Well, the next time you hear anyone from the US government going on about the horrors of the Assad ‘regime’, or indeed any other country where the internal arrangements are squalid and brutal (or the government is waging an ultra-violent war against a neighbour, or both), remind yourself of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s words, or rather lack of them, during the bizarre Trump visit to the Saudi despotism over the weekend.

After attacking restrictions on free speech in Iran (which is a good deal less repressive than Saudi Arabia), Secretary Tillerson was then asked by a reporter if he had anything to say about human rights in Saudi Arabia. He left without answering, according to the New York Times.

The same paper reports a recent speech by Mr Tillerson https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/05/270620.htm

to employees of the US foreign ministry, the State Department:

‘If we condition too heavily that others must adopt this value that we've come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests,’

Which seems to me (though the use of English is execrable) to mean, national security and cash override any pious sermons we might hitherto have emitted on the subject of liberty.

The speech also contains this passage (emphases mine):

(Please note the weird use of the word ‘condition’ as a transitive verb) :

‘And so I think the real challenge many of us have as we think about constructing our policies and carrying out our policies is: How do we represent our values? And in some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals or our national security interests. If we condition too heavily that others must adopt this value that we’ve come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.

‘ It doesn’t mean that we leave those values on the sidelines. It doesn’t mean that we don’t advocate for and aspire to freedom, human dignity, and the treatment of people the world over. We do. And we will always have that on our shoulder everywhere we go.

But I think it is – I think it’s really important that all of us understand the difference between policy and values, and in some circumstances, we should and do condition our policy engagements on people adopting certain actions as to how they treat people. They should. We should demand that. But that doesn’t mean that’s the case in every situation. And so we really have to understand, in each country or each region of the world that we’re dealing with, what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests, and then as we can advocate and advance our values, we should – but the policies can do this; the values never change.’

Which in practice means responding to questions about human rights in Saudi Arabia, especially while in Riyadh, by ignoring them completely.

I am so sorry, but after this incoherent but unpleasant oration, and after the whole extraordinary visit by President Trump to Saudi Arabia, in which the ghastly ‘special relationship’ between Washington and Riyadh has been laid bare as exactly what it is, I find it quite impossible to take seriously any future outrage on the subject of repression or liberty expressed by the US government while these gentlemen remain in office. Whatever it is that bothers Washington about Syria or Russia, it is not the freedoms of the people there.