A Need For Honest Brokers

Moral Imperatives in One's Foreign Policy

The Saudi execution of Jamal Khashoggi is now "old news".  Nevertheless it keeps being raised by officials and commentators.  Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations, has raised the matter again, as well she might.

During an interview broadcast on Friday’s edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley stated that the United States must continue “to have harsh conversations with the Saudis” about how the U.S. “can’t continue to partner with someone that continues to brutalize people in this way.”

Haley said, “First of all, if you have Saudi officials going into a Saudi consulate, the Saudi government is responsible, which makes MBS responsible [for the killing of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi], period. That’s just what we know. Secondly, our United States principles, values will not allow us to give them a pass, and we shouldn’t. And I think that the president made a good first step when he sanctioned the 17 individuals. I think we need to continue to have harsh conversations with the Saudis about how this doesn’t fit the means of international norms, it’s not accepted by the United States, and we can’t continue to partner with someone that continues to brutalize people in this way.”  [Breitbart News]

 This is well and good: Haley's criticism is doubtless apposite and well meant.  One imagines it would be endorsed by most folk in the United States.  Yet at the same time it is beholden upon such critics that they also acknowledge and "confess" the sins of their own respective countries.  The United States, for example, like many Western nations,  has an official murder "factory": it has a legalized abortion industry--as has New Zealand, and most Western countries for that matter.

Now that does not mean that criticisms like Haley's ought not to be made.  They should.  But such just accusations need to be made in the context of acknowledging the log in one's own national eye, whilst pointing out a splinter in the eye of someone else's country.

Were such acknowledgments to be made regularly by critics and spokespeople it would make their criticisms of others more powerful, reasoned, and weighty.  In the case of the United States in particular, it would go a long way to achieving the goal of being able to talk softly whilst carrying a big stick.  We would likely see very different conversations and discussions amongst nations.  We would also likely see an early disclosure of those truly rogue nations whose malice and deceit is reprehensible.