Saudi trip captures competing demands of rights agenda, ‘great power’ contest

The Biden administration faces an intensifying reckoning over its record on human rights as the emergence of a bellicose Russia and an increasingly powerful China places new, often discordant demands on President Biden’s promise to place American ideals at the center of U.S. dealings with the world.

Biden’s talks with Middle Eastern leaders this week will offer a vivid demonstration of the competing considerations between that pledge and what officials describe as an existential “great power” contest — most starkly in the president’s encounter with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the U.S. government blamed for the brutal 2018 killing of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.