Trump administration dusts off Cold War playbook to defend Saudi ties

The Donald Trump administration is dusting off an influential Cold War-era foreign policy playbook to help justify its support for Riyadh.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal this week before the Senate voted to advance a bill that would end US support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited a famed 1979 essay to explain why the Trump team is sticking by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid international uproar over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Jeane Kirkpatrick, a one-time Democrat who later switched parties and served as UN ambassador during the Ronald Reagan administration, called on the United States to support conservative autocrats over communist dictatorships during the height of the Cold War, after President Jimmy Carter criticized the human rights records of American allies in Nicaragua and Iran.

“Mr. Carter’s ideological predilections had blinded him to US national-security interests and inhibited him, to borrow a phrase, from putting America first,” Pompeo wrote. “What a timely reminder for critics of President Trump’s pragmatic — and correct — approach to the US-Saudi relationship today.”