The EU has committed to outsourcing its dirty work to authoritarians in the Middle East and Africa—and to confusing dependence for maturity
ADAM TOOZE:
“…In Europe’s relations with its Arab neighbors and former colonial possessions, it is not just fraught history that is at stake. The unprecedented summit between the Arab League and the European Union in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Feb. 24 and 25 was a clash of political regimes. The EU prides itself on a values-based foreign policy that affirms democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Of the 30 Arab states it met in Egypt, only Tunisia comes close to meeting those criteria.
In the end, 20 European heads of government, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attended, but only after two particular pariahs, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had agreed to stay away. That may have spared the Europeans’ blushes, but it only had the effect of highlighting the incongruity of the EU readily accepting the hospitality of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Sisi is a former general who overthrew the duly elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood in the summer of 2013, at the cost of many hundreds of lives. Since then, he has ruled with an iron fist, imprisoning dozens of journalists and jailing, according to Human Rights Watch, upward of 60,000 of his political opponents. Only last month, nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood were put to death. The overthrow of the democratically elected government put in place by the revolution of 2011 was initially justified as transitional. Sisi’s supporters are now pushing to entrench the general’s grip on power until 2034.
Sisi at least puts on the veneer of a modern international statesman. The Saudis do not even bother. King Salman stumbled embarrassingly through his summit speech before departing the scene. To show others the respect of listening to their opinion was beneath his royal dignity, or perhaps simply beyond the octogenarian’s strength.
Europe has become accustomed to portraying its sacrifices of human rights as the necessary wages of diplomacy in an anarchic world. That is self-flattering—but also self-deceiving. The real question is why Europe feels it is so essential to cultivate government-to-government relations with such authoritarian regimes…”