Little to gain by zinging Saudis
Dear editor: First it was Justin Trudeau’s welcoming Twitter messaging that triggered the flood of illegal migrants at the border. Now its Chrystia Freeland’s zinger to the Saudis on the Raif Badawi case.
Expressions of disapproval to a foreign country normally follow a series of escalating diplomatic protocols aimed at achieving a solution. Impulsive tweets make things personal, immediate, and public, leaving little room for diplomacy.
Loss of face is a big issue with the Arabs and personal relationships count for a lot. Public chastisements are inflammatory and counterproductive, as evidenced by the disproportionate blowback from the Saudis on this.
The oil wealth of the Saudis insulates them from any real censure. Freeland should have known these things.
The Saudis have a miserable record on human rights, which includes subordination of females, suppression of dissent and enabling terrorism under the extreme Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam. The Wahhabists have a symbiotic relationship with the Saudi rulers and their policies. But, like Canada, Saudi Arabia is a sovereign nation which gets to choose and operate its own form of laws and government. That’s a reality which needs to be acknowledged.
Canada will go it alone on this one and reap the consequences, which are mostly economic. We won’t change any minds in Saudi Arabia on Badawi. And we won’t be getting any help from the U.S. or anyone else.
The U.S. has enormous financial and strategic stakes in maintaining relations with the Saudis which include blocking the propagation of militant Shia Islam from Iran, and maintaining basing rights, arms sales, Saudi investments and the oil status quo.
We don’t have a lot to lose from troubles with the Saudis. We can sell our wheat and barley elsewhere. We could even buy out the $15 billion Saudi contract for armoured vehicles and use them for our own depleted military.
Saudi oil imports are no loss when we’re awash in our own oil. Even Jagmeet Singh thinks Eastern Canada should start importing oil from somewhere else; as long as it’s not from Western Canada. Who knows, it might be a case of the right things happening for the wrong reasons. Sometimes serendipity can beat deliberate policy making. Sunni ways indeed!
The subject of this dust-up, Raif Badawi, isn’t even a Canadian. He’s a Saudi citizen and political activist who’s been convicted and imprisoned under Saudi law. Our virtue signaling gymnastics aren’t helping him one bit. John Thompson Kaleden