Canada will need to consider growing its relations with non-democratic Gulf States

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Thomas Juneau is a professor with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

President Donald Trump’s assault on America’s trade with Canada has provoked a sense of urgency that we must diversify our relationships with international partners. So far, Canadians have seen Ottawa try to deepen relations on the trade and security fronts mostly with like-minded allies and partners in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

This is essential, but Canada also needs to have a difficult debate on whether its diversification efforts should be limited to democracies. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to the United Arab Emirates this week illustrates this debate.

Expanding trade relations with the UAE, as well as with the other five petro-monarchies that collectively form the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia) holds some promise. But it also comes with risks: Critics rightly point out the abysmal human-rights records in GCC states while highlighting how some have supported human-rights violations abroad. This is notably the case in Sudan, where the UAE supports one of two parties engaged in a brutal civil war that has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.

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At the same time, pursuing deeper relations with GCC states promises benefits for Canada. The centre of gravity of economic and diplomatic power in the Middle East has steadily shifted to the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar are today self-confident regional powers with global ambitions. Yet Canada has neglected them since 2015.

GCC countries are among the richest in the world in terms of per-capita revenue. To varying degrees, they have made it a priority to diversify their economies beyond hydrocarbons. The UAE, for example, has become a powerhouse in artificial intelligence and green tech, while its emirate of Dubai is a hub for banking and financial services. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have gigantic sovereign wealth funds seeking opportunities abroad.

It is important here to correct a common misperception. It is true that around 2015-2020, Saudi foreign policy was often reckless and aggressive, as witnessed by its conduct of the war in Yemen, embargo on Qatar, assassination of a critical journalist in Turkey and diplomatic dispute with Canada in 2018. Like its GCC counterparts, Saudi Arabia is also not democratizing, and neither will it in the foreseeable future. For the past few years, however, Riyadh has prioritized the stabilization of its relations with its neighbours, including its regional rival Iran, and the diversification of its economy, with the goal of attracting trade, investment and tourism. Saudi Arabia has also been working closely with France in support of progress toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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The challenge for Canada today is to define what diversifying its foreign policy beyond the United States means. Will Ottawa focus on a shrinking and besieged democratic world, thereby narrowing its ability to compensate for losses caused by growing tension with its southern neighbour? Some argue that morally, this is the right way ahead for Canada.

The problem with this view is that it lowers the ceiling for success in efforts to diversify our trade and security partnerships. Canada has disagreements with GCC states, and these will not go away. But Canada does not have the luxury of being able to avoid hard foreign policy decisions, as it had until recently. All too comfortable with the tremendous security and economic benefits we derived from close relations with the United States, we became complacent and too often forgot how ugly geopolitics often are.

To survive and thrive in a world of American retrenchment, unilateralism and protectionism, Ottawa should prioritize deeper ties with other democracies, since common values often imply similar interests. But Canada also shares important interests, both economic and diplomatic, with non-democracies, and notably with GCC countries. The loud but empty moralizing of the past will not only fail to allow Canada to promote its interests in the Gulf, it will also be counterproductive given that GCC countries have clearly signalled that relations with them are on a take-it-or-leave-it basis; there is simply no space for Canada to pressure them with any success on human rights.

The choice for Canada, in this context, is: How high does it want the ceiling of its diversification efforts to be?