Following the massacre of protesting students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, US President George H.W. Bush’s administration limited its sanctions and kept lines of communication open, owing to China’s strategic importance. Would a similar policy toward Saudi Arabia prove viable?

The 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” highlights former US Vice President Al Gore’s efforts to alert his fellow Americans to the perils of global warming. What made the truth inconvenient is that avoiding catastrophic climate change would require people to live differently and, in some cases, give up what they love (such as gas-guzzling cars).

For nearly two months, we have all been living with another inconvenient truth – ever since Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist working for The Washington Post and living in the United States, disappeared after entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.

Read more at Project Syndicate.