The wannabe Putin in Saudi Arabia

American leaders have peered into Vladimir Putin’s eyes to sense “his soul,” have praised him as “very straightforward and trustworthy” or even a “genius.” They have “reset” relations, tolerated invasions of Georgia and Crimea, averted eyes from atrocities and even gone so far as to blame “US foolishness” for strains in Russia-American relations — because they wanted a steady relationship, and Putin was unmistakably in control of an important country.

But as the weekend upheavals in Russia underscored, dictators are forever, until they’re not. In retrospect, ignoring Putin’s provocations wasn’t savvy realpolitik, but naïveté.

So where else are we making the same mistake, empowering a dictator instead of confronting him? My candidate for tomorrow’s Putin is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, better known as MBS President Biden and his aides have been courting MBS and trying to reset relations with him — even as he seeks a “civilian” nuclear program. This is as misguided and morally bankrupt as our mishandling of Putin over the last two decades.

“MBS is a wannabe Putin,” said Dr Khalid Aljabri, a Saudi cardiologist who previously worked as a clinician for the Saudi counterterrorism agency. Aljabri, who has a brother and sister imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for political reasons, lives in the United States and is frustrated that the crown prince has, as he puts it, played Biden “like a fiddle.”

Not everyone is comfortable comparing MBS to Putin. “I don’t want to make this comparison because I don’t want to make MBS happy,” said Alia al-Hathloul, a Saudi living in Europe. Her Nobel Peace Prize nominee sister, Loujain, was imprisoned and tortured for championing women’s rights.

Hathloul added that Western leaders should have learned a lesson from Russia that applies to Saudi Arabia: “Do not rely on crazy people; you will regret it.” The crown prince specialises in crazy. He effectively kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister and started a war with Yemen, causing what the United Nations described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. He provoked a split with Qatar, a crucial American partner. He is widely believed to be behind the murder and dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist, my friend Jamal Khashoggi — leading critics to say that MBS actually stands for “Mr Bone Saw.”

In short, this is a Putin-like pattern of bamboozling Western leaders eager for a partner. And this is a leader we might trust with a nuclear program?

Yet that may be in the cards. The Biden administration is reportedly pursuing a deal in which the Saudis would recognise Israel, a diplomatic coup that might help Biden in the 2024 elections. As his price, MBS is said to be demanding security guarantees from the United States and acceptance of a “civilian” Saudi nuclear program involving enrichment of uranium.

America historically opposed enrichment, and such a deal should be a non-starter. For the same reasons we don’t want extremists in Iran to have nuclear weapons, we shouldn’t want extremists in Saudi Arabia to be on a path to get them.

How do we say we’re confronting Putin in Ukraine since we believe in the rule of law when Biden exchanges fist bumps with a Saudi ruler who also invades a neighbour and governs even more tyrannically at home, without even the fig leaf of sham national elections? Defenders of MBS say he is popular at home, as he has loosened social and cultural restrictions. Yes, that’s true. But remember that Putin also improved life in Russia in the 2000s and remains popular there. One of the most baffling elements of the Saudi-American relationship is that both sides act as if MBS has us over a barrel.

If we have learned anything from a quarter-century of miscalculations with Putin, it should be that thuggish dictators are unreliable partners.

Nicholas Kristof is an Opinion Columnist with NYT©2023