PORTUGAL IS putting aside qualms on issues linked to human rights, basic freedoms, corruption and democracy in its search for new markets and energy sources according to political analysts.
The current economic crisis and the emergence of threatening competitive markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and China means that the government is prepared to entertain some unsavoury and maverick bedfellows.
The name of the game is now realpolitik. In less than a month, Prime Minister José Sócrates has been to Tripoli to visit Muammar Gadhaffi, Luanda to see José Eduardo Santos, and received Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Lisbon.
Last year, the government paid court to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the EU Presidency and followed that up with a visit to Moscow in May.
This recent succession of meetings between the Portuguese government and world leaders with politically doubtful reputations has shocked some political analysts and raised some uncomfortable questions.
The biggest question is this: is Portugal now prepared to sell out on all its democratic principles for the sake of business?
In the corridors of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, the explanation is fairly clear. Yes, Portugal has been changing its direction in foreign policy since the end of its Presidency of the EU last year.
The reasons are equally clear: Portugal is losing its traditional export markets and investment partners partly because of the economic crisis in the United States and Europe but also because the world is changing.
Rising energy prices coupled with Portugal’s overt reliance on imported oil and gas and the decline of her textile market has forced her to adopt a much more aggressive and flexible attitude to counteract these problems.
The priority has been to search out new and cheaper energy suppliers – Angola, Venezuela and Libya.
Nothing new
In effect, it doesn’t matter how mad political analysts perceive these countries’ leaders to be, how corrupt they are, and how little attention their regimes pay to human rights and basic freedoms – if it wins cheap energy and construction contracts for Portuguese firms, so be it.
This is nothing new on the world stage. The United States has been doing business with and propping up unsavoury regimes with dubious human rights credentials for years for the sake of money.
Nixon’s foreign minister Henry Kissinger believed that realpolitik was the way that the United States should conduct foreign policy. One only has to look at its dealings with half of the Latin American and Arab states to see realpolitik in action.
But the last time Europe and the democratic world openly pursued realpolitik while turning a blind eye to unsavoury regimes was in the 1930s and any school pupil with a minimum of historical knowledge will tell you the results of that.
Trade with undemocratic, amoral, coercive or Machiavellian regimes without enforcing political concessions and conditions only encourages their proliferation and legitimacy while running the risk of allowing history to repeat itself.
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