Why is it better to pay people to build a tank than to build a truck?
June 8, 2017 10:07 PM   Subscribe

Trucks are useful, but tanks only kill. The recent announcement of the gargarntuan arms sales to Saudi Arabia have prompted some excellent analysis of Trump foreign policy. Of course, it's all about oil. And natural gas. And dollars.
posted by NeoRothbardian (7 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
What US strategic interest does sucking up to Saudi Arabia serve? The US is pretty self sufficient in fossil fuels and OPEC can't influence the oil market like it used to. Saudi famously spends its ill gotten billions training people around the world to be intolerant.

What does the US need from these corrupt oligarchs?
posted by monotreme at 11:12 PM on June 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


Um, hundreds of billions in arms sales?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:28 AM on June 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


One would think that a look at the Saud proselytization of Wahhabism would be enough to tell Trump where the terrorists get their ideas from, but maybe I have too simplistic of a worldview.
posted by hippybear at 2:46 AM on June 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


But there weren't sales to SA. It was a sham. Just like everything else with our lying president.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:21 AM on June 9, 2017 [5 favorites]




monotreme: What does the US need from these corrupt oligarchs?

I suspect that it's generational foreign policy thinking. Right up to the first Gulf War, serious foreign policy decisions were dominated by memories of the Munich Agreement and WWII; every tinpot dictator who wasn't on our side, including mid-career Saddam, was surely the next Hitler. Now it's memories of the OPEC crisis and the Iranian Revolution that dominate foreign policy planning fears. You're right, the world has changed, but it always takes a while for institutional thinking to catch up.
posted by clawsoon at 5:43 AM on June 9, 2017 [6 favorites]


What does the US need from these corrupt oligarchs?

Well it was awfully convenient of them to choose a production level that dipped oil prices just as Russia was starting to get super aggressive in the Ukraine a couple years back. Of course it was also hoped by the Saudis it would cause a delay in the development of natural gas resources as a replacement for oil, but still.

And the reason it takes a while for foreign policy to catch up is not juts the thinking, it's the diplomatic relations and contacts. And, well, we haven't been developing great relations with Iran, or anywhere else. And given the current administration...
posted by Zalzidrax at 8:14 AM on June 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


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