As Joe Biden vowed, in late 2019, to make Saudi Arabia a pariah if he was elected president, a little-known former aide was examining what exactly a “progressive” post-Trump stance towards the oil-rich kingdom might look like.
Daniel Benaim, who had worked for Biden as a speechwriter, and for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry before that, first travelled to Saudi Arabia and then began interviewing dozens of Democratic and progressive policy experts to come up with a blueprint. The former US diplomats, political appointees, academics and activists he spoke to were divided: was the US relationship with Saudi Arabia and its obviously murderous and unstable de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, worth salvaging?
For so-called “rethinkers”, as Benaim called them, the partnership was unreliable, unpalatable, outdated and overrated. The “resetters”,…
