Shira
Jr. Member
Posts: 1,858
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« on: August 05, 2008, 12:58:51 AM » |
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This week it became known that President Bush is about to supply Saudi Arabia with huge quantities of the most advanced weapons. The price tag is 20 billion (20,000,000,000) dollars.
Ostensibly, the arms are needed to strengthen Saudi Arabia against the Great Satan: Iran. In Saudi eyes, this is now the great danger.
How did this happen? For centuries, Iraq served as a wall between Shiite Persian Iran and the Sunni Arab Middle East. When President Bush toppled the Sunni regime in Iraq, the whole region was opened up to the Shiite power. In Iraq itself, a Shiite government was installed, and Shiite militias roam at will. The Shiite Hizbullah is growing in power in Lebanon, and Iran is extending its long arm to all the Shiites in the region.
Allah, in his infinite wisdom, has seen to it that almost all the huge Middle East oil reserves are located in Shiite areas: in Iran, in the South of Iraq and the Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf principalities. If these reserves slip away from US control, it will cause a drastic change in the balance of power, not only in the region but in the entire world.
Therefore, the strengthening of Saudi Arabia - ruled by conservative Sunnis - makes a lot of sense from the American point of view. However, the arms deal is quite irrelevant to this.
The Saudis do not need weapons. They have an instrument that is much more effective than any number of airplanes and tanks: an inexhaustible supply of dollars. They use it to finance friends, buy influence and bribe leaders.
On the other side, Saudi Arabia is unable to maintain the weapons that are flowing to it. It does not have enough pilots for the airplanes it is buying, nor crews for the tanks. The new weaponry will collect sand in the desert, like all the expensive weapons it has bought in the past.
So what is the sense in buying more weapons to the tune of 20 billions?
Well, the Saudis are selling oil to the Americans for dollars. A lot of oil, a lot of dollars. The United States, with a huge gap in its balance of trade, cannot afford to lose these billions. So, in order to make it possible for the US to carry this burden, the Saudis must give back at least a part of the money. How? Quite simple: they buy American arms that they don't need.
This is a merry-go-round that benefits all. Especially the Saudi princes. Saudi Arabia is blessed with a great abundance of these - some 9000 (nine thousand) princes, all belonging to the House of Saud. A prince has a lot of wives, a wife has a lot of offspring. Some of them are arms dealers, who automatically receive fat commissions from the arms billions. (It is easy to work it out: a mere one percent of 20 billions amounts to 200 million. And they would laugh at a commission of one percent.)
The princes have, therefore, a vested interest in this convenient arrangement.
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