I understand what you're trying to say, but this is fundamentally backwards. The US makes a conscious decision out of supposed self-interest to align itself with a state despite its history of instigating and spreading conflicts. It is not "controlled" by anyone. Saying so would imply that the US is somehow less responsible for continuing to support the state, and that the state somehow has ultimate control over US policy, neither of which are true.
A great number of politicians, judges, etc. of the US are basically plants that are there only to ensure the survival of said greatest ally; they don't care at all about the US or its citizens and sometimes are even openly hostile to them.
Saudis have been swimming in money and investing heavily for decades. You don't need a conspiracy theory. Ownership is enough to create political power.
The "plant" statement to which you replied is framed like a general conspiracy rumour, and would benefit from references to credible sources, though.
I’d like evidence or sources for the statement that Saudi Arabia spending money and being wealthy would lead to corrupt officials (plants) in the USA. To me it sounds like an extraordinary claim.
Typically, such conspiracy minded people are referring to Israel, which supports Saudi Arabia as an opposing power to Iran. There is a long history of conspiracy theories of secret Israeli/Mossad control of the US government.
I have a hard time figuring out particularly what flavour conspiracy nut you are. The "omfg putin" kind? The "worldwide jewish plot" kind? Something about the military industrial complex? The illuminati?
Who, exactly, are the US's "greatest ally" overlords and why do you think this idea belongs on a site like HN?
It may not matter to the US, it may not matter much to the victims of those weapons, but it matters for citizens of those countries not selling weapons. Though "freezing" them doesn't say much if you then increase the volume afterwards for a while, but generally speaking, not taking part in something bad is a good in and of itself.
Meanwhile in the UK, our leaders remain ever unscrupulous[1]. The UK is the 2nd biggest exporter of arma to Saudi, selling £1.1 billion (~$1.4 billion) of military goods in 2017.
Why do we keep selling weapons to such a repressive regime? £1 billion is not that much in the greater scheme of things - so what's the bigger picture that could possible justify the UKs actions?
Who sells these things, and is £1b not that much for them?
There is much to be said in favour of a predictable legal regime, where producing and selling foo is legal this year if it was last year. Where producing and selling weapons is legal iff it was when the Royal Army suggested starting developing the weapons in question.
BAE Systems is a big one. £1b is almost certainly less than the cost of the wars we have gotten ourselves into due to the trouble that people having access to these weapons has caused.
e.g. the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost the UK ~£20b (quickly googled). And a lot of the problems in the region seem to come from the Saudi regime which is pushing an extreme version of Islam. Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia is madness.
But a lot of those 20 billion pounds also went to enrich the arms manufacturing company owners and keeping factory workers in jobs. So cynically, it's probably a net win for the UK Government :-)
As Frederick Forsyth said in one of his novels, arms manufacturing factories once started cannot be shut down when you have outfitted your own armies - hence exports.
Consider nuclear weapons. About eight or nine armies have that, nearly 100% made in the relevant country... those factories were started with the clear condition that they would produce for the domestic market only, they set their prices accordingly, and it worked.
What doesn't work is encouraging people to invest in arms production and later telling them they cannot export. Doing that may work, but the prohibition often fails. And fairly IMO. Those are long-term investments and it's not fair to change the rules on much shorter notice.
The brits probably need the hard currency given what brexit is doing to your economy. Blame the vote leavers as I’m sure if they were to remain then the brits would have an arms embargo to Saudi by now.
If you look at actual numbers, brexit isn't doing much to the British economy. There's plenty of doomsaying in oral and written communications, but when people and institutions put their actual money in the game, the expectation seems to be that there's going to be life as usual.
I understand why people are distressed, because the press and other media make a lot of noise about imminent disaster. However, markets price in ahead of time any impacts that they foresee, and we can observe that
- Britain's government debt yields, e.g. 2 and 10 year bonds, remain at similar levels to pre Brexit vote, and unlike before 2016, 10-year yields are now lower than US 10-year yields
- in currencies, the GBP has remained fairly stable against EUR and USD.
I have no doubt that there will be some impact. I did not wish Brexit to happen. But I see some positive signs as well (mainly in that this forces EU leaders to sober up).
The Brit pound devalued by about 20% V the USA dollar. The buoyant export market is propping up the brit pound as it's cheap to export but staples like food imports have risen in price. A recent report indicated that the UK economy would have grown something like 8% more had there been no brexit.
It devalued instantly after the unexpected voting result, but has since then recovered.
Compared to historical shifts over past decades, the impact of Brexit is not very visible on a chart. The falls from 1970 to 1975, or 1980 to 1985, or in 2008, are clearly more dramatic.
Nonsense. The historical trend for the pound is to be worth $1.5 whereas it’s trundled along around $1.2 since. Stop making up excuses for the disaster that is brexit.
It's going to cause breadlines, but I disagree with the OP's sentiments expressed here. This money IN is smaller than our war expenses OUT, and it was always so.
Arms dealers rip off the nations populations whose governments they sell arms to.
How is Saudi Arabia providing hard currency? UK has a central bank and a British Pound. Did you mean to say somehow Saudis are providing stability to £ by using their $ from oil sales to prop it up? I don’t think that makes sense.
What percentage of GDP is arms sales to Saudi Arabia? You could then say USD is propped up by Saudis as well since they sell more arms to them than UK, much more actually.
> Why do we keep selling weapons to such a repressive regime?
Realpolitik.
The US (and UK, I guess) are closely allied to the Saudis in order to counteract Iranian influence in the region. The theory is that the world will be in better shape if the Saudis have a military capable of deterring Iran.
It's a theory -- I don't know if it's correct, but it seems at least plausible.
If they haden't been so determined to wipe out (their words) the only working democracy in the region and the only country in the region that doesn't from time to time persecute Jews, maybe? (This is not a defense for everything Israel does, but an observation of the fact that it is considered a working democracy and it is the only country in the region that can be said to be safe for Jews to live in.)
This is misleading. Look what happened to Iran when they tried democracy. The west ruined it. We can’t have it both ways. Western meddling has caused way too much harm in the region, and it shows no sign of stopping.
Our ally, Kingdom of Saudi Barbaria say similar things about the Jews; it’s even in their textbooks being taught to their 10th Grade students:
>Among the passages found in one 10th-grade Saudi textbook on Monotheism included: "The Hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews."
They "only" need to topple the current teocracy and put secular government in place while not turning into failed state. With Iran military being the second largest military in Iran after the revolutionary guard that is next to impossible. It will lead to situation which will make Syria look enviable.
Otherwise you are right - Iran is the natueal ally in the region. And it was such until 1979.
Why does Iran need to ditch their theocracy to be our ally, but Saudi Arabia gets to keep theirs?
That’s what I don’t understand. The Iranian government is a bunch of oppressive fuckheads and stands for many things we oppose... but that’s even more the case with Saudi Arabia, so we treat like kings.
Because their theocracy refers to US as great satan? That complicates any possible alliance a bit. I think that they may also hold grudge for US support of US' best buddy Saddam Hussein during Iran - Iraq war that cost them a nice chunk of a million lives.
Saudi Arabias school book dont have nice words for america either. The 9/11 cause was that a whole generation of islamic men grew up hating infidels (russians & americans alike).
> Because their theocracy refers to US as great satan
In all honesty, the US has given Iran plenty of reasons for relations to be somewhat frosty.
In more recent times, Trump has been rather vocal against Iran with his trademark agressive Twitter 'pish' - so there's plenty of name calling on both sides, and hardly justifies the current state of affairs.
But of course, how many UK and American citizens know the history of Iran, our role in overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh, who rightfully wanted to nationalize their oil (the obvious source of the Occidents umbrage too...) and our installation of the repressive Shah Pahlavi regime that led to the Iranian revolution of 1979 that initially featured students and workers and such, but later turned into a purge, as most revolutions do, in which the powerful theocrats basically seized the nation, and thus bringing us into the modern era and the detente with Iran that still makes no sense.
Contrast this with the constant support of the various Hashemite kings directly since Trans-Jordan and Syria-Palestina were handed over... basically we set up satrapies in the wake of seizing the Ottoman empire and not being able to manage it ourselves...
Calling Iran the biggest sponsor of terrorism is gaslighting at best. The proof is in the pudding with Kingdom of Saudi Barbaria funding 90% of mosques around the world with their hardline Wahhabism, Salafism, and Deobandism[1][2].
15 of the 19 hijackers who blew up a city block were citizens of our ally, Saudi Barbaria. When the King was confronted over the attacks, he blamed the Israeli Mossad. Iran has never touched American soil, ever. So calling Iran the biggest sponsor of terrorism is gaslighting at best.
>Estimates of Saudi spending on religious causes abroad include "upward of $100 billion";[318] between $2 and 3 billion per year since 1975 (compared to the annual Soviet propaganda budget of $1 billion/year);[319] and "at least $87 billion" from 1987–2007.[320]
The total opposite, even though big media likes to say otherwise. Iran is fairly benign, but Israel has beef with them. There is a lot of propaganda over Iran. I feel like it's probably the next one-sided big war.
This is like saying, in 1939, its sad because it sure seems like the Germans would make far better allies for us. There were plenty of people who said that, but With the Nazis in power, they were very wrong.
The Iranian government is a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists, who are one of the most successful terrorism exporting states ever. Just recently they were caught attempting to kill people in Belgium and France. And those are just the recent catches.
The Iranians are very aggressively attempting to take over the middle east. The Egyptians Saudis are attempting to prevent this. The battlefields today are Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine.
No it doesn't. I've read manufactured consent. I understand and see the propaganda being targeted at Iran by USA, Saudi, & Israel. This is how we got into the Iraq war. I would like sources.
Im sorry, I just don't trust the people who got us into the Iraq war to tell us anything about foreign policy from three war monger countries being funded by US imperialism.
Iraq, libya, afghanistan, vietnam, laos, cambodia, korea, all based on lies which corporate media sold to us. That's only the tip of the iceberg too.
I am skeptical, and so should everyone else. If we aren't skeptical, we'll be going "why the heck did we do this?" in 8 years.
>This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Saudi Arabia just killed a journalist with no reprocussions, is bombing the absolute shit out of Yemen (civilians!) using US weapons and intelligence. Democracy Now! had an episode this week about Israeli, US, & Saudi targeted assassination programs.
It's easy to see that the corporate media is selling this potential war. How do you trust it?
In my opinion, the rest of the world should be stopping US, Israel, and Saudi from continuing their global terrorism programs and ending imperialism.
>In my opinion, the rest of the world should be stopping US, Israel, and Saudi from continuing their global terrorism programs and ending imperialism.
You are not alone. There are many of us in the West who tire of the duplicity and arrogance of our governments actions around the world - those of us who have taken the time to actually educate ourselves about the statistics of the Wests' Coalition War Machine find ourselves nearly overwhelmed, daily, with disdain at what we so-called enlightened civilians are allowing our governments to do around the world, in our name.
Just the fact that nobody knows what's going on in Yemen at the moment (imperialist war machine out of control), but can easily name the Kardashians, is disheartening enough.
But if you ever meet refugees from countries victimised by America's illegal, heinous wars, its another thing entirely. If you don't get angry about what our war machines are doing, you're simply on the wrong side this time around.
It's all about Israel. Iran wants to destroy Israel, erase it from the map. Saudi Arabia is happy to keep its mouth shut in exchange for weapons, oil money and influence.
I actually went to Tehran in 2000 (oil & gas industry related trip), and it wasn't a bit like the anti-Iran propaganda machine would have had me believe - everyone I met was really friendly, and nobody seemed particularly conservative or over-zealous in their religious views. On top of that, the food was incredible, and lots of people even spoke great English!
Iran is also home to many historical sites - if politics were different, it would likely be a popular tourist destination.
I recommend watching the Adam Curtis documentary Bitter Lake (can be found on YouTube). It explains how the currrent Anglo American relationship with the kingdom of saud started almost immediately post ww2, why it won’t be going away any time soon, and all the blowback it has caused.
The british relationship with the kingdom of saud predates ww2 by decades going back to the ottoman empire. The british were instrumental in supporting saudi and arab nationalism to destroy the ottoman empire. Hence the tense relationship between "britain and turkey" and "saudi arabia and turkey" today.
Actually british have a long history of using nationalism to destroy the ottoman empire. Some of the foremost british romantic poets supported greek nationalism to free greece from the ottoman empire.
Interestingly enough, 40 years after nationalism destroyed the ottoman empire, nationalism would destroy the british empire.
Is it fair to call it "nationalism" though. That word has a bit too many meanings, but universally it includes the idea of doing something on your own in a selfish fashion. The desire to be independent from an oppressive regime is orthogonal to nationalism.
I am saying this as a Bulgarian citizen, one of the beneficiaries of the fall of the Ottoman empire (the Ottoman government was very oppressive to my people for centuries up until 150 years ago). It is not selfish nationalism that liberated us, it was the desire to stop being abused by a conqueror.
> The british were instrumental in supporting saudi and arab nationalism
The Saud family didn't overthrow the Ottomans with the British. That was done the Hashemites, under King Faisal, and of course T.E. Lawrence (whose story was told in his own memoir, and later in David Lean's epic film Lawrence of Arabia).
In the subsequent post-WWI, post-Ottoman chaos, the Sauds conquered Mecca from the Hashemites, and established modern "Saudi" Arabia.
The Hashemites fled and established what is now the modern country of Jordan, which they rule today.
I just got John J. Mearsheimer's new book (hot off the presses!) called “The Great Delusion”. He argues that from a strictly Western political perspective there are only three forces which control the interplay of great powers: Liberalism, Nationalism, and Realism.
He says that Nationalism and Realism always trump Liberalism. (From his perspective both neo-liberals and neo-cons are Liberal in that to the public at least they espouse bringing freedom and democracy to the peoples of the world even if it is at the business end of a gun.)
He drives home his point that nationalism has "won" by pointing out that most states are now nation-states whereas 200 years ago that most certainly was not the case. (Not all nations have their own state.) National identity is complicated but it explains all sorts of conflicts in the last 100 years.
It is political irony, as you say, that the forces the Brits used to topple their enemies also toppled them. But I think we must realise that the nationalism was there before the Brits decided to use it for their Machiavellian purposes. It is Afghan nationalism that has made Afghanistan the graveyard of empires. It was Irish nationalism (dressed up as Republicanism) that finally broke the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and as a consequence has made Brexit orders of magnitude more intractable.
You could go further and point out that by nationalism is meant National Identity. So it is social identity in one of its many powerful guises that has shaped the last 200 years. The other being religious identity of course: (internecine – Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism and Shia versus Sunni; interfaith – Christianity versus Islam).
This suggests that the rules-based international order is not going to contain China because China has a national identity going back millennia. The key geopolitical question of this generation (the years to 2049) is whether the US and China come into direct conflict because of China's rise. I'm a rational optimist so I say "no" but I wouldn't put money on it. :/
> Why do we keep selling weapons to such a repressive regime?
I'm happy that the country I'm living in stopped selling to them earlier this year.
That said, if one should steelman (as we are kind of expected to do to each other here) the goverments that hasn't done it yet, -here is some rebar IMO:
boycotting them as hard as we should have done might drive them straight into the arms of Russia and China which would probably love to sell some weapons and get a new ally.
I'd love to see that argument torn down as well though.
> boycotting them as hard as we should have done might drive them straight into the arms of Russia and China which would probably love to sell some weapons and get a new ally
Personally, I'd rather take the moral high-ground here.
The west has always been kissing Saudi ass. It’s just a lot of money to give up. But we as common people also have weaknesses. All the times you preferred Emirates is one example. I actively avoid any Middle Eastern airlines. Never flown Emirates.
I can't name a country that's a "good" country in that area. Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Syria, Iraq etc all are essentially dictatorships, one way or another.
Now can we agree that the West has interests over there? War is bad for energy prices. So we have to support one side. We can use leverage to push for some change but honestly, leave the Saudis and China will fill in the gap. Then you have zero leverage.
It's a question of what your morals cost. For Finland, the cost of doing the right thing is a few tens of millions of dollars. For America, it's billions more. And America is willing to sell it's morals for that amount of money.
The U.S. economy is about 75-80 times bigger than Finland (due to sheer size of country). A few tens of millions (35 M$) is for Finland about as significant as 2,7 billion $ would be for U.S. Not insignificant.
So then given the utterly insignificant amounts of arms Finland sells, the impact will also be utterly insignificant. All Finland gets is the chance to virtue signal. wow such virtue, so moral etc.
I agree with your first sentence, but it's not just about monetary cost. Saudi Arabia is Iran's strongest rival in the Middle East. Finland cutting off arms sales has negligible geo-political cost. But the US cutting off arms sales might have the impact of strengthening Iran and thereby making a homocidal near nuclear power whose leaders have advocated genocide in the past decade the most powerful country in the region.
During WW II, the US and GBR allied themselves with Russia. Russia was run by one of the biggest mass murderers ever (#2 after Mao). He violently suppressed any opposition and violated peoples rights with impunity. Even people who fled to other countries, he had hunted down and killed.
Just looking at that, it makes no sense. But, looking at the bigger picture of Japan and Germany, it made sense for a time for these democracies to ally themselves with a monster.
Iran is controlled by monsters, and Egypt/Saudi Arabia are the primary force opposed to them at this time.
>Iran is controlled by monsters, and Egypt/Saudi Arabia are the primary force opposed to them at this time.
Did you visit Iran and Saudi Arabia? I'd much rather be an ordinary citizen of the former than of the latter.
Also, one of these two countries have a far richer history and culture, and one of the two is definitely more democratic than the other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index).
The Weimar Republic lasted until 1933. The 1936 olympics were a showcase of Nazi ideology and a propaganda coup. Germans were very cultured and educated - just look at all those Nobels.
>Iran is controlled by monsters, and Egypt/Saudi Arabia are the primary force opposed to them at this time.
Can you please provide sources? Saudi Arabia is bombing innocent civilians and children in Yemen right now. Most of the 9/11 Hijackers were from Saudi Arabia too.
>Are innocents being killed, and is that horrible? You bet. But they're being killed just as much by the Iranians as the Saudis.
This is false. It is the Saudi's who are denying essential supplies to the general populous. 14 million at risk. There is no way the Iranians would have anywhere near that sort of effect.
You are totally wrong about Yemen. Iran involvment in Yemen was practically non existant before this war, they had little to do with the troubles there.
Iranian involvment in the war has grown because the saw a oppertunity jab Saudi Arabia in the soft underbelly.
But the argument that the innocents are killed just as much by Iran is simply inaccurate. Saudi Arabia is attacking civilian targets systematically with modern US aircraft.
Iran in comparison has a small troup training opperation and some infantry weapens.
Also please stop saying the 'Iran gets Yemen', that is inaccurate as Iran has absolutly no capabilty to control Yemen. The do support the Huthi who control part of the country but they are their own force and they dont listen to Iranian orders very well. Iran have no chance at all to control the rest.
The Yemen civil war would have grind to a hold long ago if Saudi/UAE would not pump absurd amounts of money, weapens and bombs into it.
You're right that the bigger picture is the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, where "we" (US + UK at least) are on the Saudi side, with Russia backing Iran. This is fought is at least Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and may blow up further at any time.
It's hard for me to see which side is the biggest monster. Perhaps Iran is the aggressor and Saudi + allies are just fighting back, I don't know.
Note that Israel is a strong part in the anti Iran front, which means Saudi Arabia and Israel are quite friendly today. It is a new era in the Middle East, for better and for worse.
You have a ver cold war perspective. Russia is hardly backing Iran at all. Iran and Russia have ver long and complicated relationship and in actual fact Russia is often working working against Iran as well, somethimes with the US.
To be fair, the entire planet is a freak show catalogue. A lot of countries seem like being controlled by coke monsters currently (sometimes local, other remote controlled). You see a surprising homogeneity everywhere.
I am not sure what is the point of bringing this up. Obviously they had no choice, since they were at war with Germany. Today the situation is completely different.
Reluctance to go ahead with ARAMCO IPO; surprise move on Qatar; buying S400 from Russia; neutralizing "Bandar Bush" elements; etc. Enough reason to let the "Kingdom" know who and how the world is run.
The situation in Yemen is complex. As I understand it, the civil war essentially started in 2014, when a group called the Houthis attempted a military coup, to seize control of the government over the democratic election process. These are the "rebels" referred to in the article.
Saudi Arabia has been supporting the government of Hadi, the former vice president who became president in Yemen's 2012 election. Meanwhile, Iran has been giving support to the Houthis. Again, the situation is complex, but it seems to me that without SA's military support, the coup would have been successful in seizing control of the country.
Imagine SA withdraws all military support, and the Houthis are successful in taking over the country by force. Is the world now a better place?
Maybe. Maybe not. I sincerely don't know. But if you felt intense anger while reading this article... I have to point out that you probably don't know, either.
The humanitarian needs in Yemen are immense, and heartbreaking; it's the poorest nation on the Arabian peninsula, and it's essentially run out of water. Maybe it's better to let the coup succeed just to allow some stability and rebuilding.
Just don't have any illusions on what you're actually supporting.
EDIT: And if you don't know what to think yet, or what's best for everyone... be willing to say that to yourself.
I agree that it is complex and your assessment seems accurate but the problem with Saudi is not that they are opposing the houthis but their tactics of attacking supply lines and bombing indiscriminately. They refuse to use ground troops because they rely on Pakistan for an army and Pakistan does not want to invade. So they continue to do airstrikes on any and all targets like hospitals, kindergartens, food supply caravans, power stations etc and they don’t seem to care.
I worked closely with their reconnaissance aircraft as a foreigner and it’s funny that when they found out I was in Afghanistan they lectured me about killing kids but they are 100 times worse. I eventually left because I was disgusted with the way they conducted that war and did not want to be a part of it regardless of it if supported US foreign policy goals.
So if the Houthis win I don’t know if it’s better long term but at least 5 year olds won’t get blown up on their way to school but a Saudi pilot.
It's a useful distinction: perhaps Finland isn't protesting SA's involvement per se. Rather, one can be neutral about that, or even support it... but not support the incompetence of how that intervetion is executed, i.e. resulting in the deaths of children and civilians. Makes a lot of sense.
Edit: And I'm now thinking about how well those can be separated. Could the military intervention continue, but change in a way that dramatically decreases innocent victims (or relatively innocent, etc.)? It seems like that ought to be possible. But I don't know the situation on the ground.
Everything is complicated, so there's no simple coherent explanation you could have provided, but it's probably not completely valid to depict the Houthi resistance as an anti-democratic uprising; rather, they may have started as a political response to the Saleh administration, which in turn violently (and anti-democratically) repressed the Houthis themselves, who militarized in response. The Arab Spring factors heavily into this too. It's a total mess.
The one thing that does seem pretty clear in all this is that the Saudis should not be bombing anyone in Yemen.
The Huthis have been at war with the government for a long time and calling it a coup is very misleading.
A coup is the seizure of power by a internal force that seeks to control the government.
The Huthis are a external force to the government and when they took Sanaa the governemnt left for aden.
A important aspect is also that the former president that was pressured out of power by US/Saudi. He essentially took his best trained and equipped (by the US of course) and allied with the Huthis. He left for another city and basically handed the Houthis Sanaa.
The now persident Hadi was hardly elected, he is the hand picked successor by the US/Saudi. He has little legitimicy anywhere, not in the North or even the South that the government claims to control.
The Houthi have no capabilty to take over the rest of the country and the only way we could 'let them succeed' would be to join them against forces in the South.
The fact is that Yemen is politically fractured and no group has the power to control the territory. We should simply accept that, minimize combat with support for local seize fires and open up trade and aid again.
And of course non of that will happen as the Saudis will continue this war. For them having stable Houthi control over the North west is not very acceptable.
We Pakistanis tried to control Afghan's politics and meddle in their domestic affairs. And it has come back to haunt us and thankfully, (at surface level) it seems Government and masses in Pakistan have realized not to meddle in another Nation's affairs.
Hopefully Saudis (and Iranians) realize this as well - let Yemen be, provide humanitarian aid to them and allow dust to be settled there. only Yemenis can solve problems of Yemen.
Look at Somalia - 20-25 years of bloody internal conflict but now they are starting to turn a corner. Had other Nations meddled with Somalia in the extent similar to Afghanistan or Yemen, it would have been much worse off.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadHonestly it doesn't matter much if the US doesn't do the same.
I understand what you're trying to say, but this is fundamentally backwards. The US makes a conscious decision out of supposed self-interest to align itself with a state despite its history of instigating and spreading conflicts. It is not "controlled" by anyone. Saying so would imply that the US is somehow less responsible for continuing to support the state, and that the state somehow has ultimate control over US policy, neither of which are true.
The "plant" statement to which you replied is framed like a general conspiracy rumour, and would benefit from references to credible sources, though.
No affiliation.
Who, exactly, are the US's "greatest ally" overlords and why do you think this idea belongs on a site like HN?
Why do we keep selling weapons to such a repressive regime? £1 billion is not that much in the greater scheme of things - so what's the bigger picture that could possible justify the UKs actions?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/23/uk-hides-arms-...
There is much to be said in favour of a predictable legal regime, where producing and selling foo is legal this year if it was last year. Where producing and selling weapons is legal iff it was when the Royal Army suggested starting developing the weapons in question.
e.g. the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost the UK ~£20b (quickly googled). And a lot of the problems in the region seem to come from the Saudi regime which is pushing an extreme version of Islam. Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia is madness.
As Frederick Forsyth said in one of his novels, arms manufacturing factories once started cannot be shut down when you have outfitted your own armies - hence exports.
Consider nuclear weapons. About eight or nine armies have that, nearly 100% made in the relevant country... those factories were started with the clear condition that they would produce for the domestic market only, they set their prices accordingly, and it worked.
What doesn't work is encouraging people to invest in arms production and later telling them they cannot export. Doing that may work, but the prohibition often fails. And fairly IMO. Those are long-term investments and it's not fair to change the rules on much shorter notice.
- Britain's government debt yields, e.g. 2 and 10 year bonds, remain at similar levels to pre Brexit vote, and unlike before 2016, 10-year yields are now lower than US 10-year yields
- in currencies, the GBP has remained fairly stable against EUR and USD.
I have no doubt that there will be some impact. I did not wish Brexit to happen. But I see some positive signs as well (mainly in that this forces EU leaders to sober up).
Brexit is a disaster.
Compared to historical shifts over past decades, the impact of Brexit is not very visible on a chart. The falls from 1970 to 1975, or 1980 to 1985, or in 2008, are clearly more dramatic.
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/bank-of-england-spot/histo...
"Recent reports" are many and contradictory, as usual.
Nonsense. The historical trend for the pound is to be worth $1.5 whereas it’s trundled along around $1.2 since. Stop making up excuses for the disaster that is brexit.
No sane nation would leave the EU.
Arms dealers rip off the nations populations whose governments they sell arms to.
Pure assertion.
It’s also what was asked for.
> What is Brexit doing to the economy in your view?
Realpolitik.
The US (and UK, I guess) are closely allied to the Saudis in order to counteract Iranian influence in the region. The theory is that the world will be in better shape if the Saudis have a military capable of deterring Iran.
It's a theory -- I don't know if it's correct, but it seems at least plausible.
>Among the passages found in one 10th-grade Saudi textbook on Monotheism included: "The Hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_textbook_controv...
Otherwise you are right - Iran is the natueal ally in the region. And it was such until 1979.
That’s what I don’t understand. The Iranian government is a bunch of oppressive fuckheads and stands for many things we oppose... but that’s even more the case with Saudi Arabia, so we treat like kings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_textbook_controv...
In all honesty, the US has given Iran plenty of reasons for relations to be somewhat frosty.
In more recent times, Trump has been rather vocal against Iran with his trademark agressive Twitter 'pish' - so there's plenty of name calling on both sides, and hardly justifies the current state of affairs.
But of course, how many UK and American citizens know the history of Iran, our role in overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh, who rightfully wanted to nationalize their oil (the obvious source of the Occidents umbrage too...) and our installation of the repressive Shah Pahlavi regime that led to the Iranian revolution of 1979 that initially featured students and workers and such, but later turned into a purge, as most revolutions do, in which the powerful theocrats basically seized the nation, and thus bringing us into the modern era and the detente with Iran that still makes no sense.
Contrast this with the constant support of the various Hashemite kings directly since Trans-Jordan and Syria-Palestina were handed over... basically we set up satrapies in the wake of seizing the Ottoman empire and not being able to manage it ourselves...
15 of the 19 hijackers who blew up a city block were citizens of our ally, Saudi Barbaria. When the King was confronted over the attacks, he blamed the Israeli Mossad. Iran has never touched American soil, ever. So calling Iran the biggest sponsor of terrorism is gaslighting at best.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism#Funding_factor
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deobandi#Presence
>Estimates of Saudi spending on religious causes abroad include "upward of $100 billion";[318] between $2 and 3 billion per year since 1975 (compared to the annual Soviet propaganda budget of $1 billion/year);[319] and "at least $87 billion" from 1987–2007.[320]
Whenever the US issues a statement on Iran, it is best to just assume it's total agenda-driven bullshit.
The Iranian government is a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists, who are one of the most successful terrorism exporting states ever. Just recently they were caught attempting to kill people in Belgium and France. And those are just the recent catches.
Once Iran consolidates power in the areas they're operating in (Yemen, Iraq, Syria), the next obvious target is Saudi Arabia.
Here, a source for the murder plot:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46043404
> a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists
This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Iraq, libya, afghanistan, vietnam, laos, cambodia, korea, all based on lies which corporate media sold to us. That's only the tip of the iceberg too.
I am skeptical, and so should everyone else. If we aren't skeptical, we'll be going "why the heck did we do this?" in 8 years.
>This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Saudi Arabia just killed a journalist with no reprocussions, is bombing the absolute shit out of Yemen (civilians!) using US weapons and intelligence. Democracy Now! had an episode this week about Israeli, US, & Saudi targeted assassination programs.
It's easy to see that the corporate media is selling this potential war. How do you trust it?
In my opinion, the rest of the world should be stopping US, Israel, and Saudi from continuing their global terrorism programs and ending imperialism.
You are not alone. There are many of us in the West who tire of the duplicity and arrogance of our governments actions around the world - those of us who have taken the time to actually educate ourselves about the statistics of the Wests' Coalition War Machine find ourselves nearly overwhelmed, daily, with disdain at what we so-called enlightened civilians are allowing our governments to do around the world, in our name.
Just the fact that nobody knows what's going on in Yemen at the moment (imperialist war machine out of control), but can easily name the Kardashians, is disheartening enough.
But if you ever meet refugees from countries victimised by America's illegal, heinous wars, its another thing entirely. If you don't get angry about what our war machines are doing, you're simply on the wrong side this time around.
This time, we are the bad guys.
Iran is also home to many historical sites - if politics were different, it would likely be a popular tourist destination.
(As with the equally amazing Hypernormalisation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-h... )
Actually british have a long history of using nationalism to destroy the ottoman empire. Some of the foremost british romantic poets supported greek nationalism to free greece from the ottoman empire.
Interestingly enough, 40 years after nationalism destroyed the ottoman empire, nationalism would destroy the british empire.
I am saying this as a Bulgarian citizen, one of the beneficiaries of the fall of the Ottoman empire (the Ottoman government was very oppressive to my people for centuries up until 150 years ago). It is not selfish nationalism that liberated us, it was the desire to stop being abused by a conqueror.
The Saud family didn't overthrow the Ottomans with the British. That was done the Hashemites, under King Faisal, and of course T.E. Lawrence (whose story was told in his own memoir, and later in David Lean's epic film Lawrence of Arabia).
In the subsequent post-WWI, post-Ottoman chaos, the Sauds conquered Mecca from the Hashemites, and established modern "Saudi" Arabia.
The Hashemites fled and established what is now the modern country of Jordan, which they rule today.
He says that Nationalism and Realism always trump Liberalism. (From his perspective both neo-liberals and neo-cons are Liberal in that to the public at least they espouse bringing freedom and democracy to the peoples of the world even if it is at the business end of a gun.)
He drives home his point that nationalism has "won" by pointing out that most states are now nation-states whereas 200 years ago that most certainly was not the case. (Not all nations have their own state.) National identity is complicated but it explains all sorts of conflicts in the last 100 years.
It is political irony, as you say, that the forces the Brits used to topple their enemies also toppled them. But I think we must realise that the nationalism was there before the Brits decided to use it for their Machiavellian purposes. It is Afghan nationalism that has made Afghanistan the graveyard of empires. It was Irish nationalism (dressed up as Republicanism) that finally broke the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and as a consequence has made Brexit orders of magnitude more intractable.
You could go further and point out that by nationalism is meant National Identity. So it is social identity in one of its many powerful guises that has shaped the last 200 years. The other being religious identity of course: (internecine – Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism and Shia versus Sunni; interfaith – Christianity versus Islam).
This suggests that the rules-based international order is not going to contain China because China has a national identity going back millennia. The key geopolitical question of this generation (the years to 2049) is whether the US and China come into direct conflict because of China's rise. I'm a rational optimist so I say "no" but I wouldn't put money on it. :/
To a government, £1 billion and the approval of the arms industry are worth much more than a mild disapproval by the public opinion.
I'm happy that the country I'm living in stopped selling to them earlier this year.
That said, if one should steelman (as we are kind of expected to do to each other here) the goverments that hasn't done it yet, -here is some rebar IMO:
boycotting them as hard as we should have done might drive them straight into the arms of Russia and China which would probably love to sell some weapons and get a new ally.
I'd love to see that argument torn down as well though.
Personally, I'd rather take the moral high-ground here.
I don't know the value of US arms sales, but the UK's are only around £1.1 billion, which honestly, is not that much.
https://www.ft.com/content/3149b714-2073-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45863548
Now can we agree that the West has interests over there? War is bad for energy prices. So we have to support one side. We can use leverage to push for some change but honestly, leave the Saudis and China will fill in the gap. Then you have zero leverage.
Some products are primary intended to keep people alive: food, energy, medicines…
Some other aren't: tanks, missiles…
That's why.
Just looking at that, it makes no sense. But, looking at the bigger picture of Japan and Germany, it made sense for a time for these democracies to ally themselves with a monster.
Iran is controlled by monsters, and Egypt/Saudi Arabia are the primary force opposed to them at this time.
Did you visit Iran and Saudi Arabia? I'd much rather be an ordinary citizen of the former than of the latter.
Also, one of these two countries have a far richer history and culture, and one of the two is definitely more democratic than the other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index).
Can you please provide sources? Saudi Arabia is bombing innocent civilians and children in Yemen right now. Most of the 9/11 Hijackers were from Saudi Arabia too.
Are there bad guys in Saudi government? There sure are.
Are innocents being killed, and is that horrible? You bet. But they're being killed just as much by the Iranians as the Saudis.
But the Iranians are not going to stop in Yemen, and if they're not stopped, there will certainly be more innocents killed in other countries.
Lets say the Saudis were completely cut off. What then? Iran gets Yemen, and then topples the Saudis? How does that help anyone out?
Sometimes, there are not any really great answers.
Sometimes, just like in WW II when the US and GBR allied with the Soviets, you have to do what you can to tackle the bigger problem.
This is false. It is the Saudi's who are denying essential supplies to the general populous. 14 million at risk. There is no way the Iranians would have anywhere near that sort of effect.
Iranian involvment in the war has grown because the saw a oppertunity jab Saudi Arabia in the soft underbelly.
But the argument that the innocents are killed just as much by Iran is simply inaccurate. Saudi Arabia is attacking civilian targets systematically with modern US aircraft.
Iran in comparison has a small troup training opperation and some infantry weapens.
Also please stop saying the 'Iran gets Yemen', that is inaccurate as Iran has absolutly no capabilty to control Yemen. The do support the Huthi who control part of the country but they are their own force and they dont listen to Iranian orders very well. Iran have no chance at all to control the rest.
The Yemen civil war would have grind to a hold long ago if Saudi/UAE would not pump absurd amounts of money, weapens and bombs into it.
It's hard for me to see which side is the biggest monster. Perhaps Iran is the aggressor and Saudi + allies are just fighting back, I don't know.
Note that Israel is a strong part in the anti Iran front, which means Saudi Arabia and Israel are quite friendly today. It is a new era in the Middle East, for better and for worse.
To be fair, the entire planet is a freak show catalogue. A lot of countries seem like being controlled by coke monsters currently (sometimes local, other remote controlled). You see a surprising homogeneity everywhere.
I am not sure what is the point of bringing this up. Obviously they had no choice, since they were at war with Germany. Today the situation is completely different.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jamal-khashoggi-murder-...
Now let's get UK, France, Spain, and the others still selling arms to the Saudis and UAE to ALSO stop.
Saudi Arabia has been supporting the government of Hadi, the former vice president who became president in Yemen's 2012 election. Meanwhile, Iran has been giving support to the Houthis. Again, the situation is complex, but it seems to me that without SA's military support, the coup would have been successful in seizing control of the country.
Imagine SA withdraws all military support, and the Houthis are successful in taking over the country by force. Is the world now a better place?
Maybe. Maybe not. I sincerely don't know. But if you felt intense anger while reading this article... I have to point out that you probably don't know, either.
The humanitarian needs in Yemen are immense, and heartbreaking; it's the poorest nation on the Arabian peninsula, and it's essentially run out of water. Maybe it's better to let the coup succeed just to allow some stability and rebuilding.
Just don't have any illusions on what you're actually supporting.
EDIT: And if you don't know what to think yet, or what's best for everyone... be willing to say that to yourself.
I worked closely with their reconnaissance aircraft as a foreigner and it’s funny that when they found out I was in Afghanistan they lectured me about killing kids but they are 100 times worse. I eventually left because I was disgusted with the way they conducted that war and did not want to be a part of it regardless of it if supported US foreign policy goals.
So if the Houthis win I don’t know if it’s better long term but at least 5 year olds won’t get blown up on their way to school but a Saudi pilot.
It's a useful distinction: perhaps Finland isn't protesting SA's involvement per se. Rather, one can be neutral about that, or even support it... but not support the incompetence of how that intervetion is executed, i.e. resulting in the deaths of children and civilians. Makes a lot of sense.
Edit: And I'm now thinking about how well those can be separated. Could the military intervention continue, but change in a way that dramatically decreases innocent victims (or relatively innocent, etc.)? It seems like that ought to be possible. But I don't know the situation on the ground.
The one thing that does seem pretty clear in all this is that the Saudis should not be bombing anyone in Yemen.
The Huthis have been at war with the government for a long time and calling it a coup is very misleading.
A coup is the seizure of power by a internal force that seeks to control the government.
The Huthis are a external force to the government and when they took Sanaa the governemnt left for aden.
A important aspect is also that the former president that was pressured out of power by US/Saudi. He essentially took his best trained and equipped (by the US of course) and allied with the Huthis. He left for another city and basically handed the Houthis Sanaa.
The now persident Hadi was hardly elected, he is the hand picked successor by the US/Saudi. He has little legitimicy anywhere, not in the North or even the South that the government claims to control.
The Houthi have no capabilty to take over the rest of the country and the only way we could 'let them succeed' would be to join them against forces in the South.
The fact is that Yemen is politically fractured and no group has the power to control the territory. We should simply accept that, minimize combat with support for local seize fires and open up trade and aid again.
And of course non of that will happen as the Saudis will continue this war. For them having stable Houthi control over the North west is not very acceptable.
Hopefully Saudis (and Iranians) realize this as well - let Yemen be, provide humanitarian aid to them and allow dust to be settled there. only Yemenis can solve problems of Yemen.
Look at Somalia - 20-25 years of bloody internal conflict but now they are starting to turn a corner. Had other Nations meddled with Somalia in the extent similar to Afghanistan or Yemen, it would have been much worse off.