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By supporting Saudi Arabia the West really shoots itself in the foot. You can't lecture other countries about freedom while supporting this regime.
by maxxxxx 7y ago
By supporting Saudi Arabia the West really shoots itself in the foot. You can't lecture other countries about freedom while supporting this regime.
- sampo 7y ago> By supporting Saudi Arabia the West really shoots itself in the foot. Well, the West went and took down the regime in Iraq, but some think that didn't go so well, either. SA is ruled by a clan and king, so it's not a full theocracy at least. If you go and perturb things, there is also room to make the situation worse.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoOne could cut trade relations without violently attempting regime change.
- tehjoker 7y agoFwiw, the sanctions the US imposes on other countries often are brutal to their innocent population. One thing we could do is provide asylum for persecuted people, but appearently we don't do that anymore (and never have done it in great quantity).
- lostlogin 7y agoA lot of the early European settlers in the US were fleeing religious persecution. But I suppose it wasn’t the USA then... https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago>A lot of the early European settlers in the US were fleeing religious persecution. What's your point? Some of them turned around and treated people who didn't fit in with them even worse than they themselves had been treated when in Europe. I can think of a couple groups who, in retrospect, the natives should have killed on day 1.
- lostlogin 7y agoMy comment wasn’t clear - tehjoker stated that the US had never let in a lot of persecuted people. The early European colonisers included a lot of small groups fleeing persecution. As you mention, formerly persecuted groups don’t seem to behave better when they get power.
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- _bxg1 7y agoThere's a difference between overthrowing the government and not letting them invest in Uber.
- dannykwells 7y agoAlso different than selling them like 10Bil in arms. Europe, for example, has not invaded SA, but is not buddy buddy with MBS. Also, it's clear that sanctions are a much more powerful weapon than invasion. Western sanctions (or embargo) on SA oil would certainly put them in a tight(er) spot. No excuses!!!
- Cyph0n 7y agoWeapons sanctions are guaranteed way to hit the Gulf monarchies hard. They are extremely dependent on US tech as far as I know.
- sampo 7y agoYou just need to estimate to level of sanctions so that the monarchy will still be able to stay in power, without risking an Islamic revolution.
- beagle3 7y agoYou forgot the /s Or Are you not aware that the monarchy is already Islamic, of the kind least tolerant towards personal freedoms?
- lostlogin 7y agoWhat would an Islamist revolution risk for those that aren’t rulers in SA? Other Islamists regimes have done less harm than SA.
- justforyou 7y agoWhat's the net benefit of continuing to support the monarchy which exported wahhabism to the rest of the middle east?
- maxxxxx 7y agoThe russians would be very happy to help probably.
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- luckylion 7y agoIraq and Libya, both of which seemed moderate compared to SA (Saddam less so then Qaddafi). Neither Iraq nor Libya have, to my knowledge, ever been used as an argument for why "we" have to unconditionally support SA, though. Neither of them have been an ally before "spreading democracy", so they don't make good analogies either imho. Also, "unwavering ally" and "we'll remove their state and let the country fall into civil war" aren't the only options on the table.
- mieseratte 7y agoI believe the point is that sometimes a tyrant is worse than cutting off the head and seeing the hydra. Of course it’s possible Iraq would’ve gone different without the Coalition Provisional Authority’s early orders.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago>I believe the point is that sometimes a tyrant is worse than cutting off the head and seeing the hydra. If the last several dictators ousted from nations in the middle east teaches us anything it's that we do not want the hydra. It cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to dump all the crap out of the Iraq vacuum. Egypt was teetering on the edge for quite awhile after the arab spring. Libya is still in ruins. Syria speaks for itself. Afghanistan is slipping back into Taliban control. Every time we touch it it gets worse. While I think we can all agree that totalitarian rulers are not the global maximum they seem to be a pretty clear local maximum in the middle east. The situations that develop in their absence are so much worse on a "suffering per time" basis that it's basically impossible to justify trying to oust them.
- mieseratte 7y agoOh that was a helluva a slip. I'd meant to write sometimes a tyrant is better than the hydra. I believe you're right on the money with your point about a local maximum.
- luckylion 7y agoSometimes that may be true. In these examples it certainly hasn't, and has destabilized the whole region. Even a bad ruler is better than anomie, especially for local minorities. The yazidis may not have been happy with Assad or Saddam, but I'm pretty sure they preferred them to ISIS and similar groups.
- Cyph0n 7y agoI think the US handled the aftermath of the invasion quite poorly for a variety of reasons, one of which was the heavy exploitation of the sectarian divide.
- mahkeiro 7y agoCan you tell me what is worst between a theocracy and an absolute monarchy? In SA, the king is bound by no law not even the law of god. He wants you dead on spot, and then you die. Doesn't sound to me a better system.
- cr0sh 7y agoWhereas in a theocracy, the Ruler is bound by the law of God. God wants You dead on the spot, and the Ruler is his instrument on Earth - and then You die. The Ruler is now not at fault, because God told, and used, the Ruler to do the deed. The Ruler is absolved of responsibility - God's Will. ...do you see and understand the difference?
- a1369209993 7y agoThere is no difference, and the ruler is still responsible for not refusing the god's will.
- mikeash 7y agoApproximately nobody is saying that we should invade SA and overthrow the government. But could we at least stop selling them weapons and giving them nuclear technology and giving them defensive cover from our military?
- colechristensen 7y agoThere is a delicate game being played. If you are friendly with SA you can put pressure on them to improve. If you declare them an evil enemy would the outcome be better? There is a path to walk and it is not easy to find the right one when you have to deal with reality not just idealism. The natural resources in the middle east are important to the world and it is not so simple as an 'us vs. them' because there are many entirely separate interests in the region and we play them off each other. Maybe it would be better to do a Star Trek style prime directive of completely cutting off countries until they have a certain level of social development, but you would have to come to terms with knowing bad things were happening and actively deciding to do nothing.
- resoluteteeth 7y ago> If you are friendly with SA you can put pressure on them to improve. If you declare them an evil enemy would the outcome be better? > There is a path to walk and it is not easy to find the right one when you have to deal with reality not just idealism. The natural resources in the middle east are important to the world and it is not so simple as an 'us vs. them' because there are many entirely separate interests in the region and we play them off each other. > Maybe it would be better to do a Star Trek style prime directive of completely cutting off countries until they have a certain level of social development, but you would have to come to terms with knowing bad things were happening and actively deciding to do nothing. If the US was friendly to all countries in order to exert pressure on them this might make sense, but in light of actual US foreign policy with respect to North Korea, Iran, etc. it's completely absurd to pretend that the US is being friendly to SA as a means to effect change.
- dopamean 7y ago> it's completely absurd to pretend that the US is being friendly to SA as a means to effect change Agreed. Also, where's the change? It feels like I've been hearing the same thing about SA since I was a kid.
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- leesec 7y ago>You can't lecture other countries about freedom while supporting this regime. Or generally doing any number of the malicious and horrendous things we do here in the U.S.
- Miner49er 7y agoThe fact is, the West (mainly talking about the U.S. here) doesn't care about freedom. They've made this clear many, many times. It's a buzzword, used when convenient. It sounds better to say you're invading a country to bring freedom to its people then to say you're invading to take their oil.
- swebs 7y agoIf you had to chose between supporting Saudi Arabia and supporting fracking, which would you chose?
- Shivetya 7y agowell the same should be said about China but we have many companies producing product there and I can guarantee most here have a phone, tablet, or computer, made there. there are many undesirable countries to do business with, so what is the distinction to be made? To be honest businesses that work in either should be challenged both at investor meetings and online.
- codedokode 7y agoI think the main reason is military cooperation. West supports dictator regimes and in exchange they allow to have military bases there. If USA doesn't support such regimes then they will turn to other countries who are not so picky like China or Russia.
- thiagoharry 7y agoThey can, as they always had done. Foreign relations are about trade and military cooperation. Only after these things you use the ideological arguments about "fight for the freedom" to better convince the people about who are the enemies.
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoYes you can.