REPROACHING RIYADH
THE SAUDIS DON’T CARE WHAT CANADA THINKS, BECAUSE WE CAN’T HURT THEM
What if the Saudis did murder that guy? What are we meant to do? War and surrender being out, I mean. Because Saudi Arabia is a country, not a puppy we can call to heel.
In fairness it is not established that the Saudi authorities murdered Jamal Khashoggi. The journalist, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, may simply have evaporated, inside the consulate or after turning invisible and leaving.
Hey, if a guy can turn invisible, he can evaporate, right? Or leave the consulate without being picked up by security cameras then flee incognito to Patagonia, get nabbed by “rogue killers,” or fall down a sewer and be swept out to sea.
You never do know. The darnedest things happen to enemies of undemocratic regimes. But I’ll leave the development of other equally plausible scenarios to the Saudis, once they’re done bleaching the consulate.
Meanwhile, assuming the worst, we have a problem. Namely confronting Riyadh with sanctions so severe they outweigh the value to the regime of visibly crushing dissent and the cost of inflicting punishment all the way up the chain of command.
It won’t be easy. Tyrannies rightly fear free speech. And Khashoggi was a very vocal critic of a regime he once served closely enough to know better, you’d think, than to venture into its consulate for a document they could have mailed. Like activists who return to Iran and vanish into Evin Prison, it’s odd to spend years denouncing a regime as beastly then enter its lair to see if it bites. Yup. And every other dissident now knows it.
So what kind of beast is Saudi Arabia? Well, for starters, it’s a foreign country. You can’t arrest those. Or bend them to your will with frown beams. If we say oh you big bad meanies they will sneer at us. Which is what such an implausible account of Khashoggi’s disappearance amounts to, because the more brazen the lie the greater the humiliation in swallowing it. So what sanctions can we apply instead?
If the answer is “none” then forget it. Keep our humiliation as lowkey as possible.
In one sense it’s easier to threaten the Saudis than, say, Russia over Sergei Skripal, because the Saudis don’t have nuclear weapons. But in another sense it’s harder because the Saudis are, in the best-case scenario, a tyrannical ally being modernized by a strongman.
Half a century ago people took a fairly optimistic view of such unsavoury allies on the theory that modernization inherently meant democratization in the long run, so you held your nose in the short run. As with, say, the shah of Iran.
Unfortunately experience, from Iran to China, has shown no link between forced modernization and democratization. In which case winking at an ally’s repression just invites more repression with a side of hypocrisy.
Sometimes you have to anyway, the paradigm being the alliance with Stalin against Hitler. But while the Middle East is always smouldering, there’s no actual war. And it’s not obvious that Saudi Arabia is an ally.
The Saudis’ claim to be pro-Western long seemed plausible since their ruling class of Ibn Saud’s descendants is debauched and hence presumably not “ideological,” especially not Islamist. But they’ve been in an alliance with the Islamists since Muhammad al-Wahhab’s daughter married Muhammad bin Saud’s son, and that was in the 1740s. Both sides may often regard the other with alarmed disgust. But it’s lasted too long to be dismissed as a marriage of convenience. Unlike, say, their supposed fondness for us.
Even if they are a Western ally, it’s not obvious they’re a useful one. And they probably need the West more than the West needs them, surrounded as they are by enemies including their own people.
But we’re still short of convincing threats.
They despise our society, so disapproval bounces off. They don’t need our money because they have oil that Canada, refusing to build pipelines, does need. Awkward.
Canada also cannot contemplate war with Saudi Arabia, being deep in Duchy of Grand Fenwick territory militarily. The United States could but won’t, wars to force democracy down people’s throats being justifiably out of favour among the American people these days.
If you’re expecting a deus ex word processor at this point, I’m going to disappoint you. The world is a jungle filled with nasty beasts in which a government that protects its own people has done a full day’s work. But we can at least recognize it.
We can also recognize that our fabled “world needs more Canada” is a fable, especially the bit where people respect us more because we’re not those awful Americans. The Saudis somewhat fear commercial reprisals and arms cutoffs that the U.S, a net oil exporter, can credibly threaten.
Canadians can and should say what we think. But the Saudis won’t care. And while throwing “soft power” pillows scares puppies, it doesn’t work with countries.
IF THEY ARE A WESTERN ALLY, IT’S NOT OBVIOUS THEY’RE A USEFUL ONE.