Stop actively and vocally supporting the violent consolidation of power that the murder was part of?
> We can't go to war over some guy who wasn't even our citizen, killed in Turkey, by a foreign government.
We could, especially since he was a US permanent resident and a journalist for US publications; we won't, but then going to war isn't exactly the only possible action.
As well as he aforementioned steps, we could just stop aiding the war being wages by he regime.that committed the murder. The political threshold of support for such an action is much lower than going to war.
But again, this Khashoggi guy is one guy, a Saudi citizen...not ours. We don't deal with any other country like this...what makes Khashoggi so important as to disrupt treaties and trade deals between nations?
The purpose of trade is to serve people, not the other way around. Whoops, I meant make a lot of money for corporations.
Also, even if you approach this from a pure self-interest angle, at some point, the US might start to lose influence if they keep undermining their own stated values, not to mention allowing other powers to murder their residents with impunity.
Also, if the Americans are looking for a reason to get involved, his son is American.
We're hearing more about Khashoggi because he was a journalist, I suppose.
If these things happened all of the time they wouldn't be reported in national papers. A mugging in San Francisco isn't in the Washington Post.
He was a columnist for The Washington Post. He was known for having interviewed Osama Bin Laden a couple times.
News was slow and after the Chinese trade imbalance/conflict (finally someone stepped up to address it), so it looked like there was news to be had against another objectively-bad-government. Even if just to see what Trump might do to resolve (or sabotage) our uncomfortably close relationship. Nope, he just tried to promote it like the moron he is, in context of the assassination.
I really wish he woulda dumped another of these 19th century (depending on when they became stable) strategic allies, as I'm certain there's 0 chance the next POTUS will.
My guess is this case was specifically targeted by media influencing government agencies to exert pressure on SA.
The case itself is also almost a perfect fit - a good link to the USA and English speaking world, very solid evidence collected by Turkey, etc.
I suspect there are also some where there is reasonable evidence a foreign state was involved, but the victim simply wasn't sufficiently noteworthy for the media to care, and the case not being worthy of getting high level politicians involved in. For a state, using the brief time the president has talking to another state president to discuss a missing person rather than finalizing a new trade deal is a bad move.
There are many, many methods of leverage short of war. International relations happens all the time between every country on earth; only a tiny number of those interactions involves violence. In fact, a primary job of the people who practice international relations is to get things done without risking wars - sort of like doctors whose job is to get things done without killing the patient.
> some guy who wasn't even our citizen, killed in Turkey, by a foreign government
Human rights are widely considered to be universal, both in philosophy and in law. The U.S.'s own Declaration of Independence says 'all men are created equal ...'; it doesn't say 'all Americans'. Also, it's widely believed that if you let human rights deteriorate elsewhere, you are creating more risk for yourself. If your next door neighbor doesn't have freedom, there are many reasons to think you might be next. Finally, free, democratic countries tend to be much better partners on the world stage - they tend to be peaceful, stable, and prosperous.
Finally, Khashoggi was a journalist, which implicates a specific human right, freedom of the press.
> not doing business with any non-democratic countries
That would be a pretty extreme measure; I don't think anyone, or anyone respected, is calling for it. Another drawback to disengaging completely is that you lose future leverage; it's a punishment, in a way, but once it's done then you have no more relationship with the other party. 'I'm taking my ball and going home' is very amateur diplomacy.
> The U.S. should serve as an inspirational example as it did in the past but we can't be nation builders and all-out imperialists.
The choice of the U.S. isn't all or nothing - be purely "inspirational" or be "all-out imperialists". The U.S.'s soft power - the inspiration - was very potent until Trump, and to a smaller degree GW Bush, said democracy and human rights weren't a priority. It still could be revived to a significant degree. But there are other solutions, including the following:
* Intervene in ways that are efficient and effective. The U.S. can't help every country, and many interventions are ineffective. But lots of research and experience show what works in which scenarios.
* Support international law and norms that pressure regimes in the right direction. The UN in general plays a major role. The Responsibility to Protect, for example, was developed after Rwanda's massacres in the 1990s and, generally speaking, requires each government to protect the welfare of its citizens (rather than massacre them) and says the government is illegitimate otherwise. The International Criminal Court holds political leaders legally responsible for crimes (though I don't know that the U.S. officially supports it).
* Support mechanisms that provide stability, such as the World Bank (which supports infrastructure and other needs) and the International Monetary Fund (which loans governments money to prevent bankruptcies).
They’re doing what they can and should do via policy decisions. I don’t remember reading a piece thus far where going to war with Suadia Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman was even a scenario.
By trying to minimize this act as something that “happens all the time” is partially due to society viewing these acts as normal for them.
One thing that I thought of that legislatures in sovereign countries could do is to pass a law that adds a clause to all military equipment contracts carried out by their constituent corporations that allows such cancellations in the case of human rights violations. It wouldn't help with the current event, but it might for future ones.
Sanction the NSO Group.
Just sanction their oil sales, crank up production everywhere else to compensate. It would hurt but could certainly be done. Then demand they stop waging genocide on Yemen, and demand they convert from a brutal dictatorial monarchy to a democratic republic with actual human rights for women. Or something like that. We could do all that, but we wont.
The reason we wont is that we need Saudi Arabia to wage our (the US', the Wests') wars in the Middle East, and right now they've just lost their play in Syria, and the west is hoping that all those ISIS fighters they've deployed through Saudi Arabia that are leaving Syria will find a home in the desert in SA somewhere, instead of coming to us in the West. So right now, nobody wants to upset them, and so we get a nice show of the hypocrisy of our leaders, who speak of human rights only when convenient, while being friends with a psychopathic serial killer.