The Post-American Order Starts in Riyadh and Islamabad | Hacker News Reader

The Post-American Order Starts in Riyadh and Islamabad

bloomberg.com

27 pointsnabla913 comments

This is not new. None of the Arab countries have ever fully aligned with the US. They routinely host Russia and China and buy their hardware. They will continue to host the US and buy its hardware as well.

A fundamental misunderstanding of the West is that these countries will, with time, align philosophically against the West's enemies. They are concerned with preservation of their regimes and their ways of life. They recognize that they have no foundational shared story with the West (religious or otherwise), and that without such shared origins and culture, Western people will not fight to save Arabs when resources get tight. So what do they do? Hedge their alliances so that they always have someone to turn to.

> None of the Arab countries have ever fully aligned with the US

That's patently false. The Gulf States have been aligned with the US for almost 90 years now.

The US's intervention in Iraq to protect Kuwait in 1991, to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2004 (the way Kim Jong Un is lampooned in American media is how Saddam is still lampooned in Saudi media [0]), our backing of Saudi-aligned Hariri in Lebanon, and various other foreign policy interventions and alignments in Western Asia were aligned with the Gulf States and vice versa.

The difference is,

1. Obama and later Biden decided to cut off American support for the Saudi war against the Houthis in Yemen

2. Trump was "convinced" by Rex Tillerson to stop Saudi and the UAE from invading Qatar and hoisting the Thani family with a construction crane.

This convinced all the Gulf States that US foreign policy can no longer be trusted, and they need to be like Qatar and build their own alliances with regional powers.

[0] - https://www.facebook.com/masameer/videos/%D9%83%D9%8A%D9%81-...

OP did write "fully aligned".

The US is increasingly turning in to a religious state. Most of the Middle East are people who are part of a religion fundamentally in conflict with the religiosity of America and vice versa.

Ridiculous to me as I don't subscribe to any of this, but oh well.

More fundamentally, the people in those places strongly oppose the U.S. regardless of the alliances of their government. They’re religious and hate the U.S. for supporting Israel. They hate the U.S. interventions in middle eastern affairs. They often have strong sympathies towards socialism and hate the U.S. opposition to socialism.

The big difference is that there's now alternative peers to the US (economically and militarily) that didn't exist before. The Soviet Union was economically stagnant by the late 1960s and China and India were in self-imposed isolation to varying degrees. There was no other unified entity anywhere near as big and powerful.

While Russia is a paper tiger and it's military kit (mostly) second rate, China and India both now have a very large market for energy as well as a developing defence sector making modern kit (especially China).

Now we have the United States essentially throwing a hissy fit against everybody for every (perceived or real) "unfair" trade relationship now that they may actually need to compete again (while turning its back on it's one major superpower, the fact that it is/was a magnet for immigrants).

I do agree that the west, and especially America, can suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of other country's origins, culture, and governments. This is especially true of right-leaning political leaders who think everybody wants to be like the United States (which made those in the Bush Administration think Iraq would welcome them and misreading Saddam's vague statements about WMDs being more about derring Iran). "The west" has had a 2-300 year run at the top and that's made us complacent, I think.

(On a side note, it still remains to be seen how well China will fare in the medium to long term - centralization of power usually ends up meaning little problems fester into larger ones far more than more open societies where criticism can mean earlier awareness to deal with them...)

The Pakistan-U.S. alliance was always bizarre to me. The whole subcontinent was always in the Soviet sphere of influence. And across the Arab world and south Asia, Islam is tightly linked to socialism.

This is more about hedging/diversification. US has had bases in Saudi Arabia since the 90s. There was some shifting to Qatar in the past then re establishment of some base infra in 2019 due to Iran.

Calling it the start of a post American order feels like headline chasing. Riyadh is hedging, not cutting ties with Washington. Islamabad is hunting for relevance.

I thought it was an interesting article. Gave some insight into the different strategic relationships between countries in the area beyond the usual discussions of their relationship with the West.

That's the point.

Hedging and multipolar tactical relations is by definition a post-America relationship, and is a result of the relative (not absolute) decline in American power.

America was able to be the sole hyperpower in the 1990s and 2000s because we were the largest economy in PPP by far in 2000 [0] with 20% of global GDP PPP and with no near competitor. In 2025, we are now at 14% of global GDP PPP [1] and outcompeted by China. And in the 2030s, the US's share of GDP PPP will converge with India's [2]

Mind you, GDP and especially GDP PPP is basically a function of production based on relative value, and China+India are seeing this growth due to a large population size along with generational reforms from the 1970s-1980s and 1990s-2000s respectively finally starting to pay off, but there is no way to deny that middle powers can now make their own economic and defense alliances independent of the "West" or "China", and will increasingly make their own poles.

For example, the fact that the newly constructed Dangote Refinery - Africa's largest refinery, and 6th largest in the world and larger than any refinery owned or operated by an American company - is built and operated by an Indian SOE [3] highlights how an entire region (West Africa) that has historically been dependent on American refining capacity from Chevron despite being a major oil producer is now working with a non-western country to remove that reliance. A Nigeria+India story, a Cambodia+China story, a Angola+Brazil story, a Vietnam+Russia story, and others are developing out of relative convergence of interests.

This is not a stable world. This means that regional conflicts can cause contagion in other conflicts in the world.

For example, the Russia-Ukraine War now pulling the South Korea, North Korea, and Japan into the conflict. Or the Thailand-Cambodia conflict, where neither the US nor China knew how to respond because it would alienate either Thailand or Cambodia to align with either the US or China.

[0] - https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVE...

[1] - https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVE...

[2] - https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVE...

[3] - https://engineersindia.com/dangote-refinery-and-petrochemica...

https://archive.ph/JjKvv

>Renewed defense ties between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provide a taste of what’s to come as the US retreats from its traditional alliances.

It’s kind of like the dollar where everyone hates the dollar, but the alternatives aren’t really better.

I wonder if there is work being started in Pakistan on conversion kits for the Saudi DF-3 and DF-21 missiles.

Makes sense, considering America lets Israel bomb the capital cities of its Arab "major non-NATO allies" [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5jl77ygv4o

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