On warhead be it: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan

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1:05The Economist.

1:12Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:27It can be tough when your big successful company goes overseas and you discover that the brand name that worked well at home means something obscene or just unpronounceable abroad. Our correspondent tracks the challenges as Chinese firms go out. And back in Soviet times, a joke about the regime could cross Moscow in a matter of hours. Our correspondent reviews a long history of how authoritarians deal with comedians. Some shoot the messenger. Others just commandeer the audience.

2:04First up, though.

2:12Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have had a quiet bargain for years. Saudi Arabia had lots of cash, but little muscle. Pakistan was poor, but had plenty of weapons. An exchange has long served them both. But now the two Islamic countries are taking their relationship to the next level and on the global stage. In a joint statement last week, they declared, any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both. Such mutual defense pacts are not so uncommon. What is, is that one of the parties has a good-sized handful of nukes. This would be the first time, I think, that a nuclear-armed state, outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT, outside that big five of recognized nuclear armed powers, America, Britain, France, Russia, China, has actually extended nuclear deterrence to another country.

3:12Shashank Joshi is our defense editor. Now, there are some mixed messages from Pakistan as to whether nuclear weapons are really included in this pact, but Saudi Arabia clearly believes so. And if that is so, it would mean Saudi Arabia is now sheltering under Pakistan's nuclear umbrella of somewhere in the region of 170 nuclear warheads. So let's wind back a bit. Why is it that this deal between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan has come about? There's been decades of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. So back in the 1960s, I think Pakistani troops even deployed to Saudi Arabia's border with Yemen.

3:59I think there are rumors that Pakistani pilots flew Saudi jets in patrols. After successfully conducting five nuclear tests on 28th May 1998, 1828, Pakistan completed the current series by another nuclear test today.

4:25And then in the 90s, when India tested its nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia offered Pakistan 50 ,000 barrels of oil a day, basically to provide some relief from the sanctions that would otherwise be coming. And that helped Pakistan have the confidence to match India's nuclear tests. In 1999, Saudi Arabia's then defense minister, Prince Sultan, actually visited Pakistan's nuclear sites, the sites where Pakistan enriched uranium, assembled its missiles. And so there has long been this very close defense relationship, a degree of nuclear cooperation. And this is really that cooperation bursting out into the open for the first time.

5:07So in a sense, this is no real surprise. as you say, this is just that notion of the nuclear umbrella coming out of the shadows? I think so. I mean, there are some Pakistanis who disagree with that interpretation and say, we're reading too much into it. Pakistan's defense minister himself backtracked a day after making comments that suggested nukes were part of the deal. He said, they're not on the radar of the deal. But I think that's a little bit of obfuscation. If you look at the history, Pakistani officials have always denied there has been any formal cooperation. But there's a book published back in 2012 called Eating Grass.

5:41It's by a man called Feroz Hassan Khan. He was a military officer who was in Pakistan's Nuclear Strategic Plans Division, the SPD. And he acknowledged that there had been generous financial support from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. And Western intelligence officials, as well as Israeli intelligence officials, had long suspected that there had been arrangements, that Saudi Arabia had provided so much funding that if the moment came, for instance, if Iran were to acquire a nuclear bomb, Saudi Arabia would go to Pakistan and say, look, we need a bomb or we need some kind of deterrence. And this, I think, is exactly what we saw last week in a sense.

6:19So is it the general defense situation in the region then that has made this come out into the open? Officials from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia say that they've been working on this for years. So this didn't come out of the blue. I suspect it was accelerated by recent events, many of which, Jason, you've been discussing on the show. So, for example, Iran has been bombed by America and Israel, but it still has big stocks of enriched uranium that are probably buried under the rubble, and the prospect of an Iranian bomb is still there. Also, just a couple of weeks ago, we saw Israel conduct airstrikes on the Qatari capital of Doha, targeting Hamas officials.

6:58And indeed, Iran also fired missiles at an American airbase in Qatar in retaliation to those American strikes that I mentioned. And if you are a Gulf Arab state, either a small one like Qatar or Bahrain or the UAE or a big one like Saudi Arabia, all these missiles flying around, I think are going to make you a little bit nervous. And so I think this is a way for Saudi Arabia to say, if you fire missiles at us, if you tangle with us, whether you are Iran or in the future, whether you are Israel, you have to contend with the possibility of Pakistan being involved, and you have to contend with the possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons.

7:37It doesn't mean there's any kind of automatic nuclear deterrence at work here, but I think Saudi Arabia sees as a bit of a safety net, a way of shoring up deterrence at a time when the region is looking very, very volatile and very uncertain indeed. And from Pakistan's point of view, it is just a matter of making good on a historical debt? And I don't know if that's just it. I think it could bring new investment in cash from Saudi Arabia. Don't forget, Pakistan is having a pretty rough few months as well in some ways. It's had to resort to an IMF bailout earlier in the summer. About a week ago, the National Bank cut the growth forecast for the next fiscal year.

8:13And that was in part due to these unprecedented floods that have displaced two and a half million people. They've destroyed harvests across the country. I think that this is also Pakistan capitalizing on what it feels is a sense of success after its military clash with India back in May. Now, India claims that it struck many targets in Pakistan, and so India claims that it won that conflict. But Pakistan emerged, I think, pretty buoyant. It emerged with, I think, a sense of confidence. And I think it's capitalizing on that to build relationships in the Middle East with countries, notably Saudi Arabia, that in recent years have been tilting towards India.

8:55So I would also see this as a kind of diplomatic contest between India and Pakistan in the Middle East and Pakistan capitalizing on its stock being a little bit higher after those May clashes in the region. And that being the case, that being the mood and the fact that offering a country the shelter under a nuclear umbrella brings some cash in as well, it sounds like they might wish to offer their services elsewhere. Well, Pakistan's foreign minister has basically said that. He said, yep, this is a potential template for other countries, by which I presume he meant other Middle Eastern countries who see themselves as natural Islamic bedfellows with Pakistan, which of course was founded as a state to protect and represent the Muslims of British India and the Indian subcontinent back in 1947.

9:46But what I would say is that, you know, Jason, you and I have talked about nuclear deterrence in the context of Europe and Asia, and we know that there is growing distrust towards America's nuclear umbrella over allies. And what that teaches us is it's not that easy declaring a nuclear umbrella. You can't just say, hey, I am now protecting you with nukes. People don't believe that. They need to see some signs of assurance. They need to see perhaps that you're deploying nuclear weapons on your soil. They need to see that you're consulting with them on how those nukes might be used in a crisis. They need to have some confidence that you have enough nuclear warheads to use in a crisis to protect your ally while also protecting yourself.

10:26Now, Pakistan has never had to think about those things in the 25 years or so it has been a nuclear power. And so in that sense, declaring a nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia or over anyone else, that's easier said than done. Shishong, thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for having me, Jason.

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12:10Let me spell out a word for you. B-I-E-M-L-F-D-L-K-K. Now try and say it. Biemfelduk. Biemfelduk. Biemfelduk. Pretty hard, eh? Yet for 21 years, that was the English name for a Chinese brand selling golf apparel. But when you're expanding overseas, it's probably wise to have something a little easier for Western consumers to enunciate. So this year, the company's swapping the old name for one with a few more vowels. BM Lawson. Still not that easy. And many other Chinese firms have also discovered the importance of a name. More Chinese companies than ever are moving overseas. Don Wineland is our China business and finance editor.

13:05This trend is called Chuhai in Chinese. And what it means is local brands are looking for consumers in Western markets and in Southeast Asia and really all over the world. So that is something that has kind of awakened these brands to what they're called in Chinese. So as you say, some brands are struggling with the names that they've lumped themselves with a long time ago, but presumably some have got it right. Yeah, there are lots of Chinese companies that have done it right. That tends to be the ones that are newer, companies that have been launched just in the past couple of years. So, for example, Popmart, which is very, very popular in America and Europe right now with its Labubu dolls.

13:54Its name, you wouldn't know that it's a Chinese company, and it actually uses the English name in most of its marketing in China as well. There's plenty of other companies that have done this as well. So Xi 'an, the Chinese online apparel company that's so popular in America right now, uses a very easy-to-pronounce name. The restaurant chain Heidi Lau, which I think some people would argue is a bit difficult to pronounce in English, is simplifying its name just as high at overseas shops. So it's very, very easy to say. It's easy to remember. But Don, I know you're desperate to tell us about the ones that have got it wrong.

14:31Go on, hit us with them. Well, there's a broad range of companies that are trying different things. Mi Xue, this ice cream and cold drinks chain, which is opening up very, very rapidly across Southeast Asia and is looking at Western markets as well. It's stuck with its Chinese name. Mi Xue, it hasn't used the translation of its name, which is Honey Snow. I think that they could have done something with the meaning instead of using the actual Chinese pronunciation. And, you know, some people have argued that Mi Xue, while it seems relatively easy to say. A lot of people look at it and might not know how to say it.

15:09So it's difficult to recommend to friends. They might stumble in some places if they keep using their Chinese phoneticized name. But this is quite a longstanding problem, isn't it? Some companies have been, I guess, getting it wrong for quite a long time. That's right. And a lot of these companies, when they first launched, I don't think they thought very much about what it would mean for them to go overseas. They were really just thinking about the local market. And now, yeah, when they're going overseas, they really need to think about how these names are perceived. For example, there's the Chinese battery brand White Elephant, which is moving overseas.

15:50It's becoming popular in Africa. In English, to have a white elephant is not necessarily a good thing. It means something you don't want. So maybe they should have stuck with the Chinese phoneticization of this name, which is Bai Xiao. And there's a whole list of these. The Chinese shampoo brand Adolf gave itself that name years and years ago to give itself some European flair. But now, as it tries to sell its brand overseas, you know, it just doesn't work in places like Europe or America. And does this work both ways? How have Western companies found it going into China? Yeah, of course it works both ways.

16:29And, you know, some big Western companies have nailed it really, really well. So Coca-Cola or Coca-Cola, the name just has this ring to it in Chinese, and it has an association with the meaning of thirsty as well. So that's a great example of a company that's done it well. And then there's brands that have not done it so well. So Peugeot, the French carmaker, its name in Chinese is Biaozhi, which sounds relatively standard. But the Cantonese for it is Biuzi, which sounds like bitch. And I should mention that Peugeot is owned by Stellantis, whose largest shareholder part owns The Economist. So Don, you spend a lot of time thinking about this.

17:13I'm sure you've got some great photos on your phone of crazy brand names in China. What's the answer? So what's the golden rule for companies to abide by? I think avoiding symbolism is a good idea. Choosing easy names. And we can see by the way that Heidi Lau has simplified to high. This is a pretty good strategy just to make your name simpler and easier for people to say. If thinking of a good name was the biggest problem Chinese companies had when they were going to places like America, then I think they'd be doing just fine. Geopolitics right now is a bigger problem. So they're probably spending more time thinking about that than they are about what they'll be called in English.

17:54Don, thank you so much. Thank you.

18:08Joseph Stalin has lost his pipe and informs his security chief. Andrew Miller writes Backstory, our column on culture. Later he finds it behind the sofa. That's impossible, says the henchman. Three people have confessed to stealing it. Lots of jokes were told about the Soviet Generalissimo proliferating long after he died. I got a taste for them when I was a correspondent in Moscow. Another one goes like this. Stalin's ghost visits Vladimir Putin. Kill your opponents and paint the Kremlin blue, he advises. Why blue, asks Putin. The ghost smiles. I knew you wouldn't question the first part. While Stalin lived, however, it was reckless to tell jokes like that in public, or to anyone who might report them.

18:55Even hearing them could be calamitous, as a gag about a monstrous infrastructure project suggests. Who built the White Sea Canal? The right bank was dug by the joke tellers, the left by those who heard them. Every joke is a tiny revolution, George Orwell wrote. To silence the comedians, some autocrats use the torture chamber in the gulag. In Egypt today and other stifled places, the penalties for ridicule include prison and exile. In America, the relatively mild tools are regulators, broadcast licenses and social media parlons. Yet, whatever the fate of the comics, the jokes themselves get away.

19:40Authoritarians are, among other things, inherently funny.

19:47Humor strives on pretense and delusion, and the strongman is always pretending. He poses as a saviour, but is actually a brute. He purports to be omnipotent, but is as frail as other mortals, or more so. If he has an ideology, it will be deficient too. Prickly strong men can rarely take jokes, which makes them risky but funnier. Saddam Hussein once tried to murder the cast of a film that mocked him. The Nazis banned the Great Dictator, in which Charlie Chaplin sent up Adolf Hitler. But the Fuhrer himself reputedly watched it twice.

20:43Now on the other side, political jokes are the ideal weapon of the week. Even without the internet, they travel at warp speed, traversing a country before the censors have their pens out. And crucially, a good gag is collusive, recruiting listeners to the teller's side, or rather, making clear which side they're already on. They can't help finding it funny, and it's funny because, at bottom, it's true. This bond can be a launchpad for politics, as it was for Beppe Grillo in Italy and Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. Naturally, autocrats fret about people knowing that other people are thinking just like them.

21:23And according to the maximalist logic of repression, the fact that laughter is intimate, spontaneous and ephemeral heightens its appeal as a target. If rulers can suppress wit, they can control everything. But they can't. Trying to squish a joke tends to spread it instead.

21:46When the laughter police give up this unequal fight, it's a sign of liberalisation, voluntary or otherwise. At the fag end of the Soviet Union, even Mikhail Gorbachev, its last leader, wisecracked about discontent and shortages. The working classes consume plenty of cognac through their chosen representatives. A big comedy festival in Riyadh, which is set to start on September 26, is supposed to advertise Saudi Arabia's new freedoms. We'll see. Tim Dillon, an American stand-up who was due to attend, says he was disinvited over a riff the organisers didn't like. So, cannie authoritarians see the benefits of letting the gags flow?

22:32If they're selling jokes about me, it means they love me, Leonid Brezhnev is said to have remarked, and it wasn't altogether wrong. Scabrous as it may be, satire always can trace as a trace of homage. After all, nobodies are never satirised. And humour can be a safety valve for dissent and a kind of homeopathic dose of plurality. It also offers raw intel on the national mood, relaying hard truths and bad news, as medieval jesters sometimes did to kings. But the wiliest strongmen commandeer the audience for themselves. In an age like ours, when the struggle for power is really a battle for attention, they are the carnival barkers of the public square, dealing as much in one-liners and theatrical taunts as in policy.

23:27And as politics is repackaged as entertainment, crackdowns on comics or others can become part of the show, the threat to free expression blurred by the spectacle. The story of Bim Bom, a circus clown duo in the Soviet Union, is an ominous parable. Performing in Moscow in 1918, they made some jokes about the Bolsheviks that the secret policemen in attendance disliked. The goons rushed the stage to arrest the clowns, and thinking the chase was part of the act, the crowd hooted with laughter.

24:17That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.