President Trump has resisted pressure to postpone or cancel arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite reports that a Saudi journalist was killed and dismembered.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump made Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination after taking office last year, he struck what amounted to a fundamental bargain with the royal family: He would not lecture them about human rights, and they would buy plenty of American weapons and military hardware.
So as the world recoils at reports that the Saudis sent agents to Turkey to kill and dismember a Saudi dissident journalist with a bone saw, Mr. Trump faces the most profound test of that trade-off. For days, he has rebuffed pressure to punish the Saudis by canceling arms sales that he secured during his visit, arguing that it would cost Americans money and jobs.
That he would prioritize potentially tens of billions of dollars for the United States over moral outrage about the apparent death of a single dissident may not be a major surprise. Other presidents have tempered concerns about human rights overseas with what they perceived to be America’s own security or economic interests. What is different is how open Mr. Trump has been in expressing that realpolitik calculation no matter how crass or cynical it might appear.
“Any president’s going to be stuck in this awkward place,” said Steven A. Cook, a specialist on the region at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The one thing about Trump is he’s basically willing to say: ‘I don’t really care. He’s not an American citizen. Yes, it’s terrible, but we’ve got all this business with them.’ He doesn’t shy away from saying that.”
But that approach could put Mr. Trump on a collision course with Congress, where there is sentiment among members of both parties to use the leverage of arms sales to send a message to Saudi Arabia that it cannot get away with killing a journalist with American ties on foreign soil.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said on Sunday that curbing arms sales would be on the menu of possible responses if it is determined that the Saudi government did kill the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who lived in Virginia and wrote columns for The Washington Post. Turkish officials have concluded that Mr. Khashoggi was murdered as he visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago; the Saudi government has rejected the accusations.
Mr. Rubio said it was important for the United States to have the moral authority to criticize autocrats like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “All of that is undermined and compromised if we somehow decide that because an ally who is important did that we’re not going to call it out,” he said on “Meet the Press” on NBC .
“So I will just say this to you with full confidence: If this is proven to be true, there is going to be a response from Congress,” he went on. “It’s going to be nearly unanimous. It’s going to be swift. And it’s going to go pretty far. And that could include arms sales. But it could include a bunch of other things as well.”
The Saudi government reacted harshly on Sunday to the specter of a punitive American response, saying it would respond to any action “with greater action,” backed by its economic might.
The threat came in response to a promise Mr. Trump had made in an interview on “60 Minutes” to extract “severe punishment” if the Saudis’ complicity in Mr. Khashoggi’s apparent killing is demonstrated.
But the seriousness of his commitment to that vow was unclear. Asked by reporters on Saturday what specifically he had in mind, he offered no examples and instead asked a senator visiting the Oval Office for his thoughts.
Mr. Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 was meant to be a signal of his foreign policy priorities. He was hoping to realign the region by rebuilding America’s alliance with Riyadh, which had frayed under President Barack Obama, and by making clear that he was getting the United States out of the business of lecturing friends about domestic matters.
“We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be or how to worship,” he told the Saudis in a message heard elsewhere around the world. Instead, he focused on the economic benefits of the relationship, boasting that he had secured $110 billion in arms sales during his trip.
That figure, though, was wildly inflated and misleading. Mr. Trump’s package essentially consisted of letters of intent or interest, not actual contracts, and the possible deals began in the Obama administration, when the Saudis bought $112 billion in aircraft, missiles and other military equipment over eight years.
Seventeen months later, the Trump arms bonanza still has not materialized. The kingdom has not bought any new arms platform during the Trump administration, noted Bruce Riedel, a former C. I. A. official and a Saudi expert at the Brookings Institution who advised the Obama administration on Middle East policy.
The possible deal with the highest profile, a $15 billion purchase of a missile defense system known as Thaad, seems stalled as the Saudis let a September deadline with Lockheed Martin pass, Mr. Riedel pointed out in a paper last week.
Even so, Mr. Trump has remained committed, citing the package as a signal accomplishment and explicitly rejecting any pause, much less cancellation.
“I worked very hard to get the order for the military,” he told reporters on Saturday. “If they don’t buy it from us, they’re going to buy it from Russia or they’re going to buy it from China, or they’re going to buy it from other countries.”
Mr. Trump has a point about competitors. As the Saudis hedge on Thaad, they have been in talks with Russia for the purchase of its S-400 air defense system. But more broadly, Saudi Arabia would find it hard to switch wholesale to other arms suppliers. The Royal Saudi Air Force depends on American and British support for its fleet of F-15 fighter jets, Apache helicopters and Tornado aircraft, Mr. Riedel pointed out. Its army is likewise dependent on Western parts and support.
But Mr. Trump’s focus on the bottom line sends an unmistakable message. “The president, through his reluctance to scuttle the arms deal, is telegraphing to authoritarian regimes that they can buy a pass on repressive, brutal measures without incurring consequences from the United States,” said David J. Kramer, an assistant secretary of state for human rights under President George W. Bush and now a senior fellow at Florida International University.
Elisa Massimino, former president of Human Rights First, an advocacy group, said that every president had to navigate complex relationships with allies, balancing sometimes competing interests, but that Mr. Trump did not understand the power that came from being clear about values.
“His short-term, transactional approach not only undermines those working for democratic change in their own countries, but robs the United States of key leverage on strategic interests across the board,” she said.
