In 2015, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died, the union flags were lowered at half-mast all across Whitehall. Even Westminster Abbey followed suit, doffing its ecclesiastical cap to a tyrannical regime that has sponsored militant Islam throughout the Arab world.
We need them, came the justification. They are our friends. Humbug, came the reply. We have sold our soul for desert gold.
It was an early skirmish in a moral debate that has now grown impossible to ignore.
The Khasshogi case has put us on the spot. A journalist was brazenly murdered in broad daylight, allegedly by the Saudis, and Western governments have to decide how they will react. On the one hand, most people will feel – to a greater or lesser extent – that such behaviour must have consequences. For our politicians to shrug their shoulders in the name of realpolitik is effectively to green light powerful nations doing what they like – much as the Russians did in Salisbury. And it is to ignore all the misery that the Saudis are creating in the Yemen, as they bomb innocents with weapons supplied by this country, creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
But a great many jobs here do depend upon Saudi contracts, the pragmatists reply, and if we don’t supply them on a matter of principle, the Russians gladly would. Besides, can we discount the role Saudi Arabia apparently plays in stabilising the Middle East, a counter-weight to the pernicious influence of Iran, and an important link between the Arab world and Israel.
How, then, can we possibly find the proper balance between principles and practical reality?
It’s a very old question, of course. “It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish,” said the High Priest in the Gospel of John, expressing bluntly the thought that the murder of an innocent man should be weighed against the consequences for the many.
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