There has been much discussion over the last 18 months about whether the United States should extend security guarantees to Ukraine or support that country’s admission to NATO as it defends itself against a brutal Russian invasion. To my mind, the answer is: No. While I absolutely support extending military and economic aid to Ukraine (much more and much faster than what the Biden administration has so-far offered), and while I see a Russian defeat as clearly in the U.S. interest, I do not believe the price of that defeat to be worth open war with the Russians unless the Kremlin foolishly escalates by taking direct military action against the U.S. or a current NATO member. But Americans can — and most certainly do, including in these pages — disagree in good faith on the costs and benefits of supporting, and potentially defending, the struggling, flawed, but spirited democracy in Kyiv.

I am stunned, however, to read that Joe Biden is exploring a deal that would offer a formal American security guarantee to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and an American-backed Saudi civilian nuclear program in exchange for Riyadh normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel and curtailing its relationship with China, as long as Jerusalem grants concessions to the Palestinians to “preserve the possibility of a two-state solution.”

In his New York Times column, Thomas Friedman praises the basic outlines of such a deal — which he says could normalize relations between Israel and the whole Muslim world — and proclaims that, if such a treaty would come to pass, it would be a “significant Biden foreign policy legacy.”

First, a U.S.-Saudi security pact that produces normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state — while curtailing Saudi-China relations — would be a game changer for the Middle East, bigger than the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. . . .

Second, if the United States forges a security alliance with Saudi Arabia — on the conditions that it normalize relations with Israel and that Israel make meaningful concessions to the Palestinians — Netanyahu’s ruling coalition of Jewish supremacists and religious extremists would have to answer this question: You can annex the West Bank, or you can have peace with Saudi Arabia and the whole Muslim world, but you can’t have both, so which will it be?

Now, there are good reasons to extend formal, treaty-bound U.S. security guarantees to countries and there are bad ones. This is a terrible reason. It would be a terrible deal.

This would not be the United States placing her shield in front of a weakened western Europe with the establishment of NATO. This would not even be the U.S., in the face of an expansionary international Soviet Communism, guaranteeing the defense of Japan or South Korea, which were not yet democracies. This would be committing ourselves formally to defend a backward, totalitarian, absolute monarchy in Riyadh in exchange for — what? — throwing a brush-back pitch at an allied government’s coalition partners? In exchange for the the commitment of Saudi Arabia to stop playing both sides and align itself with the United States rather than its economic interests in China? In exchange for the fanciful hope that lions will lay down with lambs and the Arab–Israeli conflict will end once a few pieces of paper are signed, sealed, and delivered?

America’s implicit security guarantees of the Saudi monarchy have brought us little but grief for 40 years. During every one of those years, the Saudi dictatorship has played us fast and loose. It has never been aligned with our values or our interests. It has tolerated and indirectly funded our radical-jihadist enemies to shore itself up domestically. It has brutalized and terrorized its people, especially its women and religious minorities. It has used its oil reserves as a weapon and has participated in and led a cartel that has placed the United States under an oil embargo, causing tremendous economic damage. Under no circumstances should we compound this grave error and naïveté by granting explicit security guarantees in exchange for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s mess of pottage. And under no circumstances should we do this because Joe Biden wants to place a difficult political choice in front of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Joe Biden has been wrong about one foreign-policy issue after another his entire career. This idea is foolishness on top of foolishness.

No American should die in defense of the dictatorship in Riyadh. Hell no to new U.S. security guarantees to Saudi Arabia.