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Luigi Thirty posted:But you see, America is actually worse because... uh... I got nothing. Maybe the US is no better or worse than the other actors who support authoritarian and/or apartheid embracing governments who have no conjunction of using violence against their own or neighboring populations? Everyone just pretends their client-proxy relationship is somehow less horrendous than the other ones.
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Sep 28, 2015 13:42
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icantfindaname posted:yeah but it's worse because it's the ME and the undermining of liberal democracy has turned the entire region into a hellscape warzone. like africa is already a shithole, it doesn't matter if the US supports a lovely dictator there. this is literally the reason why the ME is hosed up That said, plenty other regional actors have their own part to play. Turkey, Iran and Israel at least have remained independent of Saudi influence, and have accomplished plenty of poo poo on their own. That said, I don't think the US gets a free pass as much as some people really want it to, even if US policy is so often weirdly counterproductive (look at Iranian influence in Iraq after 2003). If the Saudis fell at this point, I don't know if it would fix anything either, and would most likely enter up some type of uber-Syria complete with Shia minority and border spillage.
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Sep 28, 2015 20:10
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-Troika- posted:The US got about 13% of it's oil imports from Saudi Arabia last year, which is a lot less than we get from, say, Canada. And imports have been decreasing over the past 15 years or so, too, which is why the Saudis are so scared of shale oil. It is part of the reason why the Saudis have kept production higher amidst falling prices, they are hoping to strangle the US shale industry in order to reassert their export strategy. They are doing a fairly good job so far (and the Chinese economy is unintentionally helping them out as well).
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Sep 28, 2015 21:11
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A Winner is Jew posted:Unless they're working on fusion reactors that can fit under the hood they can only hope to stall the shale industry. Demand for oil isn't going to magically disappear unless something huge happens like the US defaulting or a magical energy device gets built. Low prices are already have a pretty disasterous effect on the industry, maybe not enough to kill but certainly enough to slow development and maybe even cap more marginal wells. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 22:34
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Bastard Tetris posted:You guys realize that Saudi Aramco can produce a barrel of oil for like 8 dollars and can keep production up until the planet kills us, right? Latest estimates is that the Saudi state itself needs Brent at $100-110 to break even, Aramco can pump the very cheaply but their entire country is based around the assumption of far more enormous profits. The Saudis have money stashed away to pay for their expenses for a while, but there is growing worry they are burning through them too quickly and building too much debt. As for the US and the Saudis, every toxic relationship has a reason for existing in the first place. The question is how much you apply that logic to other toxic relationships.
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Sep 29, 2015 12:08
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Best Friends posted:Everyone has very different ideas about what human rights abuses we're supposed to ignore and which ones we're supposed to be outraged by. Saudi Arabia is really bad and I wish we were actually openly hostile to them, and I mean that, but I think most of the posters talking about evil America enabling them here probably don't have much of a problem with the us normalizing relations with Iran, which has its God police sentence teenagers to be publicly strangled to death routinely. The naked subjectivity of Internet leftist outrage makes it lose all effect. Well isn't there a difference between relative basic ratcheting down of sanctions and selling them tons of military equipment? By the same token is there any action the US can do beyond going from being "best buddies" to "now we are going to starve you?" Do leftists really want the US to sell its highest tech arms to Iran now to balance everything out? tsa posted:Pretty much exactly what people said about the Iraq sanctions. Were leftists really ever supportive of sanctioning the Iraqi civilian population? I guess I was too young to remember but I didn't hear of Marxists lining up to go after Saddam at all costs. Bro Dad posted:It's a shame the Middle East never developed a true secular democracy due to the interference of Western imperialists Well they did do their best to make sure it didn't happen in a quite a few notable cases. No one looks that great though coming out of the modern history of the Middle East, yes including the Soviets. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 06:51
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galagazombie posted:You joke, but Democratic regimes the world over have a habit of being destroyed by western interests. Not saying theres some evil anti-democracy council siting around a dark boardroom, but you can often see how Western things like nonsense borders in Africa or Banana Republics in South America screwed them over in the cradle. The west doesn't even have to keep doing it. Once you've set ethnic group A against religious group B they'll hate each other drat near forever, and even if you change your mind you can't really get them to stop. Which is a lot of what we see in the 3rd World today. As it as been said quite a few times, no one actually cares about democracy, they just want to get poo poo done. Admittedly, the Soviets weren't probably overly concerned with worker rights in Afghanistan at the time either.
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Sep 30, 2015 07:03
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icantfindaname posted:it didn't even get far enough to hope for that, the ME was finished when the arab states were chopped up by britain and france. it was doomed to anarchy after that Admittedly, the Cold War and its aftermath also helped quite a bit as well. At this point, though Western intervention isn't even needed to keep things pretty hosed up for several generations (between the Iranian-Saudi cold war, and a bunch of collapsed countries).
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Sep 30, 2015 07:11
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Bro Dad posted:Really? I can't think of any. Iran during the 1950s, and irrevocably loving up Iraq during the 00s are usual starting places. Also, turning a blind eye to Mubarak didn't turn out to be a very sustainable strategy.
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Sep 30, 2015 07:15
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Bro Dad posted:Mohammad "but they elected me dictator!" Mosaddegh Emergency powers didn't make him an actual dictator considering what was happening, and once he was replaced Iranian democracy was completely a dead letter. If you want to say Iran at that time wasn't a true liberal democracy, that is fine, but it clearly became less of one through the intervention of the West. There is a pretty clear difference between Mosaddegh's policies and then what the Shah did when he actually took power. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 07:30
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Bro Dad posted:That is exactly what I'm saying actually. There is no proof Mossadegh would have give up his absolute powers, and to say otherwise is simply trying to argue a counterfactual. Not to say he was in any way a bad leader, it just puts him on the same level as Nasser. The type of powers Mossadegh was requesting though weren't on par with the type of state that the Shah built though, and to be honest Mossadegh was in a pretty weak position and was expecting to be overthrown from either from the left or the right for a while. Sure, Iranian democracy was more of a concept at that point than anything, but circumstances moved far further way from it due to the coup and the new regime. Ah but there is a difference between saying "only the West" strangled democracy versus they have played a major part in strangling it. You can criticize the relationship of the US and the Saudis without saying Iran are the "good guys" or that the Saudis need to be sanctioned/bombed. That said, even with the Ayatollah, for most people (non-royals) it is better to live in Iran than Saudi Arabia. As for the US, it is rather unclear what the current administration wants at this point since so much of our foreign policy seems to be a big question mark. Frostwerks posted:There's been a precipitous decline in new users per month so I'd say it's a foregone conclusion. I decided to check some of the stats, yeah it is actually pretty grim. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 07:52
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Bro Dad posted:Except I haven't heard a good argument on America strangling democracy in the Middle East other than Mossadegh maybe resigning his powers and that Bush didn't do a good enough job in Iraq. I actually agree about Saudi sanctions but to say the US taking the cheap oil in exchange for looking the other way is responsible for its current state is hella disingenuous. Granted, we have done more than take cheap oil but actively worked with their government and its military and have done so with the other gulf states as well, all of which are repressive authoritarian regimes. Then you have the US' relation Egypt-Israel, which is also very messy and definitions of "democracy" get pretty sketchy. Sure, the US isn't the only actor here, and no one really seems that interested in actual functional democracy at this point but the US doesn't have a good track record at all. That said, I get the realpolitik explanation for it, just a spade needs to be called a spade at a certain point. I have no illusions that Putin deeply cares for the Syrian people either. quote:I think Bush kind of poisoned the well on the US having a "decisive" foreign policy for a good long time, especially in the Middle East. Bush should take most of the blame no doubt, that said it is rather unclear what our objectives even are at this point (even from the point of sheer curiosity). That said, in the case of the US maybe a lack of clarity isn't the worst thing. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 08:13
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blowfish posted:True. Democracy at best only matters within your own country so you can feel good about yourself. In the context of "spreading democracy" in the Middle East, it more or less turned out to be feel good exercises that are completely subordinate to realpolitik. Also, I always thought end of "Three Kings" was more neo-con than leftist in its politics and sort of came out of nowhere. I guess it is always in the eye of beholder. That said, under Clinton, a lot of liberals did find interventionism far more acceptable (Kosovo) and largely changed their tune later under Bush. However, ultimately there was still a split between those more hawkish liberals and the peaceniks, and that continues today. pointsofdata posted:Some people get so excited about blaming current problems on "the Wests" (many) historical crimes that they deny agency to local actors, who also invade, enslave, murder, develop etc. On the same point, some people are very eager to pretend the West didn't have that much influence to begin with and it is mostly just a cultural issue with the region. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 13:10
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Spacman posted:Sure, The Kingdom of Saud sucks, but it really is the least lovely of a pile of lovely options here. A country that decapitates then crucifies a dude vs indescriminate mass executions into a ditch. Pretty much any other option is better than ISIS or the Saudis though.
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Oct 2, 2015 16:39
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