Saudi Arabia’s Big Power Play

How the conservative Middle Eastern heavyweight is hedging its bets on a Biden administration.

President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia attend the meeting of the Leaders of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf Countries, Sunday, May 21, 2017, at the King Abdulaziz Conference Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

“When can we stop thinking about Trump every minute?” laments the New York Times today. The New York Times can rest easy; the world may soon have far more important, and dire, things to occupy the news-cycle than the Twitter antics of Donald Trump.

The Middle East is changing rapidly. Though it is an easy fact to forget, the Gulf War in 1990 was the first time the United States became militarily involved in a war in the Middle East. Desert Storm and Desert Shield were the first U.S. incursions into the diverse and troubled region, but not the last.

U.S. military forces have been fighting in the Middle East ever since. Three subsequent presidential administrations lied to the American people about losses in Afghanistan. What the Washington Post found (when at last they cared enough to look) in the Afghanistan Papers heaps shame upon every fawning news article about Barack Obama’s jump shot.

Bush, Obama, and Trump can hardly be blamed: No one ever wins in Afghanistan; certainly not the Afghani people, and least of all the foreign powers who have tried, and failed, to conquer the rugged, unforgiving terrain.

Worse, all the time world powers like Russian and the U.S. have spent in Afghanistan, together…