Trudeau accuses Modi of murder
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just shocked the world. He announced that Canada’s security services had “credible evidence” that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered this hit:
ON THE EVENING of June 18th Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh leader whom India considered a terrorist, was sitting in his truck in a car park outside a gurdwara (a Sikh temple) in Vancouver when two masked men shot him dead. They escaped through a park and disappeared.
(The Economist, September 19, 2023)
This isn’t Pakistan’s prime minister feigning outrage over another US hit on an al Qaeda terrorist. We’ve grown accustomed to that sort of theater. This accusation is a far cry from that.
After all, Trudeau is a fashion-forward, quasi-liberal pin-up boy who leads one of the world’s major democracies. And Modi is a veritable demigod who rules the world’s biggest democracy.
But we now know why Modi has been hanging out with Russia’s Putin lately. In hindsight, Trudeau accusing Modi of acting like an authoritarian thug seems inevitable. And this is the same Trudeau who practiced yoga moves to woo Indian voters. This assassination is bound to upset relations.
The hypocrisy waltz: Erdogan, Biden, and the MbS connection
Watching Trudeau brought immediately to mind the infamous killing of journalist Jamaal Khashoggi. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Saudi Crown Prince MbS of butchering Khashoggi on Turkish soil like a lamb at Eid. He vowed to prosecute the perpetrators.
Ironically, Erdogan finally got fed up with European leaders treating him how Biden vowed to treat MbS. Because, for decades, they’ve been citing his authoritarian bent for denying Turkey’s application to join the EU.
Instead, Erdogan has turned his attention to wielding more influence in the Middle East – as an elder statesman, powerbroker, and peacemaker. So, he transferred the Khashoggi case to Saudi Arabia – effectively allowing a murderer to prosecute his trial. Then he made a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia to reset relations with MbS.
But Joe Biden, then a US presidential candidate, led the chorus of democratic leaders worldwide in condemning MbS. He famously vowed to make MbS pay by turning him into a pariah on the world stage.
Except that Biden, not to be outdone, pulled an Erdogan-style about-face. Everyone watched as the need for oil forced him to fly to Saudi Arabia to kiss MbS’s ring. Hell, Biden is even discussing the US signing a mutual defense agreement with authoritarian Saudi Arabia, much like its agreements with democratic South Korea and Japan.
Putin: The maestro of Machiavellian hijinks
No doubt Russian President Vladimir Putin was chuckling in the Kremlin as he watched Biden make that pilgrimage. After all, he’s the master of such targeted assassinations of dissidents on foreign soil.
More to the point, while world leaders were heaping condemnation on him, Putin was mentoring MbS on the finer points of autocratic audacity. Condemning assassinations? Please, that’s so 2019.
Trudeau’s inevitable surrender to geopolitical reality
Despite his fire and brimstone, Trudeau and his maple-syrup morals will inevitably cave. In the meantime, Modi is practically doing a victory lap, confident that he’s as untouchable as a sacred cow.
You see, he knows Biden will cover for him just like Putin did for MbS. After all, India is indispensable to Biden’s Indo-Pacific initiative to counter China’s economic and military bullying. This, just as Saudi Arabia is indispensable to his political need to keep oil as cheap as possible.
Frankly, moral posturing has become even more of a sideshow in the grand circus of geopolitics. And Trudeau, like the rest of them, will soon find the charms of realpolitik too seductive to resist.
So Modi must be thinking: if MbS can make Biden eat his words, making Trudeau do the same will be child’s play.