Why is this gender apartheid regime our ally exactly? They finance the breeding ideology of terror worldwide and now flood the world with cheap oil aimed at destroying the American high tech green energy industry.
They sell it in the US dollars because everyone else sells everything in US dollars: yes, even Iran, Russia and North Korea. It's not a gesture of charity or good will on Saudi behalf.
Why, I totally would. I just maintain the position of U.S. dollar as international trade currency is largely due to its dependability and domestic market volume, rather than far reaching conspiracy of international bankers.
Saudi have zero say here. If they break relations and declare jihad on America tomorrow, they will still sell their oil in U.S. dollars.
I agree that dollar didn't become an international currency because the bankers had foreseen the advantages. Its largely an artifact of WW2 loan repayments and stability. But it would be naive to think that they haven't realized the advantage yet and are not actively trying to keep it that way. China is just now getting into this game but not making much headway.
Even now some of the oil to India (from Iran especially) is being payed in rupees (albeit priced in dollars).
According to Robert Gates' book Duty, it seems that the Saudi government has strong relationships with folks in both political parties. This appears to ensure that they get the kid glove treatment regardless of what happens. Gates describes a scenario where he was talking to the then-King in ~2006 and how the latter expected the US to just send troops wherever the kingdom needed them with no consideration for US lives; Gates describes this conversation as unforgettable and one that left him seething.
I know many saudi's that I like but the kingdom or government (whatever you want to call it) has turned a blind eye to terrorism. Anyone who has done a little research on 9/11 will realize they did play a key role one way or another.
The fact that they are threatening with such high stakes confirms the fear of what else may be discovered when looked into.
If you're interested, the documentary Bitter Lake goes into some of the history of the alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia, I would recommend seeing it if you'd like to know more about how the US managed to end up supporting Islamic fundamentalists:
What do you mean by "ally", exactly? The US helps perpetuate the status quo in Saudi Arabia because the alternative is a descent into utter chaos in that country and its surroundings that would cause a catastrophe for worldwide energy supplies.
eh, you stood firmly with saudi arabia and the region descent into chaos was not much accelerated or hindered by that?
I think saudi arabia as a ally just reflects the sympathy of a "autocratic"-democratic-voted-in-presidential model for its non-democratic equals.
Also i think Iran is to similar as a culture to the us-evangelicals, to be ever "a reliable ally". Messianic (and thus innovative?!), having a drug problem and a "unwieldy" youth - and subtle racism. Nobody likes a mirror, when you are not in shape.
> you stood firmly with saudi arabia and the region descent into chaos was not much accelerated or hindered by that?
I didn't do anything, since I am neither a member of the US government nor even a US citizen.
I hope it's clear that given the chaos ISIS is causing in a resource-poor country, if they were running rampant in Saudia Arabia the world would be in for a couple of orders of magnitude worse time.
Because we're the holders of the title of "Western friend" as started by the British before and around WWI.
A short, but wrong, answer is "Because of T.E. Lawrence and journalism". It's a slog ( I didn't actually even finish it ) but there is always "A Peace to End All Peace" ( ISBN-13: 978-0805088090 .
I grew up in oil business country, and one of my high school friends had a massive picture of his Dad shaking hands with, I think King Faisal in the living room.
>now flood the world with cheap oil aimed at destroying the American high tech green energy industry.
I'm not going to pretend to know the motivations of the Saudis, but if you held a resource which was seen as possibly becoming obsolete in the mid-term, would you not sell it for the prevailing price as soon as possible, rather than holding it until it became worthless? That's at least part of the issue they face.
Erm... you mean anti-gay fundamentalists like Obama? (From the article: "The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage... the administration has supported Saudi Arabia on other fronts, including providing the country with targeting intelligence and logistical support for its war in Yemen.")
Well, either the Obama administration is composed of puppets of anti-gay fundamentalists (puppets who lit the White House in rainbow colors upon the SCOTUS deciding that gay marriage bans were unconstitutional), or perhaps their relationship with Saudi Arabia is motivated by reasons other than supposedly shared religious fundamentalism, and in fact religious fundamentalism has nothing to do with this.
(Incidentally, the majority of wars, adjusted by the number of victims, as well as the majority of repressive actions against citizens by their own states throughout the last century were initiated by people whom you could more accurately describe as anti-religious fundamentalists than religious fundamentalists. It could be that religious fundamentalism, bad as it is, is not necessarily the main theme in every bad event in history, but just one of the many variations on the main theme.)
Obama in 2008 said that gay marriage should be a states' rights issue, and that he personally believed marriage is between one man and one woman. The fact that he and his administration later supported gay marriage just shows that they're canny politicians.
The first part might very well be from Obama the constitutional lawyer, meaning that it believes that the federal government has no place on defining what a marriage is and is not.
And the 2nd part might very well be from Obama himself, believing that "marriage" especially in the "traditional/religious" sense is a bond between a Man and a Woman doesn't mean you object to gay men, women, and transsexuals from being "married" in the legal sense of the way.
The Administration supported the fact that states are not allowed to ban gay marriage that in a sense actually matches what both "Obama's" said previously. And as long as gay couples can receive the same legal protection and benefits of any other "married" couple through any means I myself consider them to be equal in the eyes of the law and that anything beyond that is a fight for symbolism and semantics which while I do not object too I also do not actively support or take part in.
You mean he was honest before he was ever elected president and needed votes, and now that he can no longer be elected and in this sense has nothing to lose, came the dishonesty? Is it not imaginable that, being a canny politician, he was dishonest then and is more honest now?
Why either extreme? He chose the battles to fight then, and later realized that the battle needed to be fought in federal court after all. As well, supporting marriage equality doesn't have to entail agreeing with it. I have to support the right that bigots have to exercise their hate speech on television, but I do not have to agree with them, nor do I have to defend their position.
I think the real extreme is a guy flip flops on an issue and someone assumes it's all sincere. Much more extreme than arguing which was the time when he wasn't. I guess I'm jealous as I never found a politician or a movement I liked enough to see no fault in them, in fact I've never even got to vote for someone who didn't make me a bit sick, nor heard about a politician in any of the countries far, far away who'd give me such an opportunity as a voter had I been a citizen there.
Countries don't have values. Countries have interests. If the US had to wait until every country it dealt with lived up to the same level of democracy and civil rights that it reserves for its own citizens, we would have no allies outside of Europe.
This is correct in an extremely narrow sense, in the same narrow sense that "there is no such thing as a country." This is because countries are political abstractions, and do not exist as a physical entity, like say, a chair, or a pomegranate.
If we understand "country" to instead refer to the group of people who organize under that system, then you are completely mistaken that "countries don't have values."
You can see this for yourself right now. If it's not too cold, you could strip naked and take a walk in your town for an hour or two.
As you are almost in a country where this is against the local values, you will very likely be asked to dress, or even arrested.
But why?
You said "countries don't have values, countries have interests." So whose "interests" is it for a man (or woman I guess) not to be naked? Well, right, the people living there.
This is just one example of how you can easily see that there are certainly values that are represented by the population, municipality, country, etc.
it's kind of silly to argue that there are no such values. I've just given one example, but I could easily list dozens if you don't find it convincing (just ask me to).
I'm at a complete loss as to why you would write that, to me this is like reading "Politicians don't have any role in defining laws" or something - like, we must be using some completely different definitions for you to write that, it's not even disagreement, I clearly have no idea what you have in mind.
like, I literally don't understand why you would write that unless we're just really misreading each other due to wildly different definitions of what you're talking about. If your definition of value doesn't match the above, then what definition are you using?
That's the "In politics, everyone is a sociopath" version of politics.
It's true a lot of people think and live like this, but it would be interesting to see politics join the 21st century, instead of pretending that an ethical base that can be traced back to the Stone Age is something to celebrate.
Realpolitik is gone, when everyone got a nuke.
Even sociopaths have survival instincts - that's why no world war III so far. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and there democratic domesticated Versions (who never get to the big conquests, cause so many other snakes in that damned parliament want to be king instead of the king).
Whats really interesting is the planning horizon a government has when dealing with one another. A government with a low hanging planning horizon is due to be gambled again and again by governments with long term planning horizons.
Also unintended consequences, the Saudi government might end up in exile or with the heads on spikes, put there by the very own radical movement they inspired.
Oh, it's real, rather than fake? Whoever coined that word was trying too hard. It reminds one of "People's Republics" and fields of study the names of which include the word "science".
> The West certainly should help the ones that show the desire to improve. That's different from making the worst offenders the biggest allies though.
No shit. The ancient Athenians invented democracy but I believe the US has made exporting democracy all around the world a vocation. So many successes: Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Morocco.
As a European I would like to ask to stop exporting democracy for at least a decade, the world needs a break, really.
I'm an American, born and raised, and I'm frankly sick and tired that the xenophobic nonsense that the more vocal of us seeks to propagate has influenced foreign opinion of all Americans. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I've been, when on foreign soil, finding myself correcting (or worse sometimes, agreeing with) their notions of what life in America is like, because life in America is different for all of us. Homogenous isn't a word that would even occur to me to describe "the American way of life".
With that kind of sarcasm, you can hardly blame them. It's incendiary speech, and you do not speak for all Americans, so kindly stop using hateful and sarcastic language while sounding like you do speak for all of us. You're free to share your own brand of "'Merica" with whomever you please, but you do not speak on my behalf. Additionally, thinly veiled threats of violence, no matter how cloaked in sarcasm they may be, betray a lack of grace under pressure, and a deeper resentment than is unhealthy to be left ignored.
And GP: you don't speak for all of the EU (or of Europe) either. I'm sure you meant the former because most of the rest of Europe's populace doesn't seem to give two shits about us because they have their own problems back at home.
I was referring to the idea that American adventures abroad don't do much to 'export democracy' as evidenced by a handful of failures.
But that 'analysis' ignores the bulk of the last century where, in fact, American intervention did a great deal to export and defend Democracy in places like France, Spain, Italy, Germany and more recently places like Bosnia and our very costly presence protecting Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
I am no fan of the Bush Doctrine and the foreign policy blunders of the last twenty years but it is more than a little misleading to suggest the United States hasn't done anything to safeguard and spread democracy in the world.
I would love to ramp that role back since it is such an eye wateringly expensive policy to maintain and we could use that money for our own infrastructure and domestic projects like universal healthcare and fighting poverty -- but we're still tied up in those engagements and playing the Superpower Defender.
And xenophobia? Where did that come from?
I didn't mean for my comment to come off as hateful, just exasperated. I would love it if the US would stop sticking our nose in everyone's business. Reallocation of those resources would be wonderful. But I am a realist and I understand that you just can't stop posing a credible threat to potentially bad actors without risking peace or someone stepping up and bearing more of that cost.
Sarcasm isn't meant to help. That doesn't mean it has no place.
The fact is, a large number of the people and governments that criticize the US are propped up by the US financially, militarily, or both.
This doesn't invalidate either point or opinion, but it does reintroduce complexity where points are boiled down to one-liners, absolutes, and sound bites.
I've had the problem you describe when residing abroad, and it is frustrating, but I think you're off-target here. Parent comment seems pretty focused on the financing and accomplishments of various military activities. If you want to blame someone for encouraging false assumptions of homogeneity, Hollywood is a better target.
The EU is deteriorating a bit like 1939. I hope I'm wrong but radicalism and xenophobia is raising all over Europe and it's scary. I'm not talking for all Europeans nor I believe that the majority of Europeans cares about what happens in the US, Russia or China. But they should. We live in a globalised world and our actions have repercussions elsewhere. If US voters[1] favour a candidate that is less prone to warfare maybe, just MAYBE, the influx of refugees will stop. Same goes for Europeans leaders. Sadly I don't see that happening.
[1] The GOP candidate is a question mark regarding his external policy and we all saw how reckless H. Clinton is in Libya. I'm not sure if there's any chance for an external policy change for the better in the US right now.
Your comments regularly break the HN guidelines. If you keep doing this, we will ban your account, so please re-read them and abide by them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.
It's on the low end, less than Japan more than Brazil. The real issue is they don't share strategic interests largely by being on the other side of the planet.
EDIT: You seem to edit that part in, well if the US some how manages to strip any interests in the near east then yes they do not have that many strategic interests (outside of trade, research and industry).
However as far as values go the are more or less on the same page, the only difference it's considerably more easy to commit to your values when everyone around you plays by the same rules.
That said the US is probably the worse as far as it comes to actually living by their values of most western nations.
US, is fairly balanced in terms of oil trade. We don't share borders with the area. Direct trade is relatively speaking minimal as US to Israel ~1% of total US trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa... We don't even ship stuff though the area. That said, our foreign policy really does not seem to reflect this.
Values wise it's different cultures, languages, religious landscapes etc. Sure, nominally we are both liberal democracy's that value free markets. But, in practice things like immigration policy's demonstrate huge differences.
PS: That said we do have close ties and are Israel's largest import and export partner.
A war between Israel and the Arab nations is unavoidable without the US mediating through 3rd parties (like SA). This would be an extremely large and bloody war by itself, but it will inevitably lead to hotspots in other parts of the world, like China claiming Taiwan, settling disputes India. India would want to settle disputes with Pakistan. Russia would want to claim back some part of Eastern Europe. Turkey would want something else entirely. Obviously other counties have interests too. Vietnam? The Koreas? Thailand? Indonesia? All of them have something to prove.
Israel is probably fine negotiating with the Arab states on it's own.
It has a peace treaty with Jordan and Egypt, and various levels of official and unofficial relations with the Gulf states.
Iran is an issue, so is the Hezbollah controlled parts of Lebanon and Syria if Assad falls is also up for grabs but with all 3 the US can't mediate anyhow.
And piggy backing on this there is very little prospect for actual war between Israel and the Arab states, neither Jordan nor Egypt would go to war, there is no scenario in which Israel will some how will find it self in war with either Saudi Arabia nor the other gulf states that for the most part do not have much military presence and even less force projection.
So the only thing which is left is a proxy war between Israel and Iran, which isn't exactly something you can call bloody, excluding the "war of independence" Israel longest and bloodiest war was the 'Yom Kippur' war which lasted for 19 days.
If Syria falls to ISIS and or Hezbollah decides to stir things up again you might see a limited engagement in the north of Israel, which might lead to the re-establishment of a security buffer like the one during Israel's invasion into Lebanon (albeit most likely without the (South)Lebanese Army being allied with Israel this time), but there is simply no scenario in which this can escalate into anything than a meaningless regional conflict that would barely impact the daily life in Israel not to mention the world.
The middle east is a powder cake indeed but Israel has little to do with it, an all out war is considerably more likely to happen between SA and Iran than even between Iran and Israel not to mention between the "Arab States" and Israel.
The Arab states simply has no reason, will or ability to start a war with Israel, and Israel is not going to start a war on it's own.
If we stopped gently holding down Israels's rage at every shell that gets sent their way, I can certainly see Israel's own hard-lined leaders trying to slap down Palestinians and their outside support once and for all. Such a lopsided military offense would certainly draw support against Israel from other parts of the Arab world, and the rest is a snowball on a steep hill.
That's not a conjecture that's not even fantasy, that's a complete ignorance of the political situation.
Israel isn't being lead by hard-liners (when comparing them to US hard liners / right wing), the "Likud" is called a right wing party, mostly because back when it was established the Israeli left still had a hammer and a sickle in their logo.
Israel has no reason to bomb the Palestinians out of existence and while I doesn't want to give up territory for many reasons with security being a prime one, it also doesn't show intent no has a reason to go out for an all out war.
Offensive operations are not viewed well by the Israeli public, not to mention that even if they did went all out on the Palestinians no one in the Arab world would really care.
The Palestinian issue isn't and wasn't anything more than a front in the wider conflict between the Arab states and Israel, that conflict is long gone and faded.
If the Arabs cared about Palestinians they would not block the UN from treating them as refugees, they would not force them to live in camps for 70 years passing their situation to their children and instead of denying them every right they could easily have resettled them by now.
The US can get an alley in the middle east which respect freedom of religion, freedom of minorities, allows women to serve in its military, is pro-us and has oil any time it wants. All it has to do is recognize Kurdistan.
Yes it would piss of the Turkish dictator, but so what?
