Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumWhy the west’s view of the Saudis is shifting
S
omething is changing in the wests relationship with Saudi Arabia. You can read it in the newspapers. You can hear it from politicians. And you can see it in shifts in policy.
Hostile articles about the Saudis are now standard fare in the western press. On Sunday, the main editorial in The Observer denounced the UKs relationship with Saudi Arabia as an unedifying alliance that imperils our security. Two days earlier, the BBC ran an article highlighting an unprecedented wave of executions in Saudi Arabia. A couple of months ago, Thomas Friedman, arguably the most influential columnist in the US, labelled the terrorist group, Isis, the ideological offspring of Saudi Arabia.
Politicians are taking up similar themes. Sigmar Gabriel, Germanys vice-chancellor, has accused Saudi Arabia of funding Islamist extremism in the west and added: We have to make it clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over. In the UK, Lord Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, has called for an investigation into the funding of jihadism in Britain and pointed at Saudi Arabia.
The sudden increase in concern about Saudi Arabia is driven, in large part, by the rise of Isis. Western policymakers know that the battle with jihadism is as much about ideology as guns. When they look for a source of the Isis worldview, they increasingly trace it back to the Wahhabi philosophy promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.
Saudi influence in the west has also been weakened by other developments. The shale revolution in the US has made the west less dependent on Saudi oil. Meanwhile, the turmoil in the Middle East has shone a harsh light on Saudi foreign policy , with particular criticism aimed at the high level of civilian casualties caused by Saudi military intervention in Yemen, and Riyadhs role in crushing an uprising in Bahrain in 2011.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a33c5e6c-9ccc-11e5-8ce1-f6219b685d74.html
Over the past 18 months the US has approved the sale of more than $24bn of weaponry to Saudi Arabia.
get the red out
(13,468 posts)The Saudi elites are a wretched bunch and friends to no one.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)that they gave millions in gifts to the Clinton's.