rights act (Section 2), and, most alarmingly, potentially codify into law the once-fringe independent state legislature theory. This theory holds that, because the Constitution empowers state legislatures to organise elections, they are subject to no oversight whatsoever, including by courts, and are not bound even by their own state constitutions.
If that theory is made part of constitutional law, as seems entirely possible, it could open the floodgates to election subversion, effectively authorising majorities in state legislatures to micromanage and interfere with decisions by election officials, and even reject election results certified by governors. This is precisely what Mr Eastman – reportedly with the encouragement of Mrs Thomas – was trying to engineer in key states after the 2020 election.
The US Supreme Court has in recent months been sullied by ideological fanaticism. And Mrs Thomas appears to have exalted company, some perhaps quite close to home, in hallucinating that America is embroiled in a civil conflict so dire that “there are no rules”.
The US midterms involve violent and economic mayhem from the right
The hammer assault on Paul Pelosi is mirrored by GOP threats to bludgeon the US and global economies by taking the debt ceiling hostage.
The horrifying attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a key Democratic leader, is the chronicle of an attack foretold. Mr Pelosi, 82, was severely injured with a hammer by David DePape, who reportedly broke into their home at 2am and rampaged through the house shouting “Where’s Nancy?”
Ms Pelosi was, fortunately, in Washington DC with her security detail. But the first obvious echo of this apparent failed assassination attempt was the focus on Ms Pelosi by the January 6 mob rampaging through Congress chanting “Nancy, Nancy” and “All we want is Pelosi.” The other figure heavily singled out that day was then-vice president Mike Pence, whom the rioters chanted that they intended to hang.
The insurrectionists were infuriated with Mr Pence because he was refusing to cooperate with an unlawful scheme cooked up by former president Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman for the vice president to unconstitutionally refuse to count certified results and electors from key swing states. But their hatred of Ms Pelosi was far more broad-based and generalised, rooted in more than 10 years of intense personal vilification by Republican leaders and advocates.
She has consistently been in the top two or three Democrats demonised by increasingly violent Republican rhetoric over the past decade, first alongside former president Barack Obama, then presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and more recently candidate and now President Joe Biden. “Nancy” is such a constant feature of vitriolic right-wing denigration that she is typically referred to in these attacks only by her first name.
The reason, unsurprisingly, that she draws so much ire is that she has been a remarkably effective House leader for Democrats, particularly in the nearly two years since Mr Biden was inaugurated. The rabble-rousing Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene even indicated support for calls for Ms Pelosi to be executed as a “traitor”.
A second significant echo in the attack on her husband was an outrageously violent debasement of the Speaker by her Republican rival, Kevin McCarthy, who is seeking to become Speaker in her place. In 2021, he told a fundraising event: “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that [Speaker’s] gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.” Apparently Mr DePape took that both seriously and literally, though he had to satisfy himself with battering her elderly husband.
Violent rhetoric and thinly-disguised threats promoting attacks against politicians have been steadily intensifying since the rise of Mr Trump as the Republican leader in 2016. There have been several noteworthy instances of left-wing violence and threats against Republican officials. But not only are there significantly more such attempts against Democrats, there is no comparable violent discourse among Democratic leaders or leading liberal commentators.
The third echo in the attack on Mr Pelosi were of the chilling words of moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins who said on October 1: “I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed,” because of the proliferation of “active threats of violence and real violence.” No one could be.
While many leading Republicans have expressed horror at the attack, Mr Trump has been strikingly silent. Quite a few other Republicans made light of the attack or sought to blame it on the Democrats because of their supposedly “pro-crime” policies.
It certainly seems like just a matter of time before political assassinations and violent assaults could re-emerge as a regular feature of American national life. The spike in the rhetoric of havoc must eventually translate into concrete action, as it did at 2am on Friday in the Pelosi house.
But there is another form of mayhem lurking on the American horizon, and another potential chronicle of a terrifying attack foretold. The midterm elections which take place in a week are, this year, exceptionally unusual and hard to read. Anyone making firm predictions is being overconfident.
Republicans seem to have an excellent chance of securing at least a small House majority, but that is by no means certain. And the Senate appears to be absolutely neck and neck.
But assuming Republicans at least take the House, as does seem likely, the Biden administration faces all sorts of investigations, harassment and possible impeachment, all based on vengeance rather than actual misdeeds. That is not the grave danger, however.
Republican leaders in the House have repeatedly announced that if they regain power they intend to use the Speaker’s gavel not to hit Ms Pelosi on the head, but to hammer the US and global economies senseless, and create an unmitigated catastrophe unless Mr Biden capitulates and undoes many of his legislative accomplishments.
They want the administration to agree to huge spending cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and probably military and other support for Ukraine, or they will refuse to cooperate in the necessary regular raising of a “debt ceiling” that limits government borrowing, so that the country can pay for previous spending already authorised by Congress.
It is unconstitutional for the US government to default on its debt obligations, and doing so would not only disrupt payments to vulnerable domestic recipients of government support, it would also spike US borrowing costs. Most alarmingly, it would probably trigger a massive financial crisis across the world by destroying the credibility of US Treasury securities, which serve as a global benchmark.
They really are threatening to blow up the US, and to some extent global, economy if they do not get their way. That national and international horror is at least as terrifying as Mr Pelosi’s hammer-wielding 2am assailant.
So, if Republicans win the House next week, Democrats must act immediately to abolish the debt ceiling, or raise it to an astronomical level that makes further extensions unnecessary, or find another workaround, like minting a $1 trillion gold coin. The precise methodology is less important than the absolutely essential defusing of this ticking bomb.
Poor Mr Pelosi was a sitting duck, unprotected in his home in the middle of the night. But the Democrats will have almost two months to move quickly to disarm these gavel-wielding would-be assailants on the US and global financial system.
Anyone who thinks the current crop of Republicans isn’t reckless enough to do that must have slept through the past six years.