Yeah, because selling the Shah of Iran slightly if at all inferior versions of our weapons worked out so well for us. You know, F-14s complete with AIM-54 Phoenix missiles, AH-1J Cobra gunships, TOW anti-tank missiles (Iran-Contra anyone?), HAWK surface to air missiles, and 4 modified Spruance class destroyers that were better than any destroyer in our own navy, which thankfully weren’t completed and delivered before the Shah fell. And there’s just nothing like having your own RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile shot at you.
Well, that only goes so far. Munitions is a lousy long-term basis for an economy, as some of the Stalinist régimes learned the hard way. We’re a country with a lot of universities, we could be engineering lots of stuff. Munitions for export can be selling your future enemy the rope to hang you with, or selling rope to the schmuck from whom your future enemy robs the rope to hang you with.
“What I do might not be very nice, but anyway, if I don’t do it someone else will” has never been an argument that impress me much. It can be used to justify/rationalize pretty much anything.
What exactly do you think Saudi Arabia is going to do? Who are they going to invade?
And that argument could be used to rationalize never trading anything with anybody. Because whatever we sold them could either be used as a weapon, or traded for weapons from someone else.
And there’s still that thousands of US jobs thing that you so conveniently ignore.
$66 billion out of a what, $15 trillion economy? Thousands of jobs out of 100 million households?
0.4% of the economy is not nothing, but it’s not vital. If there were a risk of these weapons falling into the hands of some invader or revolutionary, or even being used by the Saudis in an act of aggression, the cost-benefit analysis could go the other way, once we (of course) have to get involved.
Look, I don’t care that much in this case, but in general it’s overselling it to say selling munitions is great because of jobs.
How many of these mythical invaders or revolutionaries do you think could manage to start the engines on an F-15, much less get it airborne and use it effectively in combat? Fighter aircraft are not Ak-47s. They can’t be used by anybody with a trigger finger. It takes years of training to be a decent fighter pilot.
For that matter, how many of these mythical invaders or revolutionaries can even maintain an F-15? It takes a lot of training to learn how to do that, too. Even if they manage to train up some mechanics, where will they be getting the parts?
I’ve honestly never encountered someone saying we should sell weapons to evil regimes before. I mean, I know that someone has to believe it’s worth the dirty money, because the U.S. does it (against my wishes) but I’ve never actually encountered that belief in the wild.
All I can say is, wow.
Saudi Arabia is not an “evil regime”. They’re U.S. allies. I would not want to live there, but they aren’t invading their neighbors, nor are they likely to do so in the foreseeable future.
Everyone else does, why shouldn’t we? Unless that’s an admission that the US is exceptional and should set an exceptional example. One that say, France, wouldn’t emulate.
Yes it is.
That regime oppresses women and engages in human trafficking. Being a customer or even an ally doesn’t magically suspend wrongdoing.
Being a good citizen doesn’t make make the evil of beating your children go away.
Saudi Arabia isn’t evil because they aren’t invading anyone? Is this the sole criterion we use now for deciding whether some country is evil?
I guess that makes the United States one evil mother fucking country then, if invasion is your idea of what constitutes evil.
They’re U.S. allies in much the same way that Pakistan is, and they have been helping the tyrannical regime in their neighbouring Bahrain repress a popular uprising, as well as repressing similar uprising within its own borders, and arming dubious Syrian rebel fractions, a large number of the foreign militants the U.S. fought in Iraq were Saudis, the majority of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, they have been funding various international terrorists organisations, etc.
However the arms sales to Saudi Arabia is basically a good thing and an international stabilizing factor, since Saudi money spend on bombs are money not spend on furthering international Wahhabis Islamism. And they’re never going to be able to spend the advanced arms effectively anyway. A squadron of Saudi F-15 planes or German Leopard tanks may be a slight deterrent to Iran (though I doubt Iran is overly worried about Saudi Arabia’s own capabilities), but they’re never going to pose a serious thread to any Western military force since the pilots and tank crews, etc. are simply too incompetent. Perhaps if Saudi Arabia outsourced their military to Philippine maids it would become more effective.
The hell they’re not.
Makes the KimJongs practically saints (not the first one, of course).
F-14 parts are hard for Iran to come by because they were the only export customer for the aircraft. F-15s, conversely, are in use in a half dozen countries (including some technology transfer), making finding parts much easier.
According to wikipedia, Eagles are flown by the U.S., Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia. Which of those nations are likely to supply a suddenly and inexplicably turned rogue Saudi Arabia with any damn thing the U.S. does not want them to have?
Yes, just like all the pilots in Iran forgot how to fly when the Shah fell.
You should take this up with the crew of the USS Wainwright. They must not have had a Harpoon missile fired at them in 1988; the Iranians wouldn’t have been able to maintain them.
All of them, in the sense that parts from all of them are likely to appear on the black market.