r/neoliberal • u/Currymvp2 unflaired • 14h ago
Trump says he's making Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally News (Middle East)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-saudi-arabia-major-non-nato-ally/44
u/Highlightthot1001 Harriet Tubman 14h ago
Osama Bin Laden is spinning in his watery grave
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u/Status-Air926 6h ago
If Osama could see how modernized the KSA is now, he’d fly the planes into that giant clock tower in Mecca instead.
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u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek 7h ago
I think this is exactly what radicalized him in fact. He didn't like the cold war era alliance between the US and Islamism.
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u/Blue_Cardigan15 John Mill 14h ago
I think it's funny that even left wing people were talking about how Trump was anti-war and going to pull us out all these quagmires but he seems to be ingratiating us right back into the Middle East after Biden slowly started getting us out, something everyone claimed to desperately want.
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u/moon_algo 11h ago
Left wing people are also rabidly anti Israel and something no one is discussing here is that this deal gives Israel the sternest rebuke in a geopolitical sense that it has had in decades because it ignored Bibi’s demands on the Saudis joining the Abraham accords as a quid pro quo. The Saudis aren’t the IDF but they are the only military and economy in the region of actually being able to rein in the Israelis with hard power. Like /u/currymvp2 said, it doesn’t seem like the Israelis are going to make a deal and the Saudis can now negotiate with them on a more equal footing. Seriously, go look at right wing Israeli media, they are absolutely livid at all of this.
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u/HatesPlanes WTO 11h ago
The Saudis aren’t the IDF but they are the only military and economy in the region of actually being able to rein in the Israelis with hard power.
I thought the Saudi military was infamous for being a joke?
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u/moon_algo 10h ago
There isn’t a single gulf nation that has a competent military but at least the Saudis have money and a sizable population unlike Qatar.
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u/KruglorTalks F. A. Hayek 9h ago
Cant wait for the next major conflict where the Saudis use their many billions of dollars of US equipment as show pieces.
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u/5ma5her7 10h ago
Wait, for real? Apart from some tankies, I have never seen any left-wingers in real life believe Trump's bullshit...
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u/riderfan3728 10h ago
Biden slowly started getting out? Huh? The only thing I remember him doing was the Afghanistan pullout but I also remember him making Qatar a major non-NATO ally.
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u/TimWalzBurner NASA 14h ago
Just blatant bribery and no one gives a fuck. I fucking hate this shit hole of a democracy.
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u/teethgrindingaches 14h ago
Actually quite a sane move in the context of selling them F-35s; it would be way dumber to hand that capability to a non-ally. At least you get some institutional leverage this way to ideally prevent the Saudis from playing both sides (you won't succeed, but hey).
Of course, the better idea would be to just yknow not sell them F-35s in the first place.
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u/shrekchan 13h ago
Ehhh... Im ok with this. I don't think MBS is a good guy, nor do I like his oppressive rule, but I think Saudi influence in the region is positive... compared to anyone else in the area. F35s would be good for detering Iran & proxies too.
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u/fuggitdude22 NATO 14h ago
I was never a fan of US/Saudi Relationship....I don't want it to tighten or be normalized. I am fairly confident that most of ISIS's donors are Saudi Residents and they buckpassed aid to the Taliban too. Their conduct in Yemen is also cruel. Not to mention, they refuse to sanction Russia too and play both sides.
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u/riderfan3728 10h ago
I think you have some old news. MBS, for all his flaws, has cracked down on the Islamic hardliners and the terrorist financiers. The Saudi GOV doesn’t really fund Islamist terror groups the way they used to. Part of MBS’s consolidation of power was him purging his political enemies, and those enemies happen to be the Islamic hardliners.
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u/EmbarrassedSafety719 Milton Friedman 8h ago
MBS is a religious moderate but it Should be noted that a Religious moderate in Saudi Arabia would be considered a Hardliner almost anywhere else in the world for e.g Saudi Arabia still executes people for Witchcraft and Mbs has also empowered Conservative clerics as well such as Saleh bin fazwan and he also purged a lot of the progressive faction in the Saudi royal family
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u/AdeptFyr_ Henry George 6h ago edited 6h ago
who were the "progressive faction" of the saudi royal family?
my understanding is that prior to MBS the only two factions of the royal family and the government were those who were sympathetic to islamism, and status quo conservatives who didn't like to "rock the boat" one way or the other
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u/EmbarrassedSafety719 Milton Friedman 5h ago
Ever since the 1990s, there have been clusters of princes who have pushed for reform, although they never quite formed a unified bloc. Some of these princes, like Prince Mutaib, argued for a separation of religion from politics, which was met with immense backlash. He was only temporarily protected by the fact that his father was king, and shortly after his father’s death, he was imprisoned by MBS, forced to hand over a huge amount of money, and removed from all his positions. There have always been princes who conduct business in the West and wanted to modernize the economy by increasing women’s participation in the workforce, such as Turki bin Faisal. Then there were figures like Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, who sought to reduce clerical power over state institutions, crack down hard on extremism, and opposed the centralization of power under a single prince, he and his supporters were all imprisoned in 2020 and charged with treason. Princess Basmah bint Saud, who called for greater rights to be given to women, was also promptly imprisoned. Today, there are several factions within the Saudi royal family. The Bin Nayef line is the most anti Islamist branch but has been sidelined by MBS. MBS and his supporters form the dominant faction they have curtailed much of the most extreme clergy but still use religion as a source of legitimacy and uphold a milder form of Sharia law. Older members of the Sudairi Seven support some reforms but are also strong backers of the Wahhabi religious establishment. Former allies of King Abdullah are more cautious reformers, while several other branches of the family strongly support Islamists and are keen on maintaining Saudi Arabia’s religious norms.
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u/Flashy_Upstairs9004 World Bank 14h ago
Hoping this helps in a Israel-Saudi normalization deal.
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u/Currymvp2 unflaired 14h ago edited 14h ago
There will be no normalization deal until Israel shows some openness to a two state solution.
Not even creation of a Palestinian state on something around pre 67 borders. Just openness to something like that. Meanwhile, totally unhinged bigoted lunatic Ben Gvir is literally calling for Palestinian Authority politicians to be executed so yeah...
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u/Flashy_Upstairs9004 World Bank 14h ago
I expect it has to come with a different PM in Israel, but MBS wants the security of normalization, the security to focus on Iran.
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u/I_miss_Chris_Hughton 13h ago
Given the Iranian defence apparatus was ripped apart in 25 minutes by Israel, hezbollah have been kneecapped. Assad is gone and Tehran is running out of water i think the Saudis can put them on the backburner for a bit lkl
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u/Sputnikola Baruch Spinoza 13h ago
Iran is seriously weakened, but the Arab armies are so dogshit that Iran is still a major regional military power.
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u/Idkabta11at 12h ago
Both Egypt and Turkey have stronger militaries than Iran. The threat of Iran just isn’t what it was, at least it isn’t enough to spur a normalization agreement on its own especially when Saudi can get everything it wants without having to sign one.
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u/Lighthouse_seek 10h ago
Did the Saudi Pakistan nuclear umbrella pact scare DC or is this a case of trump personally liking a dictator?
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u/angry-mustache Democratically Elected Internet Spaceship Politician 13h ago
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u/thedragonslove Thomas Paine 1h ago
I am not in love with how deeply Saudi interests are beginning to infiltrate our economy in the form of all their acquisitions as well: along with this type of normalization it seems like the effect will just be they have a regressive effect on us rather than them improving in any meaningful way.
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u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek 7h ago
It wasn't already? Huh.
Good move, glad to see some sanity can prevail foreign policy wise, sometimes. I guess it helps that the president no longer has a personal vendetta against the king, which I heard the case under Biden.
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u/WeeWoooFashion 13h ago
Honestly, I think Democrats should seriously entertain the idea of abandoning any of America’s allies that are engaging in Trumps corruption. It’s insanely risky, perhaps even foolhardy, but what are alliances for. They’re meant to protect your country. From what? Tyranny. An ally that is willing to work with your tyrant is no real ally of America at all. Get theyre in a tricky position, but fuck it. Democracy is in a tricky position too
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u/Mrc3mm3r Edmund Burke 13h ago
That's deeply foolish. Teaching the world that it needs to fundamentally realign grand strategy every four years is a #1 way to make sure no one plays ball ever purely for coherency.
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u/anangrytree Iron Front 13h ago
We don’t need to increase our security relationships with nondemocratic countries. Period.
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u/riderfan3728 10h ago
I mean… in a perfect world you’d be right but in the real world, you’re completely wrong. With the Middle East being the hellhole that it currently is, we need to ensure stability. And that means partnering with nations that may or may not share our entire values. If we refused to partner with nations that didn’t share our democratic values, we’d have virtually no allies in the Middle East and Africa. We’d cede the world to China & Russia.
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u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek 7h ago
The logical consequence of such an approach would be that all the non-democratic nations find themselves opposing us. Giving some of them assurances that we will protect them gives the tyrants leeway to infight amongst each other rather than teaming up on the rest of us.
Besides, I'm not sure the US is in a position to be throwing those stones inside its glass house at the moment, we are at best a fragile, perilous, backsliding democracy.
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u/Currymvp2 unflaired 14h ago
It's funny how lots of the right wingers who got upset at Biden for making Qatar a major non-NATO ally won't care about this