The Canada-Saudi Dispute: Politically Expedient Shadow Boxing
Why it benefits the ruling elites in both countries
The recent flurry of tweets by the foreign ministries of Canada and Saudi Arabia over the arrests of civil society activists in Saudi Arabia makes it tempting to conclude that foreign policy is but a series of quick outbursts and knee-jerk reactions. The byproduct of conducting diplomacy by Twitter is that both parties end up looking rash and impulsive. However, as international relations theorists remind us, even states like North Korea, run by an allegedly unhinged autocrat, ultimately behave as rational actors in geopolitics, with one eye firmly on the current geopolitical scenario, and the other on domestic politics. This is as true for authoritarian states as it is for liberal democracies. Foreign policy positions are carefully debated and the potential consequences — both on inter-state relations and in domestic politics — are taken into consideration.
It is curious then, that most of the commentary on the Saudi-Canada “spat” has taken a binary approach — either painting the Canadians as good and the Saudis as evil, or vice versa. Some have criticized Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister, for conducting diplomacy-by-Twitter a la Donald Trump; others have asked why Canada has not been as strident or vocal in its criticism of the human rights situation in China, a far weightier trading partner. Some commentators have critiqued the Saudi response as disproportionate and intemperate.
I argue that the very public statements by Ms. Freeland and the Canadian foreign ministry are part of a deliberate strategy that stands to politically benefit Canada’s Liberal Party as it heads into a federal election next year. The resultant diplomatic dispute has also helped the Saudi regime to test the prevailing geopolitical order as well as engage in some domestic political signaling.
An Expedient Political Tool for Saudi Arabia: Floating a Trial Balloon in Today’s Geopolitical Climate
The World Bank has noted in its most recent economic outlook for Saudi Arabia that “the Kingdom likely faces a looming poverty problem…. the old social contract — one based on government employment, generous subsidies, and free public services — is no longer sustainable.”
In light of this situation, the Saudi government, led by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (popularly known as MbS), has announced plans to implement a series of radical social and economic changes, spelled out in the Vision 2030 plan. The plan aims to significantly diversify the Saudi economy away from hydrocarbons and generate jobs for Saudi citizens, 70% of whom are under the age of 30. Much of this will depend on foreign investment, as the Saudi private sector is too small and ineffective to generate massive employment on its own. This will also require a gradual loosening of social restrictions so that Saudi women can enter the workforce. Indeed, MbS’s statement in October 2017 to return the kingdom to “moderate Islam open to the world and all religions,” was aimed as much at a domestic audience as it was at foreign investors.
The announcement of Vision 2030 and subsequent steps suggest that Saudi Arabia is moving towards a China model of governance, where the regime’s legitimacy will rest upon a new social contract between itself and Saudi citizens — where the regime provides continued material prosperity and social freedoms in return for political acquiescence from the population. The recent arrests in the kingdom whether of women’s rights activists asking for more freedom, or of conservative clerics protesting against the freedom already granted to women, could be the result of a balancing act performed by the regime, or a way of signaling that it will brook no dissent from any quarter, liberal or conservative.
MbS sits at the apex of this new political configuration in the mold of China’s President Xi Jinping. This strongman model also means that he is a defender of the country’s honor and the flagbearer of its national interests. This is particularly par for the course amongst tribal societies in Gulf Arab countries where patriotic songs, poems, TV and billboard advertisements, even those produced by private citizens, often show no distinction between the country and its leaders. Public criticism of government policies in these “strongman societies” are often conflated with direct criticism of the leader himself. When criticism is leveled by foreign powers, the insult is considered particularly provocative. That Ms. Freeland used Twitter to express her views must have been all the more egregious for the regime since Twitter is heavily used by Saudi Arabia’s youth, who form the backbone of support for MbS.
Nonetheless, Ms. Freeland’s tweets must have come as an enabler for the Saudi regime in order for it to test the prevailing geopolitical order and engage in political signaling at home. Since a Trumpian America has more or less forsaken its historic role as global defender of liberal democratic values, the Saudi regime may have flexed its diplomatic muscles and chosen to make an example out of Canada as a warning to other liberal democracies that may, in future (a UK led by Jeremy Corbyn perhaps?) choose to publicly criticize Saudi Arabia. To be sure, a US State Department spokesperson did issue an unusually tepid statement in response to the whole affair.
It has also laid the groundwork for the Saudi regime to, in future, paint whatever little form of civil rights activism and political opposition that remains within the kingdom, as anti-national and as a fifth column serving the interests of foreign powers. This is a tactic currently employed by illiberal regimes in countries across the world — from Victor Orban’s Hungary to Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines.
It is interesting that the raft of measures announced by Saudi Arabia does not include the cancellation of the $15 billion deal to import light armored vehicles (LAV) from Canada or ending petroleum exports to it, the genuinely substantial bits of contemporary Canada-Saudi relations. This suggests that this is probably the extent of the Saudi reaction for now. Tellingly, countries like Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain, that wholeheartedly joined Saudi Arabia in boycotting Qatar, have this time only issued anodyne statements of support to the Saudi government, acknowledging perhaps that the crisis in Canada-Saudi relations is likely to blow over soon.
Campaigning from the Left, Governing from the Right: The Long Game for Canada’s Liberal Party
Since it first established relations with Saudi Arabia in 1973, several Canadian governments have built up an institutional memory of how to conduct diplomacy with Middle Eastern states. Since it has now emerged that the Liberal Party government had been pursuing back-channel discussions with Riyadh since 2015 on the issue of jailed activists, it is particularly puzzling that Ms. Freeland and the foreign ministry chose to call for the Saudis to “immediately release” the detained activists through a series of tweets.
Moreover, foreign policy mandarins and Liberal Party strategists would surely have considered the possible repercussions of a Saudi cancellation of the LAV contract. This would have led to the loss of approximately 3,000 jobs in southwestern Ontario, and the concomitant loss of votes from this region for the party in next year’s federal election. Yet, cynical as may it seem, party strategists may have calculated that the Liberal Party can compensate for the loss of these votes by adopting a muscular foreign policy stance.
Indeed, the party is on shaky ground in Ontario which, with its 121 members in the 388-member federal parliament, remains the most electorally crucial Canadian province. The party was wiped out this year in Ontario’s provincial election. The results suggest that immigrant communities mostly plumped for the Conservative Party, attracted by its promises of low taxes and a return to traditional family values. Saudi Arabia is a wedge issue that can split the immigrant vote, riven as these communities are by divisions of religion and language. The issue has already sown confusion in opposition ranks and forced prominent politicians to take what some would say are counter-intuitive positions on the topic. While Conservative Party politicians like Erin O’Toole have criticized the government approach to Saudi Arabia, the left-wing National Democratic Party’s (NDP) Jagmeet Singh has called on Canada to take strident action against the Saudis in the form of ending all oil imports from the country.
Given that the Liberals are increasingly being seen as weak on immigration, picking a public fight with Saudi Arabia may help the party reclaim support from nationalist and right-wing voters across the country. Standing up for human rights around the world may also help the party stem the flow of left-wing progressive votes towards the NDP. In short, standing up to Saudi Arabia on human rights is the sort of silver bullet that can help the Liberals win plaudits from both the right and left. It also helps embellish Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s standing as leader of the free world, seen as he is as part of a global triumvirate (alongside Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel) that defends liberal democratic values.
Another distinct, but less explored possibility is that Ms. Freeland’s diplomacy-by-twitter strategy may have had something to with her potential prime ministerial ambitions in a post-Trudeau future, where she could emerge as a consensus candidate acceptable to both the right and left wings of the party. To be sure, she is increasingly viewed as the unofficial deputy prime minister to Justin Trudeau.
As political establishments no doubt bask in the nationalist afterglow of this diplomatic dispute, it is worth sparing a thought for the thousands of students and patients currently searching for new universities and hospitals across the world. For them, this completely avoidable dust-up has been nothing but life-changing.
