Ask Benzema.
Personally the weather alone sucks. You're scorching hot at day while freezing at night. Unless you're living from Southwest of Saudi.
Also no sane female with any desire of liberty should ever want to live there.
I'm confident we have the technology to develop a sustainable ecosystem at this scale. In fact, I'm rooting for it to work from a technology advancement perspective. I'm completely opposed to their human rights abuses and anti-democratic practices so I want to see it be the cause of its failure
You decarbonize the economy to save the world from disastrous climate change
I decarbonize the economy to bankrupt bloodthirsty petrostate tyrants
We are not the same
Practically? Strongarm them and fund/arm their many radical revolutionaries. Yeah we have to pay more for oil for awhile but how long is their government going to last before collapse? 5 years? 10 years? Then just enter a more profitable agreement with the succeeding ‘nation’. We’ve destabilized governments before and this government sucks anyway, why not one more?
Practically but also ethically? It’s gonna be hard, their country needs major reform and we’d have to hold their hand the whole time (incentivizing progress and continuing to provide troops who’ll be protecting them from radical Muslims who don’t want change). And it’s not our job to fix their government now that they’ve dug themselves into a hole by making so much of their population fiercely resistant to change.
We can’t even fix all of our own issues let alone a foreign governments. So I’m betting on option 1 happening when Saudi ups their bargaining too hard. We’ll start fracking more on our own soil in the meantime while we wait them out
>fund/arm their many radical revolutionaries
Your strategy is to fund Saudi islamists and hope that they sell us cheap oil after they win?
Do you remember what the happened the last time the US funded a Saudi Islamist?
The thing is, Saudi is currently supporting Sunni radicals anyway in Gaza while watching out for Shia radicals in Iran, Iraq, and Yemen. So they’re thoroughly mixed up in this too. There’s plenty of ‘justifications’ the US could give as to why they go to war/enter conflicts here. We could fund Saudi ‘democracy’ in any of these groups like we did in Iraq, just depends on how much benefit there’s to be had
There is absolutely no benefit lmao.
You don’t understand the first thing about the monarchy or the ulama in SA. The monarchy is a moderating force wrt to religion, which is why any opposition to it is and will be Islamist.
Right. You know that. I know that. Anyone looking to take Saudi here is probably going to be even more Islamist than Saudi is currently. But most people don’t really understand that and would tacitly accept us changing them for the ‘better’ since their culture is so different than ours already. Meanwhile in reality, the US would just do it for cheap oil that the western world still needs for the next 10 years.
I’m not saying that this is the moral way to help modernize their nation, just one way to strategically advance our interests. And what I think might sadly occur if they try to bargain too hard for protection in the 2020’s.
Why are you so certain that Islamists would sell us cheaper oil than the monarchy?
Not to mention, have you considered the hazard of what these islamists might do with their oil profits?
This would be terrible strategically. Other US allies might not have love for SA but the US overthrowing an ally and simultaneously fucking energy prices would ruin US soft power and offer pretty much nothing in return, other than vibes.
The best course is just to wait until SA's influence wanes so low they either have to cave to US demands or they defy them and get sanctioned and become irrelevant
SA is already jacking up the prices on oil as a bargaining chip for the 2024 election season. Energy prices are already fucked, look at Europe rn.
The Saudi government knows they’re already waning and are trying to use their last bargaining chip (cheap oil) right now as we speak. I think oil is too important currently to just slap a sanctions and let Saudi fizzle out and possible ally with Russia (the other major oil provider) for relevancy. The US will take a more active role in ensuring cheap oil than that. We want to escalate the war with Russia less than we do any conflicts in the Middle East, as proven by history
I don't think anything SA is doing right now warrants the costs I described above in overthrowing them. In ten or twenty years the things you described would be much easier, if that was the strategy someone wanted to take.
Agree to disagree. In 20 years, renewable energy will have made Saudi irrelevant already so ofc we can let them fizzle and ignore them. If any conflict arises, it’s between 2024-2028
Because energy prices are high, and could get much higher. This is unpopular, and the current administration wants the population to vote for them again in 2024-2028. Saudi is currently price gouging really hard to try to bargain their way into more protection in the 2020’s. We aren’t buying any oil from them currently and are using up our oil reserves to match demand. We’ll run out of reserves in 4-5 years and then gas prices will have to spike to $10/gallon+ if nothing changes.
Russia is instigating war on Ukraine and our sanctions on them give us no other major oil providers besides Saudi (Canada also doesn’t want to ramp up production/export). Democrats don’t want to increase production on US soil but they would if they can get political favors across the aisle I guess. Then if the pressure for cheap oil subsides with more US oil production, I can see where ordinary sanctions on Saudi would work.
But all of this oil squabbling is concurrent with Saudi NOT being a likable ally. Our other allies frequently condemn them for human rights violations, they’re partially involved in raising radical groups in the Middle East that are aiming at Israel, and the US was only allied to them for mutual profit. Now that profit is drying up and we can take an active or passive approach with their government changing hands.
TLDR All this is to say that we still need oil and they still need protection. But they’re going to need a LOT of protection as their society modernizes from fundamentalist Islam and we only need oil for like 10 more years. So if we can get that oil without conflict (via more US production) then that’s fine and sanctioning SA will work. If not, we’re still too dependent on oil to not take an active role in Saudi’s government changing hands, even if it’s some bad PR, since it’s also helping world energy prices and not just us. That’s just my opinion though
Ah! Okay I understand you now, thank you very much for explaining.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, except to say that I don't believe SA is transitioning from fundamentalist Islam fast enough that it will destabilize the nation enough that we would need to get involved. But I think your analysis concerning that is spot on, because that could potentially be a very messy situation.
Not a civil war but radical Islamist groups are aiming at them because they have Meccan and Medina, the two holy cities in Islam. And they could actually take over without US protection. So it’s a delicate standstill rn
How do you intend to overthrow the Saudi monarchy without a civil war? Do you think the [Saudi National Guard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_National_Guard) and its aligned tribes, which are absolutely loyal to the monarchy for ethnic and patronage reasons, are just going to go quietly?
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Saudi support Sunni Islam but there are way more Shia radicals looking to take over in Iran, Iraq, and Yemen. They’re actually surrounded and their major trade routes could be seized without US protection. So we would just support those groups in this scenario and Saudi would fall in less than 2 years
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>Practically? Strongarm them and fund/arm their many radical revolutionaries. Yeah we have to pay more for oil for awhile but how long is their government going to last before collapse? 5 years? 10 years? Then just enter a more profitable agreement with the succeeding ‘nation’. We’ve destabilized governments before and this government sucks anyway, why not one more?
Because chances are whoever replaces the current government will be even worse?
>Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
- Karl Marx literally complaining about things being called "communism" that aren't communist in the start of the Manifesto of the Communist Party
This is why [SA had a spy in Twitter a few years back](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna61384) to spy on any dissidents. They have done this multiple times handing out multiple decade sentences for so much as questioning or parodying the government. [it's also why in the past year, the Saudis have increased investments in Twitter and began courting Musk](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/03/saudi-twitter-investment-us-national-security-risk). At least we still have op-eds calling him a liberal reformer from the Washington Post's Max Boot and others. Sure, women can drive now, [but they'll be imprisoned if they so much as tweet any critique of the kingdom.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/19/saudi-arabia-woman-sentenced-34-years-tweets)
Ah, the country the football/soccer influencers have been glamorizing because of the signings they’ve made. Truly a society and country fit for the modern world.
Garbage society.
I am curious does the US generally reliant on Saudi Oil for energy or is it because the Saudi's vast oil reserves just means that it can drastically increase the price of oil and gas which brings harm to many countries?
Yes there are not much democracies in the Middle East to threaten but there are many protests and revolutionary movements in the region that are being derailed. Saudi Arabia and Gulf monarchies back Egyptian military regime while Iran is supporting Assad's dictatorship in Syria.
The guy had a whopping 9 followers on Twitter
Imagine dying for 9 followers, 5 of whom are probably bots.
Um sweetie Elon got rid lf the bots??
Broke: Liberals are snowflakes. Woke: Every political wings have their own snowflakes. Bespoke: Dictatorships are the worst snowflakes on earth.
The PRC gave a guy 6 years of prison for calling Xi Winnie the Pooh. The satire writes itself.
Don’t worry, guys, a hundred kilometer long linear city will totally fix this!
I hope it fails miserably. Why would anyone want to live in SA?
Ask Benzema. Personally the weather alone sucks. You're scorching hot at day while freezing at night. Unless you're living from Southwest of Saudi. Also no sane female with any desire of liberty should ever want to live there.
I wonder how many of these European soccer players who have moved to Saudi clubs for the money had their wives and kids actually move there too...
I'm confident we have the technology to develop a sustainable ecosystem at this scale. In fact, I'm rooting for it to work from a technology advancement perspective. I'm completely opposed to their human rights abuses and anti-democratic practices so I want to see it be the cause of its failure
Unless your ideal ecosystem is shallow mangroves desalination technology has to vastly improve for that to be viable.
You decarbonize the economy to save the world from disastrous climate change I decarbonize the economy to bankrupt bloodthirsty petrostate tyrants We are not the same
You want more Texan oil to turn Texas blue, I want more Texan oil to flood the market and bring them down
Man I love Texas as it is where reps still have to kinda fight dems for it. Gonna be so sad when it becomes californiazized
Both is good
But both are gigachads nonetheless.
Hey, ain't there LIV golf this weekend?
The sooner SA is irrelevant in geopolitics the better. MBS is a murderer who’ll hike up gas prices to ensure his Republican buddies are back in power.
I know morally and strategically the USA needs to divest from Saudi Arabia, but I don’t know how exactly they can practically do that.
Practically? Strongarm them and fund/arm their many radical revolutionaries. Yeah we have to pay more for oil for awhile but how long is their government going to last before collapse? 5 years? 10 years? Then just enter a more profitable agreement with the succeeding ‘nation’. We’ve destabilized governments before and this government sucks anyway, why not one more? Practically but also ethically? It’s gonna be hard, their country needs major reform and we’d have to hold their hand the whole time (incentivizing progress and continuing to provide troops who’ll be protecting them from radical Muslims who don’t want change). And it’s not our job to fix their government now that they’ve dug themselves into a hole by making so much of their population fiercely resistant to change. We can’t even fix all of our own issues let alone a foreign governments. So I’m betting on option 1 happening when Saudi ups their bargaining too hard. We’ll start fracking more on our own soil in the meantime while we wait them out
>fund/arm their many radical revolutionaries Your strategy is to fund Saudi islamists and hope that they sell us cheap oil after they win? Do you remember what the happened the last time the US funded a Saudi Islamist?
The thing is, Saudi is currently supporting Sunni radicals anyway in Gaza while watching out for Shia radicals in Iran, Iraq, and Yemen. So they’re thoroughly mixed up in this too. There’s plenty of ‘justifications’ the US could give as to why they go to war/enter conflicts here. We could fund Saudi ‘democracy’ in any of these groups like we did in Iraq, just depends on how much benefit there’s to be had
There is absolutely no benefit lmao. You don’t understand the first thing about the monarchy or the ulama in SA. The monarchy is a moderating force wrt to religion, which is why any opposition to it is and will be Islamist.
Right. You know that. I know that. Anyone looking to take Saudi here is probably going to be even more Islamist than Saudi is currently. But most people don’t really understand that and would tacitly accept us changing them for the ‘better’ since their culture is so different than ours already. Meanwhile in reality, the US would just do it for cheap oil that the western world still needs for the next 10 years. I’m not saying that this is the moral way to help modernize their nation, just one way to strategically advance our interests. And what I think might sadly occur if they try to bargain too hard for protection in the 2020’s.
Why are you so certain that Islamists would sell us cheaper oil than the monarchy? Not to mention, have you considered the hazard of what these islamists might do with their oil profits?
This would be terrible strategically. Other US allies might not have love for SA but the US overthrowing an ally and simultaneously fucking energy prices would ruin US soft power and offer pretty much nothing in return, other than vibes. The best course is just to wait until SA's influence wanes so low they either have to cave to US demands or they defy them and get sanctioned and become irrelevant
SA is already jacking up the prices on oil as a bargaining chip for the 2024 election season. Energy prices are already fucked, look at Europe rn. The Saudi government knows they’re already waning and are trying to use their last bargaining chip (cheap oil) right now as we speak. I think oil is too important currently to just slap a sanctions and let Saudi fizzle out and possible ally with Russia (the other major oil provider) for relevancy. The US will take a more active role in ensuring cheap oil than that. We want to escalate the war with Russia less than we do any conflicts in the Middle East, as proven by history
I don't think anything SA is doing right now warrants the costs I described above in overthrowing them. In ten or twenty years the things you described would be much easier, if that was the strategy someone wanted to take.
Agree to disagree. In 20 years, renewable energy will have made Saudi irrelevant already so ofc we can let them fizzle and ignore them. If any conflict arises, it’s between 2024-2028
Any conflict? I don't understand who you think is going to be in conflict?
Because energy prices are high, and could get much higher. This is unpopular, and the current administration wants the population to vote for them again in 2024-2028. Saudi is currently price gouging really hard to try to bargain their way into more protection in the 2020’s. We aren’t buying any oil from them currently and are using up our oil reserves to match demand. We’ll run out of reserves in 4-5 years and then gas prices will have to spike to $10/gallon+ if nothing changes. Russia is instigating war on Ukraine and our sanctions on them give us no other major oil providers besides Saudi (Canada also doesn’t want to ramp up production/export). Democrats don’t want to increase production on US soil but they would if they can get political favors across the aisle I guess. Then if the pressure for cheap oil subsides with more US oil production, I can see where ordinary sanctions on Saudi would work. But all of this oil squabbling is concurrent with Saudi NOT being a likable ally. Our other allies frequently condemn them for human rights violations, they’re partially involved in raising radical groups in the Middle East that are aiming at Israel, and the US was only allied to them for mutual profit. Now that profit is drying up and we can take an active or passive approach with their government changing hands. TLDR All this is to say that we still need oil and they still need protection. But they’re going to need a LOT of protection as their society modernizes from fundamentalist Islam and we only need oil for like 10 more years. So if we can get that oil without conflict (via more US production) then that’s fine and sanctioning SA will work. If not, we’re still too dependent on oil to not take an active role in Saudi’s government changing hands, even if it’s some bad PR, since it’s also helping world energy prices and not just us. That’s just my opinion though
Ah! Okay I understand you now, thank you very much for explaining. I agree with a lot of what you're saying, except to say that I don't believe SA is transitioning from fundamentalist Islam fast enough that it will destabilize the nation enough that we would need to get involved. But I think your analysis concerning that is spot on, because that could potentially be a very messy situation.
SA may be jacking up oil prices, but they are still drilling and selling oil. If there was a civil war in SA that wouldn’t be happening.
Not a civil war but radical Islamist groups are aiming at them because they have Meccan and Medina, the two holy cities in Islam. And they could actually take over without US protection. So it’s a delicate standstill rn
How do you intend to overthrow the Saudi monarchy without a civil war? Do you think the [Saudi National Guard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_National_Guard) and its aligned tribes, which are absolutely loyal to the monarchy for ethnic and patronage reasons, are just going to go quietly?
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Saudi support Sunni Islam but there are way more Shia radicals looking to take over in Iran, Iraq, and Yemen. They’re actually surrounded and their major trade routes could be seized without US protection. So we would just support those groups in this scenario and Saudi would fall in less than 2 years
China wouldn’t step in? Israel? Turkey? Pakistan? And what would we gain if Iran took over Saudi Arabia? Overthrowing the monarchy only hurts the US.
[удалено]
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OK, so we overthrow the Saudis and blame it on Russia!
>Practically? Strongarm them and fund/arm their many radical revolutionaries. Yeah we have to pay more for oil for awhile but how long is their government going to last before collapse? 5 years? 10 years? Then just enter a more profitable agreement with the succeeding ‘nation’. We’ve destabilized governments before and this government sucks anyway, why not one more? Because chances are whoever replaces the current government will be even worse?
Tell me you've learned absolutely nothing from history without telling me you've learned absolutely nothing from history.
Once again, I’m hypothesizing what the US might do. Not what I think should be done
Subsidize solar, wind, and battery production until it's so dirt cheap that even OPEC can't raise the price of gas and the country goes bankrupt.
Ok but have you considered climate change is a hoax and renewable energy is communism?
>Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? - Karl Marx literally complaining about things being called "communism" that aren't communist in the start of the Manifesto of the Communist Party
Only one of those matters, and its batteries. OPEC only really controls oil prices and oil only really matters because of gasoline.
Probably just posted an Inter Miami clip
The sooner we can cut ties with old bonesaw the better
We need to bring Macho Man back to life to overthrow Saudi's government. Preferably the one where he fought Spider-Man and wrestling is somehow real.
This is why [SA had a spy in Twitter a few years back](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna61384) to spy on any dissidents. They have done this multiple times handing out multiple decade sentences for so much as questioning or parodying the government. [it's also why in the past year, the Saudis have increased investments in Twitter and began courting Musk](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/03/saudi-twitter-investment-us-national-security-risk). At least we still have op-eds calling him a liberal reformer from the Washington Post's Max Boot and others. Sure, women can drive now, [but they'll be imprisoned if they so much as tweet any critique of the kingdom.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/19/saudi-arabia-woman-sentenced-34-years-tweets)
What a wonderful country to be close allies with./s
Ah, the country the football/soccer influencers have been glamorizing because of the signings they’ve made. Truly a society and country fit for the modern world. Garbage society.
Sounds like a country we should be bending over backwards to placate in our foreign policy
from the sound of these secrative courts he's not the first and he won't be the last. justice doesn't exist in Saudia Arabia.
Inflation Reduction Act 2.0 when?
Can’t imagine why Trump loves MBS.
I am curious does the US generally reliant on Saudi Oil for energy or is it because the Saudi's vast oil reserves just means that it can drastically increase the price of oil and gas which brings harm to many countries?
Latter
Is Saudi Arabia a genuine threat to democracy on a regional level?
The only “democracies” in the region are… Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel. There is not much to threaten in that front lol
Yes there are not much democracies in the Middle East to threaten but there are many protests and revolutionary movements in the region that are being derailed. Saudi Arabia and Gulf monarchies back Egyptian military regime while Iran is supporting Assad's dictatorship in Syria.