At War on the Rocks Richard Sokolsky and Jeremy Shapiro outline U. S. support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:
During the span of the Bush and Obama administrations, total U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia increased by nearly 97 percent. The U.S. has offered $115 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia during the Obama administration. Over the last three years alone — since the start of negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program — America has sold nearly $36 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia. These sales are certainly in the commercial interests of the United States and the American firms that manufacture the weapons. They create jobs, generate corporate profits, and improve the U.S. balance of trade.
But whether the massive sale of American arms to the Saudis serves U.S. geopolitical interests is a much more debatable proposition. U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia is a mere tool of American policy toward the Kingdom, not an end in itself. As such, it should serve broader objectives in the relationship. It should influence the Saudi government to make decisions that support American interests and priorities in the relationship and in the region more broadly.
There is a truly peculiar silence about our support for the KSA. The rulers of Saudi Arabia are certainly no better than the Assad regime and in many ways much worse. Mysteriously, we support the Saudi regime and oppose the Assad regime. In the Saudis’ war against Yemen 10,000 people, many of them civilians, have died and nearly a million have been displaced. And our fingerprints are all over the conflict from destabilizing Yemen to supporting the Saudis.
So much effort spent on Iran when Saudi has been the source of more of our problems in the ME and here at home. I guess it is god to have the most oil.
Steve
Steve, interesting thinko there.
From looking over the White House Fact sheet, appears attracting Saudi investment is as important as terrorist hunting and making sure the defense industry’s unionized work force is happy.
On the cold blooded side, Western style liberal democracies tend in wind up holding small coastal enclaves living off NGOs and the UN in that part of the world. Subjugating Yemen means the Suez Canal is still open for shipping while we keep our hands clean. Finally, its better the Saudis are inside our tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in as LBJ would say.
That might have been true when Abdulaziz’s sons were actually running things but the new generation of Sauds seem to be cut from different cloth.
The one thing Wahabis/Sauds could do to have the assistance removed is, start preaching and strategizing that inter-Muslim disputes with Shiism must be set aside, according to Allah, until Palestine is freed.
By the way and very relevant.
https://www.rt.com/usa/364628-clinton-rigging-palestine-tape/
Yes, there is a high probability we will have to move into the Saudi tent, oil prices won’t low forever, Wahhabi madrasa will be expanded in the US and we will continue to obsess over whether the head man’s sword is free trade etc.
Inertia. We have a relationship that goes back a long way (by American standards), the Saudis made a working peace with Israel and they pay some people we want paid. So we just overlook the fact that the regime is monstrous and spreads an ideology that spawns terrorism and retaliatory wars.
Inertia, too, in our relationship with Iran, which of course dovetails nicely with our Saudi bromance. I think there must be near universal agreement among rational people that in an either/or choice we’d logically pick Iran over KSA. But things are not as simple as national interest and are driven or diverted or delayed by humans – friendships, side deals, laziness, risk-aversion, love affairs, stupidity. . . But the one word that I think works best is inertia. There is a lack of external force. One sandal in front of the next.
What if the Saudis are in the tent pissing into the soup pot? That seems more like the actual relationship than them inside pissing out or outside pissing in.
Weapon sales are one factor. The Gulf Arabs also spend a lot on US think tanks. The Saudis were an ally in the cold war. Many peoples mindsets have not changed since the end of the Soviet Union and do not see that Saudi funded Wahhabism causes more problems around the world than Russia.
US illusions about our “ally” will likely continue since Hillary Clinton’s closest aide Huma was raised in Saudi Arabia and her mother works there.
Dugin, Limonov, Prokhanov have been proven right-anti-communism was just a mask for Russophobia as far as US imperialism was concerned.