• Home
• /
• Opinion

Canada must change course to mend ties with Saudi Arabia

In a nutshell, the sooner Trudeau sees the light, the easier it will be for Saudi Arabia and Canada to put their relations back on an even keel.

The row between Saudi Arabia and Canada that erupted with a series of tweets by the Canadian foreign ministry has spawned a slew of speculative explanations and filled many column inches and minutes of airtime.
In the long run, the feud - over Canada's calls for the release of human rights activists detained in Saudi Arabia - should prompt Justin Trudeau's government to re-evaluate its foreign policy in general, and its approach to the Middle East in particular.
For the immediate term, though, Ottawa has to stop seeing the dispute as purely a matter of standing up for human rights and freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia, as if otherwise no progress could happen in these fields.
The silliness of Canada's use of Twitter diplomacy (in this particular case at least) aside, the Saudi leadership has amply demonstrated its reformist resolve through legislation and action, which are liberalising the Arab Gulf state's society and decreasing restrictions on women fairly rapidly by regional standards.
There are many things that can be said in favour of Canada given the country's long record as a provider of foreign aid, humanitarian assistance, support for human rights and justice, and troops for UN peace-keeping operations.
Even so, the current government needs to work on dispelling the notion in non-Western circles that it is led by leftwing idealists out of touch with the realities of a Hobbesian world. There are several ways for Ottawa to achieve this objective in the context of the Arab world, but it could start with boosting its military and financial commitments to the cause of peace and security, and then parlay its achievements into greater diplomatic influence.
According to a government document, Canada will spend $2 billion between 2016 and 2019 to "enhance regional security and stabilization, to provide vital humanitarian assistance . to help host communities build resilience in the face of conflict and to increase ... diplomatic engagement in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon".
And while Canada also supports development and humanitarian work in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and the Palestinian territories, there is room for increasing the outlay and expanding the geographic reach of its activities, keeping in mind the sheer number of ongoing conflicts and potential flashpoints.
Take Iraq, for example. The situation there could get worse owing to a combination of bad governance, political disunity, Iranian interference, war devastation and Baghdad's high-handedness in its dealings with the Kurds who helped defeat Daesh.
Likewise, Syria's picture is grim in light of President Bashar Al Assad's unrelenting military campaign - backed by Russia, Iran and foreign Shia paramilitaries - against the opposition and his failure to restore a semblance of stability.
Across the border, in Lebanon, factional disputes and foreign interference do not augur well for the future of the world's third most indebted country.
As for Jordan, it is prone to periodic bouts of economic turbulence, which inevitably leads to public unrest and polarisation along familiar political lines.  The problems plaguing North Africa and the Middle East are, of course, hardly confined to the countries benefiting directly from Canadian stabilisation activities.
From Libya in the west to Yemen in the east, a vast expanse of land and sea is blighted by human trafficking, terrorism, conflict, poverty, overpopulation and state failure.
Even if Canada were to project just its soft power in these places instead of taking sides or fighting in an openly combative role, it would still have a lot on its plate.
Regardless of the route Trudeau takes to return to the good graces of the Saudi leadership, what is for certain is that a spat of this kind would not have happened under his conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper.
Harper's willingness to put Canadian lives on the line, be it in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, may not have played well with pacifists at home, but it earned him considerable goodwill and moral authority among his country's Arab and Kurdish partners.
By contrast, Trudeau ignored the downsides of promising during the 2015 campaign to restore ties with Iran and celebrating his election victory with the announcement of Canada's withdrawal from coalition air strikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
Although a chastened Trudeau later approved the deployment of warplanes and soldiers to the front lines, and continues to support Kurdish forces in Iraq as of today, he has got flak for sending mixed messages on Canada's role in the military campaign. Small wonder, then, despite his commendable positions on immigration, cultural and religious diversity and the environment, Trudeau's reputation as a leader who is comfortable only in the company of fellow liberal internationalists has proved, rightly or wrongly, enduring.
Finally, Trudeau's habit of tangling with Donald Trump via Twitter on trade tariffs may impress Canadians but is unlikely to endear him to foreign leaders who reckon that the geopolitical rewards of the US president's hard line on Iran, Turkey, China and Russia outweigh the costs of his personal foibles and idiosyncracies.
In a nutshell, the sooner Trudeau sees the light, the easier it will be for Saudi Arabia and Canada to put their relations back on an even keel.
Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on Middle East