Along with Guatanamo base, it's the biggest stain on US credibility in international relations.
In other words, US can't dictate its allies who can they make friends with without taking the prickly subject of Saudi Arabia, and its chainsaw prince off the table.
I guess what rubs me the wrong way about this is that it's very easy to write an incendiary toplevel comment. The story was posted about 35 minutes ago. Looking over the other toplevel comments, they're all pretty much like yours. And that's a common theme: deep, thoughtful comments take longer to write. So we end up having to read lots of incendiary comments for the first hour or so.
EDIT: Ok, this was a mistake. Mea culpa, I didn't mean to spawn a massive subthread where people double down on the nationalistic flamewar. My apologies, and I won't do this again.
Returns to quietly working on ML
Calling Saudi kingdom the Middle Eastern North Korea is the best what you can do to conduct a "nice intellectual discussion" you want.
Intellectual discussion is calling things their real names. It is a total intellectual dishonesty, and hypocrisy to pretend it isn't, while trying to have any conversation about Saudi state with a straight face.
“Is the best what you can do?” Really? Coming up with an inaccurate comparison is the best you can do?
No, they are remarkably similar
Effectively a 1 family state, with 1 party system as a decoration — Check
The few electoral opportunities are 100% rigged. Whomever wants to self-nominate gets secretly abducted, tortured, killed, and dissolved in potassium hydroxide — Check
Omnipresent domestic espionage, and political inquisition — Check
Adherence to a completely braindead ideology used as a loyalty litmus test — Check
Complete intolerance to any deviation from official political line, and complete lack of any real political figures other than the ruling family — Check
Peoples' one, and only way up through the social ladder is through the one party political institute — Check
The description is accurate and not incendiary at all.
Extrapolate that out for half a second please.
When the US, the west etc. cuts ties then the KSAs of the world get driven to the arms of Russia and China and other people who will happily do business with them no matter how many journalists they dice up.
Ok, so you get the Russias and Chinas and all those other people to cut pretty much all business ties with them as well. Congratulations, you've now reduced the number of opinions they care about to zero. That's basically what North Korea is. We can't even hold them accountable for killing a member of their own royal family in broad daylight in a foreign airport. The best we, or anyone can do is threaten military force when they get way out of line (relative to their normal level of "out of line").
It's better to do business with jerks so you at least have some sway when you ask them to "please act civilized and keep that crap under the table" than to cut them to the point where your opinion means nothing to them. It won't win you easy virtue points in the comments but realpolitik isn't about the virtue points.
A couple days ago Canada's PM wouldn't endorse some legislative resolution condemning the Chinese genocide because that would violate a trade deal they signed. Germany is routinely soft of Russia because they need the energy. This approach works.
This political opinion must be subject to the most severe censure, as is the moral character of people who can come with such an idea.
FISRT, it's untrue, and dishonest.
The world is already driven by Russia's and China's protection racket no matter how many journalists America's rogue state allies dice up.
Adherence, or non-adherence to American military aid makes ZERO DIFFERENCE to that. In fact, there are now more receivers of American military aid in Chinese, and Russian pocket than ones who aren't. In other words, the net effect of US military aid is the benefit of allies, and satellites of Russia, and China. This makes no sense.
SECOND, you lose allies by supporting rogue regimes for reasons ethical, or not.
Saudis are a piece of red cloth to every moderately sane regimes, and states in the region. They know Saudis are an intrusive force which does not stop at staging palace coups, and activity by secret agents to keep the whole Arab world under a thumb. Saudis tried to staged coups, and send clandestine agents to topple both democratic, or not governments of pretty much every Arab country.
THIRD, USA is not impotent at all to influence KSA. USA is fully capable of erasing KSA regime with a flick of a finger with both military, and non-military options on the table.
1/3 of KSA population will raise in arms the second it's given such opportunity. Economic sanctions on oil, and foreign assets will nuke KSA treasury, and lead to regime fall in at maximum of 2 years. USA military contingent in military bases on KSA soil is big enough to topple the KSA military in days.
FOURTH, the new Saudi establishment will be naturally more receptive to US influence than the current one which sploshes moneys on states which are not by an inch friendly to USA. Cutting Saudi moneys to rouge states will instantly solve at least halve of USA's headaches in the region.
I never said anything military aid, just business ties.
>SECOND, you lose allies by supporting rogue regimes for reasons ethical, or not.
"we try and do fair business with everyone" has worked out quite well for Switzerland over the last ~500yr and Sweden for the last 100.
>THIRD, USA is not impotent at all to influence KSA. USA is fully capable of erasing KSA regime with a flick of a finger with both military, and non-military options on the table.
>1/3 of KSA population will raise in arms the second its given such opportunity. Economic sanctions on oil, and foreign assets will nuke KSA treasury, and lead to regime fall in at maximum of 2 years. USA military contingent in military bases on KSA soil is big enough to topple the KSA military in days.
>FOURTH, the new Saudi establishment will be naturally more receptive to US influence than the current one which sploshes moneys on states which are not by an inch friendly to USA. Cutting Saudi moneys to rouge states will instantly solve at least halve of USA's headaches in the region.
"QED that's why we should invade Iraq" (or alternatively, replace Iraq with some banana republic in South America). Seriously, listen to yourself. This is the same insane rhetoric that led to the middle east being what it is today. If you just finished it off with "and it's our duty to civilize them" it could pass for something written by a Brit in 1903.
What a bunch of tin pot dictators in a sanbox do isn't our problem. If they wanna do business, sure, fine but it begins and ends there should be keeping all these nations at arms length and not violating their sovereignty interfering with their domestic affairs.
You can make a moral case against MBS, but... where/when has SA really been affected the US' ability to do anything specific diplomatically?