Robert Kaplan’s Obscene Cheerleading for Saudi Arabia

 

Yemen is never mentioned in Kaplan’s piece, and I’m not surprised that he would omit it.

by Daniel Larison 

Posted onApril 2, 2022

It would be tempting to view Robert Kaplan’s op-ed for Bloomberg this week as an April Fools’ prank, but unfortunately he seems to be serious:

The fight is for something broader and more fundamental: the right of peoples the world over to determine their own futures and to be free from naked aggression. This requires an orderly world where the law of the jungle does not operate. Thus, we should welcome a number of autocracies into this struggle.

Nothing demonstrates a desire to fight for self-determination like aligning with governments that deny their people the right to determine their own futures. It is not clear why these governments should be brought into a struggle against naked aggression when many of them are engaged in their own aggression. Kaplan touts the “relatively enlightened” ruler of Morocco as an example of the sort of autocracy that he means while conveniently ignoring that the Moroccan government illegally occupies territory that it seized by force almost fifty years ago and denies self-determination to the Sahrawi people that live in that territory.

One of the authoritarian regimes that Kaplan wants us to appreciate is none other than the Saudi government. Kaplan informs us that “personal freedoms have dramatically expanded” under the de facto rule of Mohammed bin Salman. This is partly true in certain limited respects, but it is also extremely misleading. While there has been some loosening of restrictions in social life, there has been intensifying repression when it comes to speech and expression. Dissenters are not only jailed, but they are also tortured and executed.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/04/02/robert-kaplans-obscene-cheerleading-for-saudi-arabia/