Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
BBC headline "Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says"
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
With more background info: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/is-china-really-using-...
Some highlights from the BBC article:
> Former British military pilots are being lured to China with large sums of money to pass on their expertise to the Chinese military, it is claimed.
> Up to 30 former UK military pilots are thought to have gone to train members of China's People's Liberation Army.
> The retired British pilots are being used to help understand the way in which Western planes and pilots operate, information which could be vital in the event of any conflict, such as over Taiwan.
> "They are a very attractive body of people to then pass on that knowledge," a Western official said. "It's taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities."
The disclaimer sentence
> There is no evidence that any pilots have broken the Official Secrets Act or that they have committed any crime.
is funny - how would they gather that evidence without confessions from the pilots involved or from the Chinese? Even if they don't tell them any secrets, there remains the fact that they train them at all. With the next big conflict where this might be used being Taiwan, where the West has already taken the opposite side.
From the second link:
> The MOD also said that the United Kingdom is only one of several Western countries whose aircrew (and likely other sources of military expertise) are currently being targeted in this way. No details were provided of other nations involved.
Personally, reading this, I think the news is getting more ridiculous by the day. I think this is much worse, I don't think Saudi Arabia is likely to end up as a direct adversary, and even if it did it would not matter much. But China...
It's a manufacturing consent piece to setup this:
>Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hostile-state-workers-...
With respect to Saudi's, a lot of Saudi of military is serviced/supported by Pakistanis who feeds info directly back to PRC. And TBH it wouldn't surprise me if PRC "lured" ex Japanese / Korean pilots for info as well.
This is exactly like Russian 'Foreign Agent' law introduced about 10 years ago. Should we be following in the footsteps of despotic regimes? If we have just declared that these regimes are morrally bankrupt, we should be doing the opposite?
MI6 is a thing. What do you think they do all day. You really think these people with classified info in their heads are just walking around blabbing secrets in China or Saudi or wherever?
So classified evidence can be used and there is no danger of it leaking.
Of course, there is a danger of innocent people being convicted but that doesn't seem to bother MPs or the government or even the public.
> "The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard. The Fairfax, VA-based company, a subsidiary of the US aerospace firm Northrup Grumman, said on its website it was hiring former US army and marine officers to train infantry battalions and combat support units for the new Iraqi army. The Vinnell Corp. of Alexandria, Va., owned by politically connected Northrop-Grumman."
More on that:
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/iraq-vinnells-army-defensi...
It's just so painfully obvious that these kind of articles wouldn't be getting published right now if the US government wasn't angry with Saudi Arabia about crude oil production.
Were similar contracts in place for training Afghani Army? Maybe we should get a refund?
I found shocking how western media just declared Afghani army as incapable and closed the chapter. Someone was in charge of this program for 20 years. Someone had oversight of billions spend. Were western contractor facilitating corruption? Was this a shocking failure of western management?
The results are worse than Russian army procurement where millions of uniforms just go missing!
Training went well, but why would they bother once we're gone?
This whole 'afghans decided not to fight' is really convenient. Like blaming a plane crash on pilot error - nothing to investigate, no defects to correct, the only one at fault is already dead.
It seems to me that the timing is the point and it is more relevant now that the relationship has become more adversarial. No one would've been paying as much attention in 2009 and rightfully so since those relationships wouldn't have as much of a conflict of interest.
And let's not forget that in 2009, MBS had yet to order Jamal Khasoggi to be killed by being cut in half by a bone saw.
Context matters.
Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
It would be more scandalous if they were to take jobs with Russia, or Iran. But Saudi Arable is a US ally, so what's the problem?
Russia, China, or Iran would be a far "better" choice for a number of reasons, chiefly the fact that the Saudis might turn the turncoat back over to the US for any number of reasons — like pulling American maintenance contractors out of KSA, which would ground their air force in a matter of days and leave them very vulnerable to Iranian aggression. Hell, without contractor representatives giving them cues I wonder if they can really run some of the gear we've sold them.
Besides, if I'm going to be stuck in one dictatorship for the rest of my life (because you could never safely travel again), I'd pick somewhere like Iran over KSA in a second.
High ranking officers can just as much buy plane tickets as anyone else. Yes, including to countries that may not have entirely harmless intentions.
Signatures on a piece of paper are not the final arbiter of disputes between countries, as demonstrated by the previous administration. Even if they were, not everyone can be trusted 100% just because they made promises to that effect, actions speak louder than words after all.
Even if a cleared military member gets nothing after their separation (perhaps do to a court martial or the like), there's still no justification in spying, especially not after the agreements and acknowledgements cleared individuals sign throughout their careers. Those documents are what put convicted spies in places like ADX Florence, and no degree of whining about one's pension changes that.
>Non-competes should include compensation commensurate for the non-compete period. In the case of these individuals is the retirement package not sufficient to guard national secrets?
"You honestly think an American flag officer would defect to Saudi Arabia? Really? Russia, China, or Iran would be a far "better" choice for a number of reasons, chiefly the fact that the Saudis might turn the turncoat back over to the US for any number of reasons — like pulling American maintenance contractors out of KSA, which would ground their air force in a matter of days and leave them very vulnerable to Iranian aggression. Hell, without contractor representatives giving them cues I wonder if they can really run some of the gear we've sold them. Besides, if I'm going to be stuck in one dictatorship for the rest of my life (because you could never safely travel again), I'd pick somewhere like Iran over KSA in a second."
Which seems to be aimed at addressing a different topic.
Unrelated to the topic of this discussion and elsewhere in the film, Mick Jagger answers another question, "Am I satisfied? Sexually, yes. Philosophically, no." (Working from hazy memories here -- I last saw the movie in the 1970s, I think.)
Truly late stage capitalism here.
We don't live in the 19th century anymore so.
Didn’t President of the United States just go to Saudi Arabia and ask them to produce more oil.
Have we not supplied them weapons for decades?
Does the world use 100 million barrels of oil a day?
Let’s go throw something on a famous painting and maybe that’ll stop.
Still waiting for the batteries and all the renewable energy to solve the problem.
In the meantime, it’s great that people can take the moral high ground for decades on end.
We’ve been trying to get off oil since the 1970’s. How’s that working out?
Some have, but for most people and most countries it's simply far too cheap and convenient to not do that. Until there's an oil shock or a war. The oil money also pays for a lot of anti-renewables lobbying.
If its a trait mixed with above average intelligence, these people often climb careers like ladders, and getting to the general/admiral level involves tons of political games and quid pro quo played right for decade(s).
What I want to say with all this - you bet those folks sleep well at night. They've sent 18-year old to (almost) certain death from time to time. Don't expect everybody in the world to share your morals, however sad it may be.
And even if you would percieve ignorance instead, it doesn't mean that they need snark targeted at them. Please respect the community guidelines of this comment section.
These former US officers in question may have already been working "for" this theocratic monarchy before they retired from the US military. So I don't think it'd be much of a moral leap for them to continue to do so, at least in their own minds.
But sure, I certainly wouldn't work for SA in any capacity; the whole idea would feel gross to me. But I don't have the career baggage of a US military officer who may have been stationed in SA for years.
Working for dictatorship is not worse than bombing innocent children in name of working for oldest democracy
The key questions raised would seem to be: did they in fact obtain the required signoffs, and are the current requirements sufficient or do they need some adjustment?
You don't get official "signoff" when you're at that level. You get plausibly deniable permission with the understanding that the powers that be reserve the right to pull the rug out from under you should doing so be politically expedient.
Also just a comment, the dichotomy "they are free not slaves" is entirely useless to this discussion. There are countless examples from elsewhere in society of where a person isn't a slave but still has constraints on how they can earn money.
Yes, there are bases in SA, and the US has threatened to pull them out.
[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/10/06/oil-dispute-p...
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-democrats-slam-opec-cu...
But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever? All sovereign nations have national interests, and they are not 100% allied with the US interests.
Still, in the case of Saudi Arabia, their most important security concern is Iran. And there, they are aligned with the US. Also, the US is the most important security partner of Israel, and, according to wikipedia [1], Saudi Arabia has quite a good working relationship with Israel
reports have surfaced in recent years indicating extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic, intelligence, and security cooperation between the two as part of a larger Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran (see Iran–Israel proxy conflict and Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict) and, more recently, Turkey under Erdoğan. At the same time, the Saudi relationship with the Palestinian National Authority is deteriorating.
Yes, I know about Kashogi. But those guys are not going there to tell MBS to kill more disidents. They are going there to give security advice. And that security advice will benefit the US, not hinder it, because it will result in a stronger ally, not a stronger enemy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_re...
All I'm pointing out is that the relationship between US and SA is souring. Simple stuff. Who has "really" bla bla bla I don't know dude, I can't be bothered to fight over semantics.
This isn't at all surprising, why wouldn't you hire American military to go with your American military hardware?
To clarify the US is invoking terror on the Yemeni Iranian proxy forces and therefore the population.
Saudi pilots are routinely trained at American military flight schools like Fort Rucker and NAS Pensacola. The performance of these Saudi student pilots is usually terrible[1], by the way, to the point that it's a running joke in the American military aviation community. This is probably because their officers are selected based on having royal blood, not based on merit, whereas getting into flight school is highly competitive for Americans. I'm told that Saudi Arabia pays a lot of money to send these guys for training, so instructors aren't allowed to fail them. Basically, the instructors pencil-whip their progress and let them graduate, but then Saudi Arabia seems to really need some experienced Americans on-hand to keep things from going off the rails.
[1] I was paired with a Saudi during flight school. For example, all students had to score 100% on a written test on aircraft limits and emergency procedures before ever getting into the cockpit. American students would get a second chance if they got one or two questions wrong, but that was rare and embarrassing, and there would be no third chance. My Saudi partner, on the other hand, scored something like 16% on his first attempt and then received five or six more chances. When we actually got into the air, he wasn't much better. During the first week, I approached my commander and told him that I was uncomfortable flying with this guy, but he assured me that our instructors dealt with this situation all the time and knew how to manage it safely. Later in my career, I saw a bit of what happens behind the scenes and learned that cheating among Saudi students was also rampant and effectively allowed to continue.
https://www.vox.com/23166516/scandal-john-allen-brookings-th...
The court filing alleges that Allen had been tapped by two unregistered representatives of Qatar — a business executive named Imaad Zuberi and a former US ambassador to the UAE, Richard Olson — to advocate on Qatar’s behalf. (That Olson used the email address rickscafedxb@yahoo.com, a reference to the seedy Rick’s Cafe in the film Casablanca and the airport code for Dubai, might have been a tip-off that no one should be shocked that something was awry.)
Shortly after Olson left the State Department, several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launched a blockade against Qatar that sparked a massive spending spree in Washington on lobbying and other efforts to influence the US policy.
Olson, Zuberi and retired Marine four-star Gen John Allen traveled to Doha early in the diplomatic crisis to meet with top Qatari officials and discuss ways of resolving the issue, according to court records and a statement Allen’s spokesman provided to the wire service last year.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/954208-ex-us-ambassador-to-...
I’m not saying that there’s going to be a bunch of treasoning or anything, just that the laws you’re citing wouldn’t be particularly useful if said treasoning did happen.
I wouldn't be so sure. SA depends on the US for a significant amount of military equipment and training. They might turn over a US traitor if they got even a whiff of that help being threatened.
This was (still is?) a classic of French influence in Africa, for instance.
Here my interpretation is that the US keep a close watch on the Saudis...
In this case, the US and the Saudis have been 'tight' for 70 years so one can imagine it is all very friendly...
> do things against the wishes of the Pentagon
I'm betting that the Pentagon prefers their retired senior staff don't whore themselves out to potential adversaries. But unless and until they cross a formal line, what are you gonna do? If the Pentagon comes across as punitive, e.g. by revoking any latent security clearances, there'll be a huge backlash. This form of consulting and liaising with international groups by retired military is nothing new, and there are legions of retired staff leveraging their status one way or another. It's a perk of the job. It's also not new that it can sometimes be rather unseemly, to say the least. What might be new is the amount of money being thrown around.
These relationships are quite valuable because while it may not seem that way in our social media bubbles and among our international cosmopolitan peers, the day-to-day cultures and administrative machinations of various governments and militaries can be extremely opaque simply because of the huge differences in presumptions and expectations. And this is true even among allies with seemingly similar cultures, which is why even a country like the U.S. with veritable armies of intelligence analysts do ridiculous *hit like bug Angela Merkel's cellphone. Retired personnel don't need to divulge secrets to provide extremely valuable and timely insights, especially as between countries like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Just the opposite, it's those ties and connections that the Saudi's are buying.
Not all laws.[1]
> Legal acts do about as much to deter desertion and security leaks as speed limit signs keep people from speeding.
Seems to be working well so far.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gr...
Incidence matters. If intentional classified information leaks were commonplace and unsurprising, then sure, we could say we expect retired military officers to routinely follow the example of Trump, Snowden, and Assange when it comes to classified information. But I don't think any of us can make that claim.
Intentional classified information leakage is relatively uncommon, and, for the most part, is punished when it happens and a perpetrator can be identified and caught. Obviously in the case of Trump, that potential punishment is politically fraught, as was/is the case with Assange. The US government would love to punish Snowden if they could get their grubby hands on him. I guess look to Chelsea Manning if you want an example of when the government has successfully brought down the hammer on someone doing things with classified material that they didn't like.
To bring it back to the topic at hand, I expect that the retired military officers now taking employment with the Saudi Arabian military will most likely protect any secrets they're legally bound to protect. Why? Because that's what seems to happen most of the time, and punishments for failure to do so can get pretty severe. And someone who wanted to sell secrets might have a difficult time if their chosen country of exile is SA. If found out, they'd have to contend with the strong possibility that the SA government would extradite them to the US, depending on what kind of pressure the US might bring to bear.
> That's an awfully bold statement.
Worse, it is entirely false on its face because it not only completely ignores enforcement as well as social contract, the purpose of law is not "to keep honest people honest," nor is law "paper veneer." Laws are rules to regulate behavior, and as such fundamentally they are ideas, therefore they are intangible and only recorded to medium like paper, digital storage, stone tablets, what have you.
If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out.
If the US could make every other country's military a subsidiary of the US military, they would.
What if you know it inside out and all it benefits you is that you now know they have a competent and robust organization, whereas before they were bungling idiots and you only kind-of knew the extent of it?
Maybe they would have otherwise been bungling and inept, but that is pretty poor planning to to just hope that your enemy is incompetent. The more likely scenario is they would be competent and you just wouldn't know anything about them.
A competent enemy you can predict is probably better than an incompetent one you can't. Better to know in advance exactly what competent thing they will do so you can anticipate it. Incompetent people can still get lucky and can hurt you when they act in ways you don't expect.
Once you get that star (or whatever the equivalent is for the navy) you are basically a US officer for life. Retired Generals and Admirals can and do get called upon by the government when they are needed. They are considered highly experienced professionals that the government can trust. They are not "in" the system, they are the system.
I would expect that the DoD keeps tabs on these officers. While the oil money may be nice, make no mistake, the US government is the wealthiest organization on the planet. These officers understand who the real provider is.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hong-kong-protesters-turn...
Having lived through this, it's a bit funny to me that most people aren't aware the Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong protests was led by British officers on the field. Inconvenient truths I guess.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
OTOH - certain foreign governments paying top dollar to employ a bunch of military big shots from the U.S. does not say good things about their local talent pools. And the situation may look less-than-inspired to what talented young locals there are.
It depends. If it's just "talent" they're after, then sure. If they're after things that can only come from a US military big shot, then it's a different issue.
In other news, this is just another symptom of a shrinking US empire. Pax americana is starting to crumble.
Pax Americana is definitely crumbling before our eyes.
People in power will abuse power. That’s inevitable in any regime. What makes the difference is how they are held accountable, especially by their own regime.
For example, Manadel al-Jamadi was murdered in detention, while being tortured by the US military. The people who murdered him then took "thumbs up" photos with his corpse.
No one was punished for his murder.
NSFW, his corpse is pictured on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Manadel_al-Jamadi
But your comment is particularly funny because you brought up NATO [1]:
> One typical example is General Adolf Heusinger, a career military officer who, with the outbreak of the Second World War, became part of the German headquarters field staff and helped plan the Nazi invasions of Poland, Denmark, Norway, France and the Low Countries. The Nazis perpetrated against Poland one of the worst crimes history has ever known. Poland suffered the largest number of casualties per capita of any European country, with a total of about six million people killed. Heusinger rose quickly through the Wehrmacht’s administrative ranks and in 1944 was appointed Adolf Hitler’s Chief of the General Staff of the Army.
> With the 1955 establishment of the Bundeswehr, the reconstituted West German Armed Forces, Heusinger returned to military service, and was appointed Lieutenant-General in 1955. In 1957, he was promoted to full general and named the first Inspector-General of the Bundeswehr. He served in that capacity until 1961. In 1961, Heusinger was appointed Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, making him the senior military spokesperson for NATO and in 1963 he also became NATO’s chief of staff, serving in that capacity until 1964.
There were a number of other ex-Nazis in NATO's ranks and leadership.
Saudi Arabia is not a U.S adversary, it is an ungrateful client state and has been since Roosevelt.
You mean Pax Israel is starting to crumble. Is it a coincidence that Yair Lapid is now advocating for a two state solution? They see the writing on the wall.