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I think our relationship with the Saudi's makes a mockery of/destroys claims to be a moral player in the geopolitical arena.
Mind you, pursuing illegal wars etc does that fairly effectively anyway, so flogging the Saudi's a bunch of Eurofighters probably pales in comparison.
I still totally disagree with our doing it, however - lets turn the BAe crew toward signals intelligence work rather than selling their labour to cunts.
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Yes. There are definitely degrees of support.
I also wonder if we've got to the stage where we've supported them for so long that we don't have much other choice.
They've already created a tonne of sovereign wealth, established a successful extreme/orthodox islamist state and exported and consolidated an extreme religious doctrine globally. How do you actually roll that back now?
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claims to be a moral player
I guess for me that just it. It's just a political pipe dream.
Other than politicians tooting their own horn,who actually thinks that the West has any moral basis to lecture anyone?
Empires. Backing genocidal nutters. Invading for our own ends. That's how everyone else sees the West.
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We're the good guys in films, (the west, not the Brits, we're the evil genius) that's what counts.
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Because your assertion that western governments want war in Syria/northern Iraq to keep oil prices low makes no sense.
Ah, I wouldn't say that, but I may not have been clear. Or I may indeed be talking bollocks, in which case tell me if the following is. I said:
Needless to say, certain Western powers have no interest in bringing stability to the region, as this would mean an increased oil price.
By 'region' I mean the whole region, not only Syria and Iraq. By 'stability' (or lack thereof) I mean to refer to the long history of divide-and-rule in the region, typically arming the minority somewhere against the majority in 'post-colonial' (really 'quasi-post-colonial') textbook politics (but also dividing countries and other countries), installing and propping up kleptocracies which kowtow to the West's interest in a lower oil price than they should be charging. This has a long-term effect that offsets the inevitable fluctuations in price based on supply factors.
Were the Near and Middle East able to emancipate themselves and charge realistic prices for their resources, the world's economy would become more balanced pretty damn quickly.
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The OPEC countries do charge realistic prices for their commodities. They already hiked the price when they realised their power - hence the oil shocks of the 1970s. What they charge now is largely a function of what the market will bear. Too high a price and the market will develop alternatives - such as renewables, or such as the horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques that have made shale exploitable. Now OPEC is allowing prices to stay low - rather than rebalancing the market as they have previously done at times of cyclical, rather than structural, oversupply - because they want to kill off a chunk of US shale, which is a threat to their political/economic power. Making renewables that bit harder to do is probably just a bonus.
I say OPEC. This policy is largely the GCC's doing - the more populous OPEC states like Venezuela and Algeria and Iran would much prefer a higher price, because their budgets are stretched. But the GCC, and Saudi in particular, have a point to prove.
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Interesting piece in a Reuter's blog:
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It is. The paper the article links to, and is based on, I'm currently wading through:
EDIT: It seems that this is a report commenting on the main paper by Charlie Winter which can be found here:
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This is interesting
http://m.state.gov/md250383.htm -
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France, again. :'(
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It's fair enough. He's spanish, and he's found out a relative doesn't eat pork.
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Proper Mad Max territory:
Dammit
hugo7
h2o
snottyotter
t_w
Oliver Schick
aggi
dst2
user47496
ObiWomKenobi
Chalfie-
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ISIS / IS / ISIL / The Islamic State
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While I have a deep distate for the arms trade, I can also see that a deal that keeps jobs in cities where the biggest single employer is BAe, keeps petrodollars invested in our economy and keeps intelligence cooperation running with a country that's intimately familiar with islamic radicalism might be attractive to a politician, even if it means we've basically gotten in bed with a regressive illiberal kleptocracy.
Doesn't mean I agree with it or would do similar. But it's a bit more complicated than just venal moneygrubbing.