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Khasho who? One year after gruesome murder, investors embrace Saudi Arabia again
- sverige 7y ago> Larry Fink, who boycotted last year’s event. Fink explained his decision in a post on LinkedIn: “I believe greater economic integration and diversification will help Saudi Arabia build a more modern and sustainable economy for all of its citizens,” he wrote, adding that “corporate engagement and public dialogue can help with that evolution.” That's the same reasoning used to justify continuing trade with China and other repressive regimes. I think of it as high-minded rationalization to justify continuing profitable business. Excuse me if I don't believe the people saying things like this really give a shit about anything but getting more money.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoJust like it helped china. Is neo-liberalism at this point even a ideology anymore? Or just a fig leave, for doing whatever one wants to do? A ideology should at least have some grounding in facts or at least some desperate searching for idea-traitors, to repair the damage done to it by reality. Neither of those can be seen ..
- BeetleB 7y agoI can't speak for Larry's motives, but consider the counterpoint: It's very easy to list countries where sanctions did not change anything, and possibly worsened the situation. Successful sanctions are the exception. They're a lot like punishment. People do it not because they'll get positive outcomes, but because it feels good morally.
- uncletaco 7y agoI told my mom this (among other things) and we’re going on year two of not speaking. It’s like when parents say they hit you because they love you. But they “love” you regardless. They’re just hitting you because they’re mad.
- isoskeles 7y agoAre you saying that you told your mother this because you were explaining why you are imposing 'sanctions' on her, or are you saying the two of you had an argument about politics and are therefore not speaking? (Or something else?)
- phkahler 7y ago"Mom I'm imposing sanctions on you." That's a thing, but saying so is generally not a good idea ;-)
- reitanqild 7y agoAnother thing to consider: Do sanctions help other countries stay nice? I'm afraid that if it came out that you could do what you wanted and it wouldn't have consequences then we'd see a lot more bad behavior. So, while it hasn't worked on NK who knows what other countries would have tried if they could get away with it (and, I'd say, just look at history to get an idea).
- nraynaud 7y agoWell the US didn't stay nice when there were sanctions all around them.
- reitanqild 7y agoI anticipated this coming up but you kind of see why I guess. If there was an even bigger superpower ready to punish them they might have behaved a whole lot better.
- sterlingmoss 7y agoReuters ran an interesting debate last month on the motion "Sanctions are fair and effective", each side had a senior lawyer and a politician speaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtfSheVScFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtfSheVScFc
- IOT_Apprentice 7y agoSouth Africa would like you to hold their beer.
- BeetleB 7y agoIt's kind of futile to give an example of sanctions working to someone who clearly stated that they some times work.
- munk-a 7y agoThat's quite accurate - instead of trying to state any reasoning that would be refutable your statement above doesn't guarantee anything while implying a lot - thus it's pretty unassailable by logic. The implication is rested on a very relaxed statement and will continue to imply even while counter examples are raised.
- BeetleB 7y agoActually, I made a very refutable statement: > Successful sanctions are the exception. To refute, you just need to look at all sanctions, and enumerate the successful ones, and show the proportion is at least half.[0] If "all" sanctions is onerous, a decent sample (e.g. "sanctions in the last 30 years") would still have weight. But simply giving an example of something that the claimant clearly agrees with - that's not even close to a refutation. [0] Clearly one can disagree on what success means, but then nothing in society can yield to logic
- lollipop90 7y agoReduction of foreign military expenditure by Gorbachev, political settlement in South-West Africa/Namibia, and the eventual fall of the Soviet Union arguably did more to remove any remaining rationale of the segregated government. In any case, sanctions/disinvestment caused many foreign companies to sell their South African divisions at a great discount to white industrialists. These industrialists in turn greatly benefited by opening up in the 90ies.
- buboard 7y agoThat's like saying "war did not change anything" . Sure , but the possibility that it might change something is why they re done. What's the alternative, assuming diplomacy has been exhausted?
- BeetleB 7y ago>Sure , but the possibility that it might change something is why they re done. Don't consider possibilities in one direction only. Consider the possibility that the change may exacerbate the situation. And then compare with the "no action" alternative.
- buboard 7y agoin almost all cases, the "no action" option has already been deemed unpalatable
- rhizome 7y agoOne person's decision is not "sanctions," it's deciding not to work with a bad client.
- tomp 7y agoWhat else should we do? Did economic isolation help with the case of North Korea? To the extent I see, the rise of tourism has helped / is helping Cuba to become more and more integrated, as it's increasingly hard for the government to keep modern technology etc. from the hands of locals.
- _bxg1 7y agoChina has kept NK afloat all these years; it's a special case.
- option 7y agoyes, economic isolation helps - compare the amount of influence N. Korea (isolated) has in the world to the one of China (not isolated).
- EGreg 7y agoSorry but I don’t agree this mentality Unless you are an extreme nationalist, you have got to be happy that China lifted a billion people out of grinding poverty in 20-30 years? Now they need to work to maintain that standard of living. I hope soon they will transition to UBI and robots but in the meantime they need to earn a wage. So you’re not happy because the people lifted out of poverty were Chinese? If North Korea didnt have sanctions they would probably have never gotten nukes and the Kim regime would be far more benign to its own people. Making people and families independently wealthy gives a counterweight to the government. What we should have actually done is get off Saudi oil and stop subsidizing fossil fuels decades ago, to protect our citizens from OPEC. Then we could have actually had electric cars by now. Instead we buy oil and sell weapons. Creating jobs in this economy — oil and weapons are often closely linked. We should care about MILLIONS OF REGULAR PEOPLE in Libya, Yemen, North Korea etc. but instead we care about Kashoggi and Libyan embassy only!
- option 7y agoI am not happy about dictatorship having a sizable influence on the world - long term, I believe, it is a dead end (I have lived in USSR). I am even less happy about Saudi Arabia. IMHO, it is the worst regime in the world (worse than NK) and I am appalled that my home country (USA) considers them “allies”
- dukoid 7y agoIn my opinion, only countries respecting basic human rights should be permitted in the WTO.
- epanchin 7y agoWho would be the judge? Some would say the US should be excluded based on that criteria.
- 0_gravitas 7y agoAs someone that lives in the US I wholeheartedly agree that we should be excluded
- buboard 7y agoI wouldn't want to be in a WTO where the strongest member is China.
- 0_gravitas 7y agoand there exists the problem, and that will be the case unless an organization like the UN is actually given teeth
- munk-a 7y agoThe good news is while the US should be excluded - so should China - it might just be Norway and Sweden sitting at a table eating some lutefisk[1]. 1. Joke. In reality there are plenty of moral countries, but a lot of the economic powerhouses have clear exclusion reasons - Canada might get a seat at the table, along with Mexico perhaps.
- dukoid 7y agoWell there seem to be some indices available.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
- kareemm 7y agoReminds me of this: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- mrguyorama 7y agoI'm starting to really dislike that quote, because these people absolutely understand, they just don't care because it doesn't affect them directly.
- yourbandsucks 7y agoDisagree. People rationalize. Change the motivations and you get a different sincerely held rationalization. Look at TFA. Decades of a top US ally being a human rights disaster, noone in the media cared. Until one journalist is killed..
- chewbacha 7y ago“It’s difficult to get a person to care about something when their salary depends on not caring about it” Updated it for you ;)
- tim333 7y agoI think Upton Sinclair assumed roughly that but was being a little sarcastic. In practice the people often do care and will go to great efforts to avoid the truth to further their own interests.
- everdev 7y agoUnfortunately, I'm pretty jaded on our outrage culture when it comes to tragedies. It seems like people are great at virtue signaling through a tweet, an article, a public statement or a sign, but what change are we really willing to affect in the world? How many people who were outraged about this story did anything to change the world beyond saying how bad it was? What was someone willing to risk in order to stand their ground on this issue? Same goes for other tragedies as well. A lot of talk and no action.
- adamch 7y agoTurning down millions of dollars in Saudi investment is a pretty big action. Basically the opposite of virtue signalling. It has a real cost for the people doing it. Seems like Google, Amazon and Uber are actually doing something in this situation, not just signalling that they care.
- gautamnarula 7y agoUber's greatest contribution has been losing so much money/having their share price performing so badly that SoftBank, and by extension the Saudis who poured money in the SoftBank Vision Fund, is hundreds of millions of dollars underwater.
- JohnClark1337 7y agoThe outrage over this served the political/economic purposes of those who pull our strings and now no longer serves a purpose. Nothing complicated about it. It's all just a game.
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- luckylion 7y agoImho the biggest part if whether you're using economic investments to change something or just to make a quick buck. Mutual investment is a significant part of Europe's relatively long, relatively peaceful recent history: a war between the great powers will only create losers. Similarly, if you have no significant relationship (and internationally, the only relevant relationships are of the trading variety), you have no leverage for change. If I wanted to alter your behavior, isolating you won't do much. Trading with you and then, when you see the value of our trades, ask for small, incremental change is much more effective. Granted, the West hasn't done that a lot with Saudi Arabia (though otoh, women are now allowed to drive etc - would that have happened if China was SA's primary trade partner?), it has been mostly about "sell us oil, buy our weapons, and we'll look the other way when you commit some atrocity", but that doesn't mean that the idea is always wrong. A diversified economy would also most certainly make Saudi Arabia a better place. Right now, natural resources are pretty much the only relevant industry, and typically, that industry is controlled by a small minority. A modern economy that consists of more than one sector would change the power balance and a change in the power balance would likely curb the Wahabi fundamentalism that the royal family uses to keep their population in check. It can be a good idea, but that's not to say that it will be successful, or that it will even be intended to be.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago> Mutual investment is a significant part of Europe's relatively long, relatively peaceful recent history: a war between the great powers will only create losers. There was a ton of mutual investment prior to WWI. The real reason for the relatively peaceful recent history is the knowledge that war in Europe would have brought in the US and/or the Soviet Union with really bad consequences for all involved (Europe would become the "shooting gallery of the super powers")
- aeturnum 7y agoI find it telling and amusing that the justification never goes the other way. Businesses never force countries to implement democratic or human rights reforms, even though the belief they are linked implies that the most efficient way to improve business conditions might sometimes be to demand political reform rather than form new business relationships.
- dcolkitt 7y agoI wouldn't say this is the case. Business almost always does consider property rights and rule of law when making overseas investments. Both of those factors are strongly linked to human rights and democracy. In general, the countries with the worst human rights abuses (North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Eritrea) tend to be the ones with the most anti-business policies. The correlation between the country-level ranking of political freedom and civil liberties[0], and their World Bank ease of doing business rating is over 50%[1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World [1]https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/media/Annual-Reports/English/DB2019-report_web-version.pdf https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/media/An...
- aeturnum 7y agoDo you know of any examples of a particular business insisting an authoritarian regime implement pro-democratic changes before opening a business venture?
- dcolkitt 7y agoEven just drawing from American history, big business interests lobbied extremely hard for desegregation and civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even today in America, big business is one of the most powerful interests in favor of LGBT-rights[1]. Another example was big business' demands for reform in the apartheid regime of South Africa[2]. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/the-u-s-chamber-of-commerce-has-a-coming-out-party https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/the-u-s-c... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_principles
- tarsinge 7y agoGreat, so why not the same reasoning with Iran too?
- yahwrong 7y agoMore economic trading means more interaction with the rest of the world. People learn and grow from being exposed to new experiences and thoughts. Sure, the leadership may not change their stance but overtime everyone else might.
- Doubl 7y agoImagine the American response if this recorded state sanctioned murder had happened in an Iranian embassy
- mrkstu 7y agoIf Iran murdered an Iranian citizen in their own embassy in third country? No response at all except a shake of the head? Iran regularly kidnaps dual citizens when they come to Iran and hold them without formal charges, and many disappear/die. The only reason this is a story is because we theoretically hold Saudi Arabia to a higher standard than Iran in the first place.
- AndrewBissell 7y agoArresting and imprisoning people within their own borders without formal charges is also a Saudi Arabian practice. And it's a far cry from murdering someone in one of their embassies in a foreign country. Now, maybe Iran actually does do that? The difference is that they have to at least do a competent job covering it up because unlike KSA they don't act with complete immunity to any consequences or repercussions for their actions.
- mattnewton 7y ago>When they come to Iran. This is different imo, an American resident was murdered in a third country. I can assure you if this happened nobody would be talking about how important it is to keep selling arms to Iran, the way we did with Saudi Arabia. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/saudi-arabia-murdered-a-journalist-trump-doesnt-seem-to-mind/2019/06/24/558dbb5e-969f-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions...
- pseingatl 7y agoAn American resident? He wasn't a US "person" under US law. He didn't have a green card--H1 visa, perhaps?- and wasn't eligible for consular protection under the Vienna Convention. Trying to turn him into an American is silly.
- throwaway66920 7y agoSo this may be interpreted poorly, but why was this murder such a big story in the news? This is a drop in the bucket of Saudi misdeeds. Is this not in line with the average person’s perception of the Saudi government?
- dpark 7y ago> Is this not in line with the average person’s perception of the Saudi government? No. The average person thinks we’re allies and therefore by definition Saudi Arabia is run by “good guys”.
- tc313 7y agoAre you sure that you’re not an average person? I think most people understand that Saudi Arabia doesn’t operate to the standards of Western republics.
- icebraining 7y agoThat's not what the polls in the US shows; 2/3rds have a mostly or very unfavourable opinion of SA: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1624/perceptions-foreign-countries.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1624/perceptions-foreign-countr...
- bryanrasmussen 7y agofrankly, if people are so uninformed they think Saudi Arabia is run by the good guys the odds are more likely they're so uninformed that they don't know Saudi Arabia is an American ally.
- umeshunni 7y agoThis was a big story in the Western media because the victim was one of their own (media person, Western educated, wrote for WaPo).
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- projectramo 7y agoI suppose this is worth saying but "the regime" is different people. Complaining about attending the investment conference because of the terrible murder of JK is like complaining that foreigners should not attend US conferences during Obama's drone strikes. I know -- you have a strong negative reaction to that statement -- because you don't think they are equivalent. Fine, let's talk about the difference.
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- icebraining 7y agoThis is not a conference organized by some SA citizen, it's organized by the sovereign wealth fund of the SA state, whose chairman is the Crown Prince.
- projectramo 7y agoBut the beneficiaries are, in theory, the people of the state. In the Obama/Trump drone equivalency case -- or pick another president and some other war -- one might argue that the people are more culpable because we have a democracy. Note that given our vantage point, we might be inclined to make fine distinctions: popular vote vs electoral college, or 52% of the support etc.
- pseingatl 7y agoKhashoggi's murder was horrible, but it did not violate international law. https://medium.com/@al_mu7ami/in-defense-of-mbs-the-need-for-a-new-law-of-war-4d408f7c96df https://medium.com/@al_mu7ami/in-defense-of-mbs-the-need-for...
- happytoexplain 7y agoI think the criticism is moral, rather than legal.
- joyjoyjoy 7y agoWell, 1. There is no "international law" 2. It violated the "Vienna treaty" In the meantime, Federica Mogherini, the high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy, stressed that "the emerging circumstances of Jamal Khashoggi's death are deeply troubling, including the shocking violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations." She reminded that the case is "in violation of article 55 of the Vienna Convention, which is about the respect for the laws and regulations of the receiving state." If I were "Erdo", no matter what I think of him, I would have told the Saudis to pack up and leave within 24h.
- pseingatl 7y agohttps://medium.com/@al_mu7ami/in-defense-of-mbs-the-need-for-a-new-law-of-war-4d408f7c96df https://medium.com/@al_mu7ami/in-defense-of-mbs-the-need-for...
- xtracto 7y agoGreat article and definitely has a point: Someone killed one co-citizen in their own country and on its own soil. At most, Saudi Arabia must open a local investigation to find the responsible person. Other countries might not like their law, but it is the same as me not liking Death Sentences in the USA, but what can I do? I am not a citizen of that country.
- cycrutchfield 7y agoConflating extrajudicial killing with the death penalty? Is it really “the same”?
- eecc 7y agoWell frankly the Saudis should have been held accountable do ISIS and the 9/11 operations... and yet they got away with it. If that didn’t earn them US retribution, nothing else ever will.
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- rudiv 7y agoSaudi Arabia has money and oil. America likes oil and money. It's been as simple as that since the bitter Lake conference. Why else would a country that claims to have gone to war to create a representative democracy and destroy an unrepresentative monarchy be the best of friends with one of the most unrepresentative monarchies in the modern world? Can you think of another country named after a dude? Or, excuse me, a dude's family? (All respect to Abdulaziz, lord knows the Saudis could strike me down in the banana republic I live in).
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago> Can you think of another country named after a dude. Liechtenstein is named after the princely family there. Bolivia was named for Simon Bolivar.
- rudiv 7y agoVenezuela is also technically named after Simon Bolivar.
- dcolkitt 7y ago> Can you think of another country named after a dude? I mean, I get what you're saying... But isn't America named after Amerigo Vespucci?
- rudiv 7y agoIIRC that is no longer considered to be a likely hypothesis.
- sixplusone 7y agomy first thought was Colombia but then went searching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_named_after_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_named_after_...
- rudiv 7y agoMost of those are not named after someone who lived on the 21st century. The point I was making was not that it is unusual for a country to be named after an individual. Rather, it was that a country named after an individual that is still directly controlled by that individual's direct descendants is some medieval shit that is relatively unusual.
- schalab 7y agoWhat was wrong with US's response to 9/11 attacks? Tunnel vision, moral and patriotic grandstanding, group think, not thinking about the long term consequences of actions. Yes, Saddam Hussein was evil, but the consequences of removing him were much more dire and opened up pandora's box. Yes, what Saudi Arabia did was gruesome, but if you respond by cutting them off totally, they will ally with China. You lose the entire region, your leverage on oil production in the middle east. You make your rivals stronger. Is that reaction proportional with the action? Is this one incident, which is not like Saudi Arabia didnt get massive blowback for, worth the long term consequences? Where is the media commentary which is more pragmatic and willing to look at things two steps down, a decade from now? Which media outlets actually present the question in that format. Nobody has learnt anything from the previous problems. People are still easy to manipulate, and the media still lacks any kind of long term thinking.
- rolltiide 7y agoThe US is not dependent on middle eastern oil any more. Let them ally, tell them “have fun with that” Same goes to any other middle eastern allies with troubling policies who we have unwavering support for. “We disagree with how you treat some human beings, have fun with Russia!” “Why havent you just been issuing debt on the international markets to fund your defense programs like the rest of us? Have fun destabilizing your whole economy, thats life!”
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoIt is, there is a global market for oil and if the ME imploded you can be sure Americans will be paying more for their fuel.
- opportune 7y agoI think the US control over global oil supply in theory has a few big consequences greater than just importing cheap oil: First, there’s the whole petrodollar thing, which in theory is a net positive in global trade (since all this external money is sloshing around in USD, there is more demand and liquidity for USD globally, and at the end of the day that means we get traded things in exchange for printing money). It also gives us a lot of leverage over other countries the world over. If Russia is acting up, the US can pressure countries to dump oil to lower the price and hurt Russia. A lot of these countries like SA buy a lot of US weapons which we like for economic and political reasons. Also, the US wants the region to be stable, since Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are all at varying degrees of being nuclear powers and don’t have great relations between each other. If there were a big war over there, it would be bad for business globally and could destabilize countries outside of the region. Now, I’m not saying I like this state of affairs, but it’s complicated and there aren’t a lot of good guys over there, so it’s hard. At least the current state of affairs is somewhat stable.
- coldtea 7y agoIf investors backed off every time a country's government did something murderous, then not just SA, but all major Western countries would be investment free...
- chiffre01 7y agoDid anyone honestly think anything else would happen?
- Animats 7y agoWait until Trump realizes he can have his supporters kill people and then pardon the killers.
- amai 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet