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

To: paul_philp who wrote (95725)	4/23/2003 1:54:05 AM
From: kumar	Respond to of 281500

no magic wand, but there is 1 more context to look at Saudi Arabia with : The Saud royal family is currently accepted as the custodians of Islam especially when it relates to Mecca and Medina. Major shit could happen if they were toppled with US involvement.

To: paul_philp who wrote (95725)	4/23/2003 2:40:27 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I have a question, inspired by the anti-Realists tonight. Who are the anti-Realists, and what did they say to inspire this question? As far as the Saudis go, there is no magic wand and no way out, at least not in the short run. The house of Saud sucks, but if it falls we get state run by Wahhabi clerics, and that would suck more. That would leave us with few options. We could seize the oilfields and leave the rest of the country, including Mecca and Medina, to the Wahhabis, but that rest of the country would soon become a terrorist breeding ground. Regime change would be easy from a military perspective, but what would we change it to? Not even mentioning the overall reaction we'd get if we send troops into the holy places. We'd also have to come up with a pretext for the invasion. WMD won't do it; they don't have any. And so on. Long term, the solution is to reduce our dependence on oil to the point where we don't need the Saudis, but even then they can be a pain in our ass. More terrorists and terrorist support come out of there than ever came out of Iraq. Dig yourself a hole that deep, it ain't going to be easy to find a way out. Current policy? Maintain status quo and look hard for another option. What else is there?

To: paul_philp who wrote (95725)	4/23/2003 1:08:55 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Respond to of 281500

Paul the anti-Realisted don't solve problem they simply trace back through time until they see the hand of the US or Great Britain (or the West) in the area and then they say see it all the US and Great Britain's fault. Given this, what would the anti-Realists say about Saudi Arabia? Well, obviously if the West wouldn't have intervened against the Ottoman empire during World War I and if the US and the West wouldn't have discovered and developed the oil in the region we would have world peace. Blah, Blah, Blah...