Also different than selling them like 10Bil in arms. Europe, for example, has not invaded SA, but is not buddy buddy with MBS.

Also, it's clear that sanctions are a much more powerful weapon than invasion. Western sanctions (or embargo) on SA oil would certainly put them in a tight(er) spot.

No excuses!!!

Weapons sanctions are guaranteed way to hit the Gulf monarchies hard. They are extremely dependent on US tech as far as I know.

The russians would be very happy to help probably.

True. And? While I understand the need for a level of competitive relationships, would it be so terrible to put the burden of selling arms to gross human rights violators on other countries?

Of course, it COULD be bad. Real bad. Hand-waving away such concerns is irresponsible. Having a major oil source friendly to an often hostile nation could have real, even deadly drawbacks.

But so too does always turning a blind eye. If we had gotten into this relationship and worked to reduce the threat (such as investing in other energy sources) we'd be in a better position, we could be at a point to change the relationship at reduced risk. We didn't, and we need to face the concrete realities we're supporting out of fear of hypotheticals.

Because now we may be safer, but we're supporting what we proclaim to be against. When we wield moral superiority, it's undercut. When we tell our children to be patriotic, we know the legacy we're leaving them.

No probably about it.

Since the start of the cold war middle eastern states have balanced/played off against each other between the US (and the west) and Russia (previously USSR) when it comes to weapons and lots of other things.

I mean the Egyptians had soviet supplied fighters flown by actual soviet pilots fighting against the Isreali's in American and French supplied air craft.[1]

The US sold Israel better fighters, the soviets sold their potential enemies better SAM's.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20

Definitely, but the migration and retraining costs are non-trivial, not to mention that US tech is far superior in general.

There are also plenty of thieves in the world. Must we all become one "in order to remain competitive"?

Would the Yemeni rather fight Saudis armed with American weapons, or Saudis armed with Russian weapons?

You just need to estimate to level of sanctions so that the monarchy will still be able to stay in power, without risking an Islamic revolution.

What would an Islamist revolution risk for those that aren’t rulers in SA? Other Islamists regimes have done less harm than SA.

What's the net benefit of continuing to support the monarchy which exported wahhabism to the rest of the middle east?

You forgot the /s

Or Are you not aware that the monarchy is already Islamic, of the kind least tolerant towards personal freedoms?

The decision to let the arms keep flowing and to let SA to get away with a particularly vicious murder appeared to be made on camera by Trump during the Khashoggi saga. The episode was very depressing to watch. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/trumps-not-gonna-let...

There's a difference between overthrowing the government and not letting them invest in Uber.

I think the US handled the aftermath of the invasion quite poorly for a variety of reasons, one of which was the heavy exploitation of the sectarian divide.

One could cut trade relations without violently attempting regime change.

Fwiw, the sanctions the US imposes on other countries often are brutal to their innocent population. One thing we could do is provide asylum for persecuted people, but appearently we don't do that anymore (and never have done it in great quantity).

A lot of the early European settlers in the US were fleeing religious persecution. But I suppose it wasn’t the USA then... https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html

>A lot of the early European settlers in the US were fleeing religious persecution.

What's your point?

Some of them turned around and treated people who didn't fit in with them even worse than they themselves had been treated when in Europe. I can think of a couple groups who, in retrospect, the natives should have killed on day 1.

My comment wasn’t clear - tehjoker stated that the US had never let in a lot of persecuted people. The early European colonisers included a lot of small groups fleeing persecution. As you mention, formerly persecuted groups don’t seem to behave better when they get power.

Can you tell me what is worst between a theocracy and an absolute monarchy? In SA, the king is bound by no law not even the law of god. He wants you dead on spot, and then you die. Doesn't sound to me a better system.

Whereas in a theocracy, the Ruler is bound by the law of God. God wants You dead on the spot, and the Ruler is his instrument on Earth - and then You die.

The Ruler is now not at fault, because God told, and used, the Ruler to do the deed. The Ruler is absolved of responsibility - God's Will.

...do you see and understand the difference?

There is no difference, and the ruler is still responsible for not refusing the god's will.

Approximately nobody is saying that we should invade SA and overthrow the government. But could we at least stop selling them weapons and giving them nuclear technology and giving them defensive cover from our military?

Iraq and Libya, both of which seemed moderate compared to SA (Saddam less so then Qaddafi). Neither Iraq nor Libya have, to my knowledge, ever been used as an argument for why "we" have to unconditionally support SA, though. Neither of them have been an ally before "spreading democracy", so they don't make good analogies either imho.

Also, "unwavering ally" and "we'll remove their state and let the country fall into civil war" aren't the only options on the table.

I believe the point is that sometimes a tyrant is worse than cutting off the head and seeing the hydra.

Of course it’s possible Iraq would’ve gone different without the Coalition Provisional Authority’s early orders.

>I believe the point is that sometimes a tyrant is worse than cutting off the head and seeing the hydra.

If the last several dictators ousted from nations in the middle east teaches us anything it's that we do not want the hydra. It cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to dump all the crap out of the Iraq vacuum. Egypt was teetering on the edge for quite awhile after the arab spring. Libya is still in ruins. Syria speaks for itself. Afghanistan is slipping back into Taliban control. Every time we touch it it gets worse.

While I think we can all agree that totalitarian rulers are not the global maximum they seem to be a pretty clear local maximum in the middle east. The situations that develop in their absence are so much worse on a "suffering per time" basis that it's basically impossible to justify trying to oust them.

Oh that was a helluva a slip. I'd meant to write sometimes a tyrant is better than the hydra.

I believe you're right on the money with your point about a local maximum.

Sometimes that may be true. In these examples it certainly hasn't, and has destabilized the whole region.

Even a bad ruler is better than anomie, especially for local minorities. The yazidis may not have been happy with Assad or Saddam, but I'm pretty sure they preferred them to ISIS and similar groups.