LA dreary summer did not stop Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS”) from shining brightly on his first visit to the EU since the 2018 assassination. The Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi. US intelligence agencies suspect King Salman’s son ordered the brutal killing inside Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Istanbul. The case ended up being a travesty of justice from which “MBS” was acquitted.
After passing through Athens, the Crown Prince was received for dinner with Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, July 28. The meeting sparked outrage on the part of human rights organizations, which failed to cover the real political arguments sparked by the Elysée amid the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Emmanuel Macron’s approach is not a reversal. Eight months ago, the French president became the first Western head of state to visit Saudi Arabia. Since then, the diplomatic rehabilitation process of “MBS” has not stopped continuing, in March, after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to Riyadh, and especially two weeks ago, US President Joe. Biden.
“MBS’s” visit comes just days after visits to Paris by the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Human rights continue to be violated. While convincing the West of the merits of its opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the name of democracy and human rights values, these encounters are once again challenging.
Two-speed rage
It is not new for an increasing number of countries to denounce the hypocrisy of Western discourse on the basis of two-speed rage, whether it is our friends or our geopolitical enemies. Anger comes from afar. The lies that justified the invasion of Iraq and later Libya helped devalue the words of Western democracies. The contrast between the emotion and international mobilization sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the deafening silence over Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen since 2015 is striking.
Russian propaganda has not hesitated to use these episodes to cast doubt on Western intentions in Ukraine. The conflict is an opportunity to measure the extent to which the Atlanticist camp is struggling to mobilize against Russian ambitions, while this legitimate struggle should inspire much broader support. Dozens of countries in Africa and Asia have opted for a certain non-alignment, rather than taking Vladimir Putin’s side, because of the loss of credibility of the Western term.
In order to regain trust and insist that democratic values are worthy of fierce defense, the West must mirror the image it creates in the rest of the planet. When the discourse of protecting human rights is no longer legitimized and discarded according to the coalitions of circumstances, it is difficult for people not to think that it is an instrument of a sinister power in the service of well-conceived interests. Case of oil companies. The strength of our confidence in Russia depends on the stability we can maintain with highly unsuggestive regimes.
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