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Lost me at these > America doesn't make anything worth buying Weapons, aerospace (as much as we all want to hate what's happened to Boeing), software IP,

Lost me at these > America doesn't make anything worth buying Weapons, aerospace (as much as we all want to hate what's happened to Boeing), software IP, material sciences, etc. The US may not always mass produce hard products, but it is very good at creating the IP. > US weapons—even if they were even available—look shoddy No one is beating the US in a conventional military confrontation.

alephnerd 2y ago
It's a blog written by a tankie who has written at length about how Israel will be destroyed by 2027 [0]. Irrespective of your stance on the very complex and morally grey Israel-Palestine issue, it's proof enough that the author doesn't really have domain knowledge on defense, IR, and policy. Also, his examples about Saudi fall apart very quickly. For example, "Saudi sells oil to the USA, which pays for it in USD. Saudi doesn't know what to do with this USD, so it buys US Treasuries". KSA has plenty of uses of USD outside of buying treasuries. That same USD they collect is what the KSA in turn uses in it's FDI globally, to purchase Eurofighters (the KSA has largely moved away from American systems because of Obama-era limits on ethical constraints of weapon systems), and develop domestic infra. Or "The most expensive weapons in the world won't even subdue the poorest people". Weapons don't win wars. This is the same reason the US lost in Vietnam, the USSR lost in Afghanistan, and KSA lost in Yemen. The reality is no one cared enough to put enough boots on the ground in Yemen (excluding Abu Dhabi), and UAE stole KSA's thunder by completely co-opting the Southern leadership in Yemen to be their vassals [1]. This annoyed the KSA as they basically were fighting a war but UAE got much in the benefits, leading to their rift [2] along with KSA ending their war in Yemen There is a case to be made about regional powers increasingly gaining capabilities that can help give them strategic autonomy, but this article ain't it, and the whole "White Empire" paradigm just doesn't make sense. [0] - https://indi.ca/how-israel-will-end-by-2027/ https://indi.ca/how-israel-will-end-by-2027/ [1] - https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/07/risk-perception-and-appetite-uae-foreign-and-national-security-policy-0/8-case-study-uae https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/07/risk-perception-and-app... [2] - https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-uae-saudi-arabia-rivalry-becomes-a-rift/ https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-uae-saudi-arabia-rival...

alephnerd 2y ago

It's a blog written by a tankie who has written at length about how Israel will be destroyed by 2027 [0]. Irrespective of your stance on the very complex and morally grey Israel-Palestine issue, it's proof enough that the author doesn't really have domain knowledge on defense, IR, and policy. Also, his examples about Saudi fall apart very quickly. For example, "Saudi sells oil to the USA, which pays for it in USD. Saudi doesn't know what to do with this USD, so it buys US Treasuries". KSA has plenty of uses of USD outside of buying treasuries. That same USD they collect is what the KSA in turn uses in it's FDI globally, to purchase Eurofighters (the KSA has largely moved away from American systems because of Obama-era limits on ethical constraints of weapon systems), and develop domestic infra. Or "The most expensive weapons in the world won't even subdue the poorest people". Weapons don't win wars. This is the same reason the US lost in Vietnam, the USSR lost in Afghanistan, and KSA lost in Yemen. The reality is no one cared enough to put enough boots on the ground in Yemen (excluding Abu Dhabi), and UAE stole KSA's thunder by completely co-opting the Southern leadership in Yemen to be their vassals [1]. This annoyed the KSA as they basically were fighting a war but UAE got much in the benefits, leading to their rift [2] along with KSA ending their war in Yemen There is a case to be made about regional powers increasingly gaining capabilities that can help give them strategic autonomy, but this article ain't it, and the whole "White Empire" paradigm just doesn't make sense. [0] - https://indi.ca/how-israel-will-end-by-2027/ https://indi.ca/how-israel-will-end-by-2027/ [1] - https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/07/risk-perception-and-appetite-uae-foreign-and-national-security-policy-0/8-case-study-uae https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/07/risk-perception-and-app... [2] - https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-uae-saudi-arabia-rivalry-becomes-a-rift/ https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-uae-saudi-arabia-rival...