MBS is clearly engaging in these modernization efforts in order to not look like a brutal dictator. But he’s not going to make any reforms to the structure of Saudi society or the status of the human rights of women or marginalized groups or anyone else in Saudi Arabia if it threatens his power.

“The administration needs to abandon its behind-closed-doors approach to addressing human rights” in Saudi Arabia, said Tess McEnery, who served on Biden’s National Security Council until last year and now heads the nongovernmental Project on Middle East Democracy. “There need to be clear public costs to [Salman’s] repression. . . . For nearly a year [since the Biden visit], we’ve seen what a policy of appeasement looks like.”

“[The Public Investment Fund’s golf strategy is about both image and economics.] It’s both diversification and soft power projection. . . . It is now a more aggressive approach to simultaneously find lucrative, high-margin returns in the intermediate run simultaneous with elevating the image of the Saudi royal family, state emblems and nation in a global era defined by multipolarity.”

“[Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund] is not just a cash cow and rainy day fund for the Saudi government. . . . It is an investment arm that directly channels the kingdom’s immense oil wealth into strategic spaces that simultaneously generate profit while elevating Saudi Arabia as a stakeholder in global markets, ideas, technology and expansion.”

“[Biden’s fistbump with Saudi Arabia’s MBS last July] was just really this visceral visual welcoming of a full international rehabilitation of, quite frankly, one of the most brutal dictators in the world. . . . I think it’s very evident that the administration needs to abandon its behind closed doors approach to addressing human rights. There need to be clear public costs to MBS’S repression.”

I mean, we have asked Blinken, for example, to meet with civil society leaders, Saudi civil society leaders outside who can speak about human rights and democratic values, but they never did. And then they went over there and met with just, like, people who work for MBS and talk about Vision 2030.

“Ultimately . . . five, 10, 15 years from now we will see the negative national and international security implications of appeasement of authoritarian allies like Saudi.”

“To me, the biggest takeaway is the PGA would have never done this if Biden hadn’t have gone to Jeddah and rehabilitated MbS. . . . Biden made it OK for the whole world, especially the business community, to not worry about re-engaging with MbS.”