The Guardian view on Sweden’s foreign policy: admirable, but maybe not entirely high-minded
Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström has spoken bluntly to Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel. But the diplomatic environment is changing
Sunday 15 March 2015
Is it possible to practise diplomacy without being diplomatic with the truth? This is the question raised by Margot Wallström, the foreign minster in Sweden’s coalition government since September, who has managed to offend three more powerful countries. First, her government recognised Palestine as a state when it took office last autumn; the Israelis withdrew their ambassador and let it be known she would not be welcome in the country. Then she tweeted of Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger so barbarously flogged by his government last month: “This cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression has to be stopped.” And she has condemned the murder of Boris Nemtsov as part of Vladimir Putin’s “reign of terror”. The Russians responded by blaming Sweden for its supposed responsibility for the war in Ukraine – a country in which Sweden has had no military interest since 1709.
The Saudis, more effectually, cancelled a speech that Ms Wallström was to give to the Arab League. The Swedish government responded by failing to renew a controversial memorandum of understanding that could have led to Swedish companies helping Saudi to establish a native arms industry. The Saudis have pulled their ambassador from Stockholm. It had been a declared aim of Swedish foreign policy to get elected to the UN security council next year. Without Arab votes, that ambition looks hopeless. There has been a real price to pay for her remarks.
In all these cases the requirement for an ethical and feminist foreign policy – and Ms Wallström also wants Swedish foreign policy to be explicitly feminist – clashes with the demands of realpolitik. Elements of her Social Democratic party certainly believed that Swedish jobs were more valuable than Saudi human rights. But the Greens and most other parties disagreed, and won the argument.
There is an honourable tradition of the Social Democrats paying a diplomatic price for saying the injudiciously obvious
There is an honourable tradition of Swedish Social Democrats paying a diplomatic price for saying the injudiciously obvious: when the late Olof Palme was education minister in 1968, he marched alongside the North Vietnamese ambassador in a street demonstration against the Vietnam war. The Americans withdrew their ambassador. What has changed since Palme’s days is that many countries now explicitly reject the notion, self-evident then, that enlightened, topless Europe represents the future of the world and that all rich countries must inevitably become more Swedish as they grow richer. Large parts of the world no longer pay so much as lip service to our conceptions of human rights, democracy and feminism.
That is exactly what makes Ms Wallström’s outspokenness valuable and worthwhile. Sweden’s support for freedom and decency in Ukraine, in Palestine or in Saudi Arabia can be no more than symbolic, but symbols matter. They should not, however, be confused with underlying reality: all through the excitement of the Palme years, the Swedish national security apparatus continued to cooperate with Nato, just as now the private Swedish company Saab still plans to sell the Saudis anti-tank missiles.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق