Confronting Saudi Arabia has its own rewards

Life is about compromise. The trick is knowing how much to compromise to get what you want. You don’t, for example, have to spend every holiday with the in-laws to stay happily married. And you don’t have to completely mollycoddle dictators to get cheap oil.

America has been exploring the boundaries of the latter bargain this week, after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. Turkey claims U.S. ally and oil supplier Saudi Arabia had the journalist killed and dismembered. President Donald Trump has tried to project some concern about this, while also seeming to take the kingdom’s side, helping spread a “rogue killers” theory of the alleged murder and ruling out a ban on arms sales. As we wrote yesterday, there’s no strategic need for Trump to bow down to the Saudis. And doing so in this case would set a terrible precedent, writes Hal Brands. We can’t just write off unsavory strategic partners like the Saudis, but we also have to set hard boundaries for their behavior, or we’re going to make our problems worse.