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Just weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia to strengthen ties with the brutal regime, his administration has approved two massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) worth more than $5 billion. Previously, the company fired $650 million worth of air-to-air missiles into Riyadh in November 2021 in a criminal war against Yemeni civilians.
Included in the sale are the $3 billion Saudi Arabian Patriot missile and the $2.2 billion Emirati high-altitude missile system designed to protect the corrupt oil monarch from rocket attacks by Yemen’s Houthi-led rebel movement.
The U.S. State Department, which is seeking congressional approval for the deal, said the proposed sale would “support U.S. foreign policy and national security by helping to improve the security of a key regional partner. The UAE is a U.S. partner critical to political stability and economic development in the Middle East. .”
Biden had pledged during his campaign to treat Saudi Arabia as a “untouchable state” because of its appalling human rights record and the signing of Saudi insider and dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Terrible assassination in 2018. He also pledged to cut off or reduce sales of “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing their attacks on civilians in Yemen. But that is nothing compared to the more pressing needs of Washington’s geostrategic interests.
Last month, Reuters reported that the Biden administration was discussing lifting the U.S. ban on offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
Since the Saudi-UAE-led coalition invaded Yemen in April 2015, international human rights groups — including New York-based Human Rights Watch and the London-based Anti-Arms Trade Movement — have documented the coalition’s use of U.S. and British weapons. Circumstances unlawful air strikes, including unquestioned war crimes, violate Washington and London’s own arms sales policies. The two imperialist warmongers wereted no time in justifying their belligerent behavior in the name of human rights, and they also provided political and diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the United Nations, even as their blockade of the impoverished country kept millions at risk In danger of famine.
This guardian The Biden administration is also reportedly exploring the creation of a new international committee to document and report on human rights abuses in Yemen, including representatives of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the country’s puppet government. Intensive lobbying in Riyadh blocked an earlier UN Human Rights Council investigation into possible war crimes. As you can imagine, there would be an uproar if President Vladimir Putin was included in a panel investigating Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.
The political reasons for Washington’s support for two of the most authoritarian regimes on Earth are obvious. They are a key market for U.S. weapons and play a vital role in repressing the working class on behalf of U.S. imperialism in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and across the region, supporting Washington’s rule in the resource-rich Middle East. They are allied with Israel on the U.S.-led anti-Iran axis, which threatens to plunge the region into another disastrous war.
The economic reasons are little known. As the U.S. becomes more self-sufficient in oil, oil monarchs look elsewhere for customers. By 2020, Gulf countries supply 40% of China’s oil imports, 16% of which will come from Saudi Arabia. Saudi trade with China soared from $3 billion in 2000 to $67 billion in 2021, while trade with the United States rose from $20.5 billion to $24.8 billion over the same period. While China’s 25-year, $400 billion trade and investment deal with Iran has come a long way, even at about $16 billion a year, that’s still far less than Beijing’s trade with Riyadh.
Merchandise trade between the Middle East and China has grown substantially, reaching $272 billion in 2020. Also, despite intense pressure from Washington, no Middle Eastern country has banned Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s 5G network. Beijing is now the largest single regional investor and trading partner of 11 countries in the Middle East. The Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to put China at the center of global trade, is the basis for agreements with 21 countries in the region.
Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all have “comprehensive strategic partnerships” with China, while Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Qatar are “strategic partners”. Turkey has a “strategic partnership” with China and Israel has a “comprehensive innovation partnership”. Tel Aviv’s extensive ties to Chinese defense technology have sometimes brought it into conflict with Washington.
A key element of China’s Belt and Road Initiative is the development and expansion of ports and industrial parks in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti (China’s only overseas military base) to ensure the delivery of goods to Africa, Europe and beyond.
More importantly, the talks, in Wall Street Journal In March last year, some oil sales to China were priced in yuan between Beijing and Riyadh. The move would weaken the dollar’s role in global oil markets. Under an agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, all oil sales anywhere in the world were made in dollars and recycled back to the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom as a sovereign reserve asset in exchange for military support and security.
The petrodollar system underpins the U.S. financial system, enabling it to finance its soaring debt — the U.S. is the world’s largest creditor nation — and the dollar’s ​​status as the world’s reserve currency. While the United States accounts for about 20 percent of global GDP, nearly 90 percent of international currency transactions and 60 percent of foreign exchange reserves are in dollars.
But foreign investment no longer finances U.S. debt as it once did. Since the 2008 financial crisis and the most recent pandemic crisis, the Fed has sought to protect financial markets through quantitative easing and to buy U.S. debt on its own. As a result, holdings of U.S. Treasuries by foreign central banks and foreign investors as a percentage of total U.S. public debt fell by about 50%.
The prospect of Riyadh accepting yuan payments is completely unacceptable to Washington. It would further wreak havoc on the dollar-based system after Russia and Iran, under pressure from U.S. sanctions, tried to make payments in different currencies. Iraq’s effort to avoid sanctions by selling oil in euros was one of the factors that led the Bush administration to declare war on Iraq in 2003, despite opposition from European powers.
Biden has fairly publicly declared that his trip to Saudi Arabia last month was an effort to strengthen the U.S. position in the region, which has weakened under his watch, to counter its rivals: “I think Make it clear that instead of creating a vacuum, a vacuum that China and/or Russia will fill, we can continue to lead in the region.”
Relations with the Gulf state began to cool after President Barack Obama refused to support Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in his overthrow of his government during mass protests in 2011 and threatened Saudi clients in Bahrain and Yemen. They became more tense after Washington signed the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran — Riyadh and Abu Dhabi accused Iran of backing the Houthi rebels that overthrew Riyadh’s puppet government in Yemen in 2015 — and the missile attack on the Houthis almost No action was taken.
Russia has successfully thwarted an attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, orchestrated by Washington, and particularly strongly supported by Riyadh, and a U.S.-organized coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. caused anxiety.
Biden’s multibillion-dollar arms sales are intended as a down payment on a new partnership. The announcements come as Chinese President Xi Jinping prepares to visit Saudi Arabia as early as this week – his first overseas trip since the COVID-19 pandemic – where he is expected to be greeted with a splendid welcome. July. Shortly after Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s state-owned Sinopec, they collaborated in areas such as “carbon capture and hydrogen processes.”
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