http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2011/05/us-hails-bahrain-as-model-of-reform.html

Short answer to your rhetorical question- human rights are treated by the ruling powers as a sales device for realpolitik, where govts wish to take action human rights are invoked where they do not wish to human rights are downplayed. Maybe the more revealing question should be- How do we make an ethical & consistent human rights criteria the priority of govt policy? At present I see no party even beginning to make this a serious part of their policy and a former minister involved in the covering up of torture almost became leader of the Labour party, so a long way to go for the established Westminster ‘left’.

(And in this particular case Western elites attitudes to Shia Muslims also come into play, their strategic calculations broadly equate Shia with Iran, thus Bahrain may well be approved of by our foreign policy planners in their repression of Shias)

If the duty to protect civilians applies in Libya, why not in Bahrain?

Sorry Pete that’s whataboutery and we don’t take to kindly to that sort of talk round here.
Apparently.

At a guess, it’s because those in power in our nations don’t actually give much of a flying fuck about those being oppressed in other nations, unless there’s some advantage in using their plight as leverage for their/our own (not in the best interests of those oppressed) aims.

OIL and er……..OIL.

Perhaps because you can only do what you can do. The UK was never really in a position to be the ‘world police’ in Libya seeing as how we are broke and our armed forces are downsizing and employed elsewhere. Perhaps it’s someone elses turn.

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First of all, in what possible sense can we be said to be failing anyone? What is the relationship between them and us except they told us to f**k off and we went? How can we have an obligation when there is no relationship? We do not run a third of the world any more. We have obligations at home to British people. We have none to the people of either Libya or Bahrain. If British interests suggest we should get involved in one, the other, both or neither, we can do so. But we owe nothing to the people of Bahrain whatsoever.

Second, there is no point helping people unless we actually help them. Yes, the regime in Bahrain is unpleasant. But the alternatives are worse. In this case it would probably mean a pro-Iranian theocracy taking the place of a fairly pro-Western lax Sunni monarchy. The people of Iran were better off under the Shah. The people of Bahrain are better off under their King than any plausible alternative on offer so far.

So we need to do precise nothing whatsoever.

The Suaidi and UAE forces are there at the invitation of the Bharain government – therefore it is not an illegal interference in the internal affairs of another state under the traditional notion of soverignty.

As a matter of principle, I would like to see Bahrain turn to a democratic, rights respecting model of governance. I’m not adverse to using the full spectrum of diplomatic measures including the use of force, even without UNSC authorisation.

That said, it is not a principle that trumps all others. In foreign policy you can’t operate on moral absolutes in foreign policy. It is the duty of the stateman to pay due regard to the consequences of their actions and the knock on effects of losing the cooperation of the Bahranian government including that US base are far more detrimental in consequentialist terms than the continuing oppression that is happening there. At the present moment I think that assessment holds true both for Bahraini people (the replacement for the regime would probably be worse), British people and those in the wider world.

Cold and callous as it sounds – it is worth nothing that those that craft foreign policy must do so with the best interests of those they act as an agent for in mind. There is no duty, moral or otherwise to anyone else. If there really is the democratic will to have resonsibility to non-citizens outside the UK, it should be enshrined in law. If the public were aware of the consequences of a truly moral and truly consistent foreign policy they would never support it. It would bankrupt the country, destroy their standard of living and pose an enormous security risk to the values that most people hold dear.

Luckily the results of globalisation are causing what is commonly (at least in the UK) thought of as “moral” to coincide with what is also in the self interest of the UK. Dictatorships and rights abusing regimes will inevitably come in to conflict with democracies, act as a partner for terrorist groups, be a source of instability for international trade and business etc, etc. In the long run, doing the ‘moral’ thing is in the interests of rights respecting democracies. But doing the ‘moral’ thing straight away, everywhere without concern for the wider consequences would be a disaster.

Moral when we can, immoral if we really can’t be anything but.

The whole bloody world isn’t out problem.

Ignore so much for subtlety. He is move any mountain from cif, a troll-extraordinaire sociopath and an on-the-record fascist sympathiser (as reinforced here by his support for the totalitarian shah regime)

Because the protestors weren’t Bahrain’s “people” , They were a SEGMENT of the people protesting, and even they couldn’t figure out what is it exactly that they wanted, their was a huge segement of Bahrain that was against them and if they both had clashed it would’ve dragged the country in a civil war, Bahrain isn’t Syria or Egypt or Tunisia or even Libya.

‘The whole bloody world isn’t out problem.’

True, but while we might not be obliged to intervene we shouldn’t be supplying weapons to oppressive regimes either.

Really, Peter, you should know. For the same reason that the UK regularly fails its own people. It doesn’t give a damn about them, that’s why. The UK is run by and for the corporate elite and their self interest is the only consideration. We intervene when it suits them, spending huge sums which cannot be used to provide public services for the people whose taxes (and the corporate elite’s approach to taxes is well known) fund the whole corrupt operation. In fact spending money on the UK’s people is roundly condemned as wickedly immoral and the source of such evils as deficits and debts, for which the UK’s people (but not its entrepreneurial elite) must be punished.

I see Mr Cameron was full of smiles as he shook the hand of Bahrain’s Crown Prince on the doorstep of No. 10.

That image should tell us everything we need to know about the prospects of an ethical foreign policy, or of bringing those in Bahrain with blood on their hands to justice in the Hague.

“The international community has failed in its duty to protect the civilian population of Bahrain from arrest, detention without trial, torture and murder by the regime of King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa.”

Quite. If as many as twenty-one–twenty-one!–opposition activists and human rights defenders are being prosecuted on trumped up charges, then a punitive bombing campaign followed by a ground invasion and regime change is surely the least the people of Bahrain deserve.

is Peter advocating invasion or merely that we stop being friends with a nasty bunch and try to pressure them to reform?

[Bahrain is tiny - maybe would have more luck invading it that those tricky big deserts. Shame to smash up all those shiny skyscrapers. Maybe that's the real reason - we don't invade modern-looking places, it just seems wrong].

Luis: I don’t think he’s suggesting invasion. I was trolling and you’re right to call me out on it. But I do think there’s something more being proposed than just not being friends with a nasty regime. (Let’s leave aside the issue of whether Bahrain really is a nasty regime, which Ahmed @10 addresses). Just read the opening sentence,

“The international community has failed in its duty to protect the civilian population of Bahrain from arrest, detention without trial, torture and murder by the regime of King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa.”

I don’t think that it’s possible to interpret that as a call to a passive response–a few strong words–from the “international community”. Is it? I mean, “duty to protect the civilian population of Bahrain”?