(As with the equally amazing Hypernormalisation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-h... )
Actually british have a long history of using nationalism to destroy the ottoman empire. Some of the foremost british romantic poets supported greek nationalism to free greece from the ottoman empire.
Interestingly enough, 40 years after nationalism destroyed the ottoman empire, nationalism would destroy the british empire.
I am saying this as a Bulgarian citizen, one of the beneficiaries of the fall of the Ottoman empire (the Ottoman government was very oppressive to my people for centuries up until 150 years ago). It is not selfish nationalism that liberated us, it was the desire to stop being abused by a conqueror.
The Saud family didn't overthrow the Ottomans with the British. That was done the Hashemites, under King Faisal, and of course T.E. Lawrence (whose story was told in his own memoir, and later in David Lean's epic film Lawrence of Arabia).
In the subsequent post-WWI, post-Ottoman chaos, the Sauds conquered Mecca from the Hashemites, and established modern "Saudi" Arabia.
The Hashemites fled and established what is now the modern country of Jordan, which they rule today.
He says that Nationalism and Realism always trump Liberalism. (From his perspective both neo-liberals and neo-cons are Liberal in that to the public at least they espouse bringing freedom and democracy to the peoples of the world even if it is at the business end of a gun.)
He drives home his point that nationalism has "won" by pointing out that most states are now nation-states whereas 200 years ago that most certainly was not the case. (Not all nations have their own state.) National identity is complicated but it explains all sorts of conflicts in the last 100 years.
It is political irony, as you say, that the forces the Brits used to topple their enemies also toppled them. But I think we must realise that the nationalism was there before the Brits decided to use it for their Machiavellian purposes. It is Afghan nationalism that has made Afghanistan the graveyard of empires. It was Irish nationalism (dressed up as Republicanism) that finally broke the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and as a consequence has made Brexit orders of magnitude more intractable.
You could go further and point out that by nationalism is meant National Identity. So it is social identity in one of its many powerful guises that has shaped the last 200 years. The other being religious identity of course: (internecine – Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism and Shia versus Sunni; interfaith – Christianity versus Islam).
This suggests that the rules-based international order is not going to contain China because China has a national identity going back millennia. The key geopolitical question of this generation (the years to 2049) is whether the US and China come into direct conflict because of China's rise. I'm a rational optimist so I say "no" but I wouldn't put money on it. :/
Realpolitik.
The US (and UK, I guess) are closely allied to the Saudis in order to counteract Iranian influence in the region. The theory is that the world will be in better shape if the Saudis have a military capable of deterring Iran.
It's a theory -- I don't know if it's correct, but it seems at least plausible.
But of course, how many UK and American citizens know the history of Iran, our role in overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh, who rightfully wanted to nationalize their oil (the obvious source of the Occidents umbrage too...) and our installation of the repressive Shah Pahlavi regime that led to the Iranian revolution of 1979 that initially featured students and workers and such, but later turned into a purge, as most revolutions do, in which the powerful theocrats basically seized the nation, and thus bringing us into the modern era and the detente with Iran that still makes no sense.
Contrast this with the constant support of the various Hashemite kings directly since Trans-Jordan and Syria-Palestina were handed over... basically we set up satrapies in the wake of seizing the Ottoman empire and not being able to manage it ourselves...
Iran is also home to many historical sites - if politics were different, it would likely be a popular tourist destination.
15 of the 19 hijackers who blew up a city block were citizens of our ally, Saudi Barbaria. When the King was confronted over the attacks, he blamed the Israeli Mossad. Iran has never touched American soil, ever. So calling Iran the biggest sponsor of terrorism is gaslighting at best.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism#Funding_factor
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deobandi#Presence
>Estimates of Saudi spending on religious causes abroad include "upward of $100 billion";[318] between $2 and 3 billion per year since 1975 (compared to the annual Soviet propaganda budget of $1 billion/year);[319] and "at least $87 billion" from 1987–2007.[320]
Whenever the US issues a statement on Iran, it is best to just assume it's total agenda-driven bullshit.
Otherwise you are right - Iran is the natueal ally in the region. And it was such until 1979.
That’s what I don’t understand. The Iranian government is a bunch of oppressive fuckheads and stands for many things we oppose... but that’s even more the case with Saudi Arabia, so we treat like kings.
In all honesty, the US has given Iran plenty of reasons for relations to be somewhat frosty.
In more recent times, Trump has been rather vocal against Iran with his trademark agressive Twitter 'pish' - so there's plenty of name calling on both sides, and hardly justifies the current state of affairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_textbook_controv...
The Iranian government is a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists, who are one of the most successful terrorism exporting states ever. Just recently they were caught attempting to kill people in Belgium and France. And those are just the recent catches.
Once Iran consolidates power in the areas they're operating in (Yemen, Iraq, Syria), the next obvious target is Saudi Arabia.
Here, a source for the murder plot:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46043404
> a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists
This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Iraq, libya, afghanistan, vietnam, laos, cambodia, korea, all based on lies which corporate media sold to us. That's only the tip of the iceberg too.
I am skeptical, and so should everyone else. If we aren't skeptical, we'll be going "why the heck did we do this?" in 8 years.
>This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Saudi Arabia just killed a journalist with no reprocussions, is bombing the absolute shit out of Yemen (civilians!) using US weapons and intelligence. Democracy Now! had an episode this week about Israeli, US, & Saudi targeted assassination programs.
It's easy to see that the corporate media is selling this potential war. How do you trust it?
In my opinion, the rest of the world should be stopping US, Israel, and Saudi from continuing their global terrorism programs and ending imperialism.
You are not alone. There are many of us in the West who tire of the duplicity and arrogance of our governments actions around the world - those of us who have taken the time to actually educate ourselves about the statistics of the Wests' Coalition War Machine find ourselves nearly overwhelmed, daily, with disdain at what we so-called enlightened civilians are allowing our governments to do around the world, in our name.
Just the fact that nobody knows what's going on in Yemen at the moment (imperialist war machine out of control), but can easily name the Kardashians, is disheartening enough.
But if you ever meet refugees from countries victimised by America's illegal, heinous wars, its another thing entirely. If you don't get angry about what our war machines are doing, you're simply on the wrong side this time around.
This time, we are the bad guys.
To a government, £1 billion and the approval of the arms industry are worth much more than a mild disapproval by the public opinion.
I'm happy that the country I'm living in stopped selling to them earlier this year.
That said, if one should steelman (as we are kind of expected to do to each other here) the goverments that hasn't done it yet, -here is some rebar IMO:
boycotting them as hard as we should have done might drive them straight into the arms of Russia and China which would probably love to sell some weapons and get a new ally.
I'd love to see that argument torn down as well though.
Personally, I'd rather take the moral high-ground here.
Now can we agree that the West has interests over there? War is bad for energy prices. So we have to support one side. We can use leverage to push for some change but honestly, leave the Saudis and China will fill in the gap. Then you have zero leverage.
I don't know the value of US arms sales, but the UK's are only around £1.1 billion, which honestly, is not that much.
https://www.ft.com/content/3149b714-2073-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45863548
There is much to be said in favour of a predictable legal regime, where producing and selling foo is legal this year if it was last year. Where producing and selling weapons is legal iff it was when the Royal Army suggested starting developing the weapons in question.
e.g. the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost the UK ~£20b (quickly googled). And a lot of the problems in the region seem to come from the Saudi regime which is pushing an extreme version of Islam. Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia is madness.
As Frederick Forsyth said in one of his novels, arms manufacturing factories once started cannot be shut down when you have outfitted your own armies - hence exports.
Consider nuclear weapons. About eight or nine armies have that, nearly 100% made in the relevant country... those factories were started with the clear condition that they would produce for the domestic market only, they set their prices accordingly, and it worked.
What doesn't work is encouraging people to invest in arms production and later telling them they cannot export. Doing that may work, but the prohibition often fails. And fairly IMO. Those are long-term investments and it's not fair to change the rules on much shorter notice.
Arms dealers rip off the nations populations whose governments they sell arms to.
Pure assertion.
It’s also what was asked for.
> What is Brexit doing to the economy in your view?
- Britain's government debt yields, e.g. 2 and 10 year bonds, remain at similar levels to pre Brexit vote, and unlike before 2016, 10-year yields are now lower than US 10-year yields
- in currencies, the GBP has remained fairly stable against EUR and USD.
I have no doubt that there will be some impact. I did not wish Brexit to happen. But I see some positive signs as well (mainly in that this forces EU leaders to sober up).
Brexit is a disaster.
Compared to historical shifts over past decades, the impact of Brexit is not very visible on a chart. The falls from 1970 to 1975, or 1980 to 1985, or in 2008, are clearly more dramatic.
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/bank-of-england-spot/histo...
"Recent reports" are many and contradictory, as usual.
Nonsense. The historical trend for the pound is to be worth $1.5 whereas it’s trundled along around $1.2 since. Stop making up excuses for the disaster that is brexit.
No sane nation would leave the EU.
Why do we keep selling weapons to such a repressive regime? £1 billion is not that much in the greater scheme of things - so what's the bigger picture that could possible justify the UKs actions?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/23/uk-hides-arms-...