Some have condemned it, others have remained silent: the international community has failed to impose an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, while in Yemen bombs made in Italy kill people every day.
Practising what you preach has never been a strong suit of the great powers, and throughout the history of international relations Realpolitik has followed criteria that reason cannot comprehend — or, at least, does not share. Yet after more than three years of war in Yemen, an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, a population pushed to the brink and more than 85,000 children dead from starvation, the international community has reached unparalleled heights of evasiveness and hypocrisy.
Read also: Yemen. La guerra, il silenzio e l'ipocrisia
Evasiveness, because — despite repeated warnings and heartfelt appeals from humanitarian organisations — it has failed to negotiate a ceasefire between the warring parties. Hypocrisy, because solemn declarations of intent have not been followed by any concerted action to impose an embargo on the weapons fuelling the conflict.
American president Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that the profits derived from arms sales to Saudi Arabia are a valid reason to side with the Al Saud dynasty unconditionally. Even after the scandal over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered on 2 October last at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul — a death that bears the hallmark of Riyadh's new strongman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But things have slowly begun to shift, and a few days ago Denmark joined the club of countries that have suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a group that already includes Greece, Finland, Norway, Switzerland and Germany.
So who is supplying the Riyadh government with weapons? According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), 61 per cent of orders come from the United States. A distant second, with around 23 per cent of the munitions and technologies supplied, is Theresa May's United Kingdom. But France, Italy and Spain are also doing their part.
Paris ranks third among supplier countries and has so far confirmed all its orders to the Saudi princes. Socialist Spain under Pedro Sánchez also bows its head to raison d'état and pockets the payment for the supply of five military corvettes, while Italy — in the words of Minister Moavero Milanesi — declares that it is "certainly evaluating" the possibility of suspending supplies to the Riyadh government. With nearly 500 million euros in exports — produced by Rwm Italia, based in Domusnovas in Sardinia's Sulcis region — our country ranks fourth among European suppliers of arms to Saudi Arabia.
And so, beneath the veil of European and global hypocrisy, the arms trade with the Saudi monarchy continues unchecked. The market is too tempting, given that the kingdom is the world's third-largest arms importer and that in 2017 global military spending reached 1.739 trillion dollars, equivalent to 2.2 per cent of global GDP — the highest level since the end of the Cold War. And never mind that Riyadh refuses international investigations every time a bomb falls on a hospital, a wedding celebration or a school bus.
