Why didn't Joe use the secret Saudi handshake?
...reacting to two articles today which insist Pres. Biden got nothing out of his fistbump with the Saudi prince, as if the president intended to shift foreign policy with SA by returning the gesture.
If you're reasoning a handshake, absent of any agreement between international leaders, represents a U.S. policy shift you're doing foreign policy wrong. If you further reason that Pres. Biden sought to use a fistbump to 'cajole' the Saudi prince, as Greg Sargent did today at WaPo, you're in the wrong profession.
If you're insisting that Pres. Biden would attempt to 'placate' the Saudi prince with a fistbump (as Eugene Robinson did today), the equivalent of a handshake in the age of Covid, you're hyping that encounter to the absurd.
Critics and journos claimed the fist-bump was a 'reset' of relations. Obviously not. Nothing changed in the administration stance toward SA.
Nothing changed in Biden's 2021 'recalibration' of SA policy, and SA got nothing out of the visit which was one stop on the president's Mideast tour. He lobbied for increased production and was unsuccessful. All Saudis got was the equivalent of a polite handshake on his visit there that was hyped by the press as a shift in policy. But nothing's changed in Biden's hardened SA policy he set in 2021. Should he have tried to negotiate more production with SA, or no?
That Biden would attempt to mollify the Saudi prince with a handshake is a media invention. Absurd. As CNN reported, "Pres. Biden said he was “straightforward and direct” with MBS, adding that he indicated to the Crown Prince that he believed he was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder."
Besides, fistbumps apparently aren't even the secret Saudi signal for cooperation...
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