The great game of diplomacy
NEW ZEALAND has bowed the knee to a dead Saudi tyrant, and people rightly object. John Key issued a statement praising the defunct Saudi king as ‘‘a strong voice for peace’’, and ordered the flags to be lowered to half-mast. He is sending the governorgeneral to join the mourners in Saudi Arabia.
This is the normal diplomatic stuff and nobody in this country will take it too seriously. If protocol requires these empty rituals, so much the worse for protocol. But there is a deeper issue.
Some Americans objected also when Barack Obama took a planeload of dignitaries to glad-hand the new king. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron is under fire for sucking-up to the oil monarchs. Suddenly the West’s ancient and unquestioned link with Riyadh seems not just odd, but grotesque.
The West has cultivated Saudi Arabia because it is the largest source of oil on earth and because Saudi Arabia was a force for ‘‘stability’’ in the wild Middle East. Now both of these reasons for ‘‘respecting’’ this brutal theocracy seem less plausible.
The advent of fracking, and the discovery of new oil sources, mean oil prices are under pressure. Saudi Arabia might well have less sway over oil prices in the future. And the ‘‘stability’’ given by a bloody police state with a habit of fomenting international terrorism also suddenly seems doubtful.
Five people have been beheaded since the old king died and the new one – allegedly suffering from dementia – took over. There are international protests over the 1000 lashes handed out to a liberal Saudi blogger. The brutal oppression of women in Saudi Arabia – they are not even allowed to drive – suddenly no longer seems acceptable.
The Wahhabist extremism of the Sunni kingdom is, in fact, not far removed from the brutalities of Islamic State. So why is the West howling for the blood of Islamic State but ingratiating itself with the tyrants of Riyadh?
The reason, of course, is the great game of diplomacy. The West sees Saudi Arabia as a counterweight to Iran, the dominant Shia power of the region. It sees a source of stability amid the bloody flux flowing from the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and the curdling of the Arab Spring.
But Saudi Arabia is a source of instability itself, with its now longestablished habit of supporting Sunni terrorism. Some experts believe that the theocracy will collapse under the weight of its social and economic contradictions. And what’s more, the West’s frozen relations with Iran may be starting to thaw.
And that is the problem with backing tyrants: sometimes they fall. Then the realist school of diplomacy finds itself in trouble. ‘‘He might be a thug, but he’s our thug,’’ goes the refrain. But when the thug has gone his many victims remain, and they may have a jaundiced view of the states that supported him.
Perhaps, then, Western ‘‘respect’’ for Saudi Arabia has reached its high point and will now start to recede. Perhaps now the West will put more pressure on the kingdom to become civilised. Perhaps we will stop bending the knee to bloodthirsty medieval monarchs.