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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (18675)	2/12/2002 3:26:40 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

So, at the end of the day, all you have left is oil. Their need to sell it and our need to buy it. The power of S Arabia as world's swing producer will lessen in the next few years as new energy technologies come to market. US's profligate energy policy is a self indulgence. Too bad neither the gasoline tax folk nor the conservation folk have been successful. The latter have been remarkably restrained with their 'told you so's'. Short term, I don't think Bush's energy policy will be helpful unless circumstances push price of oil very high, then alternative energy programs will get big support. I've been saying for a long while now that Saudi Arabia is not an American ally. It can't be because it's the Conneticut Yankee's kingdom come alive. It's rulers have been using the country's income in operations of largesse in the same way medieval barons and kings did supporting large numbers of dependents. Some utterly huge %age of the population is directly dependent on the royal family. The Afghans have more potential to be allies - they, at least, are in the early twentieth century. SA is King Arthur and Sir Gawain with cars, tanks, guns and rice krispies. Its schools and universities have medieval curricula. They have the means at hand to update that because of all the people they sent abroad for education but will not because of their blinding theocratic concerns. SA, is, in any case, not a country of @ 20 million in effective population because it forbids half the population meaningful activity. So, it's a country of 10 million and at least half of them are effectively dysfunctional. So really you are looking at a country of about 5million medieval savages sitting on the world's largest supply of oil. The Belgian police force could probably take the place over. As soon as the Americans go very far away S. Hussein will perk right up. The only restraint on him would be Iran, or it's wacko mullahs might pre-empt him, or the two might decide to divvy the place up. The Iranian mullahs might go for it if they could have Mecca. They're a basket case and most Saudis don't even know it. The ones that do are bluffing like crazy - its a middle eastern Oz with a god crazed mullah behind the curtain shouting into a top of the line PA system. The country would have been better off without the oil. If the mullahs weren't so socially repressive the country would be one of the world's greatest tourism sites. Folk go there on the Haj but nobody goes to Saudi Arabia for a vacation. What joyful muslim would pack up the wife and kids and go there for a holiday, tour the sites, go camping, relax at the beach? Alexandria's a better bet. So are Tunisia, or France, Greece, Turkey, or Italy. Or Qatar, but it's small and doesn't have a draw like Mecca. And that's where they go; anyplace but Saudi. Then there's all the non-muslims who'd love to visit.... Winter vacations in Arabia Ultima - it's sunny and 77F on the coast - sunbathing, skin diving, golf, tennis. But of course you can't go because your wife will either drown in all those clothes or be flogged or something for wearing a bathing suit or tennis clothes. The mullah slogan: Purity and poverty are better than pollution. There's going to be lots more poverty soon.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (18675)	2/12/2002 3:41:44 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So, at the end of the day, all you have left is oil. Their need to sell it and our need to buy it. True enough, but at the end of the day there wasn't much more to the Gulf War. I can't see where the Kuwaitis were any more democratic or sympathetic to our values than the Saudis are. Maybe a little more decadent and a little less theocratic than the Saudis, but pretty much the same arbitrary semi-feudal family monarchy. My recollection is most of the native population was out of the country when Iraq invaded, August not being the most pleasant time in the Gulf. The US could, in principle, do something about our need to buy it. In practice, given the pre-9/11 Cheney/Lay collaboration on energy policy, and the post-9/11 "Hydrogen fuel cells in 10 years" hypothetical miracle solution on the conservation front, our need to buy it isn't likely to diminish. Anyway, it's a global market, and the Saudis are the low cost producers. The US could spurn the Saudis, but how much of the world would follow is questionable. I can't, for example, see the pre-9/11 preferred demon of the right, China, turning down cheap Saudi oil. A funny story: I used to have the pleasure of being represented in Washington by a Senator who must have had the biggest "For Sale" sign in DC on his back. Representing an oilless and not particularly urban or populous upper midwest state, he was supposedly at one time the #1 Senate recipient of both oil and Israeli PAC money. I have no idea how he reconciled the interests of his paymasters, but it couldn't have had much to to with representing his constituents. After 12 years, he was somewhat miraculously defeated by the current Senate co-leader on campaign finance reform.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (18675)	2/13/2002 1:30:54 AM
From: SirRealist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So, at the end of the day, all you have left is oil. Their need to sell it and our need to buy it. That plus their goodly contributions to US politicians, their purchases of arms which sustain US defense corporations, their purchases of higher education which sustain US universities, their natural gas deals which sustain the oil corporations, and the sheer weight of their investments in US markets from stocks & bonds to real estate (which with modest withdrawals could rock those markets). I'm afraid the intertwinings are too great to dismiss it as all about oil now. That's where it began, but it is far more complex now. Considering their interests and ours, it seems likely we will pressure them to cut back financial ties to the violent extremists, and in return, we will ease out our presence in their country. Longer term, the oil reserves of Kazakhstan and alternate energy technologies will ultimately ease us out of that unwholesome relationship. But near term, the Saudi bankroll is a very sticky web that cannot be escaped without changing the underbelly of US politics and some major market underpinnings.