Page 76 - Bloomberg Businessweek-October 29, 2018

◼ REMARKS

Who’s Three weeks after Washington Post col-
umnist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared
into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, it
wasn’t the leader of the free world who
In Charge stepped up to articulate international
outrage at mounting evidence of his
murder, but the president of Turkey.
Here? Any cover-up of the true authors of such
a savage attack “would be an affront to
humanity’s conscience,” Recep Tayyip
Erdogan told his parliamentary party
on Oct. 23 as he demanded justice for
Khashoggi’s family and a full investiga-
tion. Just days before, Saudi authorities
had finally acknowledged the journalist
died at the consulate, but said he died
after an argument turned physical.
The contrast between Erdogan’s out-
rage and Trump’s seemingly off-the-cuff
responses underscores changes in the
post-Cold War order, as Washington’s
dominance declines alongside its pro-
motion of so-called values-based foreign
policies. It’s also illustrated by the
brazen nature of the killing, carried out

14 by officials of one U.S. ally in the terri-
tory of another—and the deep regional
rivalry emerging between Saudi Arabia
and Turkey, whose cooperation is key to
U.S. policy in the Middle East.
“That the U.S. has less of a role in
defining outcomes all over the world
than in the 1990s is certainly true,” says
Charles Ries, a former career U.S. State
Department official who served in Iraq
and Europe and is now a vice president
at the Rand Corp. in Washington. “You
can see that in the rise of China and
Russian aggression in Ukraine and its
interference in European politics.” The
Khashoggi affair has made it evident in
the Middle East, too, where the political
jostling in the wake of the murder raises
the question of how close an ally Saudi
Arabia will remain. Might it become the
next geopolitical chip to begin to slip
from America’s grasp in a region where
the U.S. has been the predominant
● The U.S. needs to keep the Saudis power for the last couple of decades—
just as Trump’s recent feud with Erdogan
and the Turks on its side. The Khashoggi alienated Turkey? PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY 731: PHOTOS: AP PHOTO
affair makes that a difficult game Indeed, on Oct. 27, Turkey—a NATO
member—will host a summit to discuss
the return of refugees to Syria. France,
● By Marc Champion Germany, and Russia will be there. The