Opinion | Britain's grotesque Saudi hypocrisy
By Tom Fowdy
According to Reuters: "Britain has invited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for an official visit later this year, as the two countries seek to deepen economic ties, a UK government official said on Thursday." The UK's embrace of Saudi Arabia as a partner has intensified extensively in recent years as Downing Street seeks to revive its lackluster economy which has stagnated on the back of catastrophic foreign policy mismanagement, including Brexit, escalation of the war in Ukraine and the decision to follow the United States in its antagonism of China, all of which crippled incomes in Britain with stagnant growth, surging inflation and reduced foreign investment.
Saudi Arabia's lucrative state-backed investment fund has been enough to buy the silence of British politicians on matters they claim to be principled on, such as human rights. The murder of Saudi US journalist Jamal Khashoggi for one, is completely ignored by the UK government, not to mention its own record on human rights and women's rights in general, which are used simultaneously to antagonize countries such as Iran, or even China. Above all, the British embrace of the Saudi Kingdom is the single highest aspect of hypocrisy manifest in its foreign policy outlook and only serves as a representation as to how ethical dimensions are used opportunistically, than sincerely.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as other states in the Persian Gulf, have long been clients of Western and British Imperialism in the Middle East, which is the reason behind their prosperity. While the UK and US sought to contain, invade and strangle revolutionary Arabist regimes which challenged Western hegemony in the region, they empowered wealthy elites in the gulf Sheikdom who were offered the opportunity to prosper insomuch they supported Western politicians' goals. This led to a lucrative relationship premised on the exchange of arms and oil, which in turn has allowed a complete pass on the thing Western countries claim to care about the most, which is human rights.
In Western foreign policy, driven primarily by the United States, the notion of human rights is used selectively to target regimes deemed strategically unfavorable, and to manufacture consent for foreign policy goals related to respective containment, sanctions and war. The US ultimately controls the discourse of human rights in the West through having a monopoly over English language resources, using the US state department's connections in the media, its ties to editors of major news outlets and an army of coordinated think-tanks and experts to set the agenda of the day. Noam Chomsky described this process as "manufacturing consent."
Because of this, it is possible to manipulate public consciousness, drawing attention to some issues, while deliberately ignoring or downplaying others. For example, the United States, backed by Britain may use claims of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang autonomous region of China in order to manufacture consent for sanctions that support fundamental US goals of legitimating supply chain shifts away from the country. For example, in resentment of China's dominance over the Green Energy market, the US falsely claimed that Chinese solar panels were being made with Uyghur forced Labour, which was used to support a ban on their import to America.
However, for countries deemed friendly or supportive of Western goals, no moralizing or weaponization of human rights exists. When it comes to the Middle East, this sets out perhaps the most blatant double standard in the world, because the US will target some countries in the region on this matter, but not others. For example, the US and UK have weaponized the notion of human and women's rights in Iran in order to push for regime change, because Iran is deemed a strategically hostile state. The media will platform and big up dissidents of Iran, but have you noticed how nobody in Saudi Arabia supporting women's rights is given such a platform? Or round-the-clock coverage?
In reality, Saudi Arabia is a more authoritarian state than Iran which exists as an absolute monarchy with an equally Conservative Islamic legal system. Britain is now hungry for its sovereign wealth fund, with Boris Johnson having personally interfered to ensure Saudi Arabia was able to take over Newcastle United unopposed. Now, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman will gain all the privileges of an official state village, but if China's President Xi Jinping was to ever again gain such an honor the papers would be filled with outrage on the grounds of human rights abuses, calling the government gravely immoral and supporting the oppression of Uyghurs. Herein, shows us how the discourse of human rights is also used to control a country's foreign policy by the US via proxy. If Saudi Arabia has done something, it is forgettable and permissible, but that is not the case for states designated as enemies. Thus, human rights never truly mattered for Western foreign policy matters, it is a ruse, and the UK's shocking embrace of Saudi Arabia shows it never cared truly about human rights in the Middle East, but only how much it can exploit it financially.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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