India can't ignore Saudi ethics, Jamal's killing

The worst of the killing of 59-year-old Jamal Khashoggi, the self-exiled American-educated Saudi journalist, is probably still to come. Turkey claims to have more macabre details up its sleeve to be revealed “in all its naked truth”. The controversy will intensify but individual tragedies seldom affect the fate of nations. The question is: Should the murder be allowed to dwindle into a footnote in history books like the Prague Spring or should the world sit up and take notice of the stark pursuit of a ruling elite’s self-interest at the cost of all civilised considerations?

The underlying principle, which affects India as much as it does Turkey or the United States which have a more direct stake in Saudi morality (or the lack of it), isn’t confined to one controversy. What matters is a country’s — any country’s — credibility, and the extent to which that credibility shapes the response of other nations. Whether or not Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked of the longtime Nicaraguan dictator, “Somoza may be a son of a b****, but he’s our son of a b****”, that kind of cynicism is self-defeating. No healthy, productive and rewarding foreign policy can be founded on expedient pacts that are so utterly devoid of respect.

That principle could be invoked for two key areas of India’s foreign policy — its unfolding honeymoon with Israel and the bittersweet ups and downs of Sino-Indian ties. Before gushing about his friend “Bibi”, Narendra Modi would have done well to reflect on whether Benjamin Netanyahu, who contemptuously dismisses the Oslo peace process and is hounding Palestinians out of their own land, can ever care for any interests save his own, even if he does flatter Mr Modi by returning his compliment with a chummy “Narendra”. Likewise, Jawaharlal Nehru may not have died brokenhearted if his assessment of China had risen above Asian revivalist sentiment to take note of Mao Zedong’s ruthless conquest of Tibet or the 45 million Chinese killed by his Great Leap Forward.

In other words, while bilateral signals are important, a government’s true nature — like a person’s — can be gauged only by studying its behaviour with many entities. The support of Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE to Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi affair may owe something to the persuasive power of Saudi petrodollars, but also speaks volumes for the stranglehold these three governments maintain at home. The pitfall is that the logic can be abused as happened in 1990 when Saddam Hussain seized Kuwait, which Iraq’s earlier pro-Western monarchy had first claimed. The Saudis screamed they were next on the conquest list. It suited George W. Bush to believe this and drum up a range of supportive evidence for Operation Desert Storm. Riyadh’s ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, paid for and directed the war.

Generally, however, there’s a pattern to national (or individual) conduct. The Biblical maxim “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is more than morality. It reflects hard-headed reciprocity. So, when Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, demanded “transparency from Saudi Arabia about the circumstances of (Khashoggi’s) death”, “condemned the crime in the sharpest possible manner”, and insisted that “those responsible must be held to account”, they were laying down conditions for future ties so that the Saudis do not display the same disregard for legality in their dealings with Germans as they are accused of doing with the journalist who had reportedly fallen foul of the all-powerful 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Mr Maas’ hint that arms exports to the kingdom might be suspended until the mystery of Khashoggi’s death has been cleared made this more pointed. More than threatening the Saudis, Germany’s foreign minister was articulating an important principle of future German foreign policy. Berlin’s longstanding economic ties with Riyadh include significant arms shipments. Having authorised military exports worth $291 million to Saudi Arabia since March, Germany is anxious for assurances of Riyadh’s good faith and commitment to the rule of law. Australia, Canada, the European Union, France and the United Nations are all worried that Saudi Arabia’s tremendous wealth may have convinced it that it is above the law.

Britain and the United States have the most reason for concern. Saudi Arabia is the UK’s top destination for arms exports, with over $15 billion delivered in jets, weapons, bombs and other equipment between 2008 and 2017. The amount increased dramatically after the Saudi military intervention in Yemen which is blamed  for a colossal human disaster. Theresa May must be uncomfortably aware that there is far more direct evidence of Saudi guilt in Khashoggi’s murder here than there was of Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning. As for the US, Donald Trump has warned Riyadh of “very severe consequences” and economic sanctions, but he also emphasizes his personal support for Prince Mohammed (another Somoza?) and Saudi Arabia’s value as a strategic ally against Iran and Islamist militants. The agreement to sell arms worth $350 billion over 10 years supports more than a million American jobs. He fears that if the US pulls out, Russia or China will move in.

Outsiders can’t ever dictate another country’s priorities. But it stands to reason that a regime that lied consistently for two weeks and is thought to be concealing more than it has revealed, that is suspected of using cold-blooded murder as an instrument of state policy, cannot make a reliable ally except on its own terms. If the West needs to reorient its global perceptions, all countries — including India — need to consider the ethical dimension of alliances. After all, foreign policy is meant to further the people’s welfare, not massage the egos of self-important national leaders.