On the menu today: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia effectively purchases the world of professional golf, and new evidence points to the Ukrainian government as the saboteur of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Selling Our Institutions
The leadership of big, prominent, influential, and popular American institutions is for sale to the highest bidder — and very often, sovereign-wealth funds of brutal regimes are the highest bidder.
After the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi Arabian government, the U.S. government needed to tell the Saudis: “We’ve always had differences, but this time you’ve crossed a line, and we cannot avert our eyes from this. He was a U.S. green-card holder. Even if he had ties to the government of Qatar, what you did to him cannot be justified by any wrongdoing he did. We are not ending our diplomatic relationship, but your actions have damaged our relationship, and it will take time to repair this damage.” That’s more or less the reaction I called for at the time.
Alas, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary turned into a game of can-you-top-this in getting tough with the Saudis, and in the November 2019 Democratic presidential-primary debate, Joe Biden made it sound as if it was time to completely upend the existing U.S.–Saudi relationship. Biden pledged to “make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. There’s very little social redeeming value of the — in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”
But the reality of the U.S.–Saudi relationship is more complicated. We need their cooperation on too many fronts, and they need ours. As I’ve detailed, month by month and year by year, Biden’s bold pledge to make the Saudi kingdom a pariah state has withered on the vine.
Last summer, the Saudi kingdom debuted LIV Golf, a rival alternative to the Professional Golfers Association Tour.
The Saudi kingdom has an unsavory reputation in some circles. Besides the Khashoggi murder, the kingdom does not recognize freedom of expression or association, routinely imprisons critics, and has grossly unfair trials. Prisoners there endure abuses of every kind, and receive draconian sentences sometimes including hundreds of lashes, crucifixions, or public executions. Women have extremely limited rights, and guest workers are routinely abused. And, as noted last week, the kingdom flogs and executes gays for being gay. Happy Pride Month, everyone!
The ruling family of Saudi Arabia also has gobs and gobs of money, and one of the ways that the kingdom improves its image around the world is by using that money to host and finance big international sports events — Formula One races, ownership of big-name European soccer clubs, tennis tournaments, golf tournaments. They’ve even hosted a WWE professional-wrestling event. Somehow, FIFA and the International Olympic Committee have not been bribed into choosing Riyadh as a host city. Yet.
This has led to accusations of “sportswashing” — the idea that the Saudis are effectively buying themselves a better public image and reputation, and major international sports competitions are eager to take the money and make the kingdom look like a sunny, wealthy, friendly, and welcoming paradise.
LIV, the Saudi-funded alternative golf tour, instantly gained credibility by naming retired legend Greg Norman as its chief executive officer and signing active golf legend Phil Mickelson. Mickelson, however, was blunt in his assessment of his new business partners in comments he later insisted were off the record:
“They’re scary mother (insert six-letter obscenity here) to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. They’ve [the PGA Tour] been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse. As nice a guy as [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won’t do what’s right. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage. I’m not sure I even want [the SGL] to succeed, but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the [PGA] Tour.” [Emphasis added.]
A year ago, the PGA tour saw the golfers joining the alternative league as taking an action that was barely one moral step above treason, and often cited a group called 9/11 Justice, which, as Michael Graham reported, was much newer than it initially appeared. In an interview you’re going to be seeing over and over again for a long time, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan told CBS Sports’ Jim Nantz that golfers who signed on with the Saudi tour would find themselves feeling a need to apologize someday:
I think you’d have to be living under a rock to not know that there are significant implications, and as it relates to the families of 9/11, I have two families that are close to me that lost loved ones and so my heart goes out to them. And I would ask, you know, any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour?
In October, Monahan said of a merger, “It’s not in the cards. It hasn’t been in the cards and it’s not in the cards. I think we’ve been pretty consistent on that front.”
And now, NEVERMIND! Jay Monahan is just fine merging with the Saudis! It’s going to be great, he assures everyone!
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” said PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV — including the team golf concept — to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.
The players were as blindsided as anyone else, it seems.
ESPN commentator Mina Kimes laid out how the PGA just betrayed any golfer in its ranks who tried to do the right thing:
Put yourself in the shoes of a PGA golfer who turned down LIV money. Over the last year-plus you have believed you were taking a principled stand. You have watched your peers accept, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars to link arms with a regime with a terrible human rights record. You may have spoken out against that record, and you have been told yours is a “player-run organization.” Today you wake up and you realize that was all a lie.
Kevin Clark wrote at The Ringer, “[Rory] McIlroy and the rest of the PGA loyalists learned a very valuable lesson about modern sports (or modern life) on Tuesday: If you do not sell out, someone will sell you out.”
And yes, there is a U.S. political angle, as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal observes:
[Prince Mohammed bin Salman] is using the Kingdom’s massive oil-funded sovereign wealth fund to buy businesses and influence in the West. In 2021 the PIF purchased the English Premier League soccer club Newcastle United. It has invested in Saudi luxury resorts to draw wealthy Western tourists, including golf courses where one LIV tournament is played.
If the PGA objection to LIV had primarily been a financial one — “We don’t want these guys coming along, stealing some of our biggest names, and hosting their own tournaments and getting their own television deals” — yesterday’s merger wouldn’t seem like such a betrayal. Institutions make decisions based on financial interests all the time.
But the PGA made a moral objection to the Saudis and LIV. They had the stones to invoke 9/11 as part of their argument. And then, once the pile of money on the table got big enough, Monahan and the PGA had the shamelessness to not only take the money, but to turn around and smile and tell us how great everything is going to be after the merger. And the PGA was already rolling in money.
As the old joke goes, “We’ve established what kind of woman you are, now we’re just haggling about the price.”
Apparently, Ukraine Has Better Deep-Sea Divers Than Anyone Knew
We don’t know with absolute certainty who sabotaged and destroyed three of the four Nord Stream 2 pipelines in September 2022, but a new piece of evidence strongly points at the Ukrainians. Yesterday, the Washington Post unveiled a bombshell: “Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.” That doesn’t prove that the Ukrainians did it, but it certainly establishes motive and means.
And, rather embarrassingly, a Biden administration that talked a good game about finding the culprit when Russia looked like a probable suspect isn’t interested in talking about the topic when the evidence points toward Ukraine:
Biden administration officials now privately concede there is no evidence that conclusively points to Moscow’s involvement. But publicly they have deflected questions about who might be responsible. European officials in several countries have quietly suggested that Ukraine was behind the attack, but resisted publicly saying so over fears that blaming Kyiv could fracture the alliance against Russia. At gatherings of European and NATO policymakers, officials have settled into a rhythm; as one senior European diplomat said recently, “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.”
Perhaps NATO thinks Bruno did it.
Now, somewhat infamously, I have no problem with blowing up a pipeline that was a terrible idea that made Germany more dependent upon Russia for its energy supplies and was put in place by one chancellor who went on to make a fortune on the board of directors for Russian gas giant Gazprom and a subsequent chancellor who insisted upon giving Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt every time.
One of the reasons we are obligated to try to avoid war is that once a war starts, nobody knows for certain how it is going to end, and people at war make moral compromises that they never would have made in peacetime. In the absence of the Russian invasion, it is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible to justify Ukraine sabotaging a pipeline running from Russia to Germany. But in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, the sabotage can be seen in the context of the ancient Tibetan philosophy, “Don’t start none, won’t be none.” It’s tougher to cry foul over a non-fatal act of sabotage when the Ukrainian civilian-casualty counter ticks past 8,800 killed. If Russia hadn’t invaded, that pipeline would still be intact.
If Russia hadn’t invaded, the world would be different in a lot of ways.
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I take a look at Doug Burgum.
Governor Doug Burgum.
The governor of North Dakota.
The one who’s running for president.
President of the United States.