The big news today is that Barack Obama has agreed to sell Saudi Arabia $60 billion worth of military weaponry. The deal includes 84 new F-15 fighters, upgrades to 70 existing F-15s that the U.S. has already sold to the Saudis in the past, 70 new Apache Helicopters, 36 Little Birds Helicopters, and 72 Blackhawk Helicopters. The reaction towards this story seems to be overwhelmingly negative based on the comments I’ve read on news websites. I’ll try my best in this blog entry to provide a “fair” analysis of this deal in hopes I can differentiate my reaction to this deal from others’.
Proponents of this deal could make the following points. Whether I agree with them is a different matter…
- Saudi Arabia needs this weaponry because they are terrified of the Iranian regime.
- Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally so arming them poses little threat to harming direct U.S. interests at the present time.
- Saudi Arabia already possesses these weapons so the U.S. is not really selling the Saudis technology that they do not have or aren’t aware of.
- The deal may preserve U.S. jobs and is good for the U.S. economy.
- The U.S. needs to continue to sell Saudi Arabia items that it wants because they may grow tired of accepting U.S. dollars as the main unit of exchange for oil if the U.S. won’t provide them with items they want for the dollars they hold. The Saudis dropping the U.S. dollar as the main unit of exchange could be a disaster for the U.S.
Although I’ve listed some points that proponents of the deal can make, there are some major problems with this deal.
1. A deal like this could escalate a Middle East arms race. For instance, the Iranian regime could view this deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as a threat to its security. This could lead to Iran seeking even more weaponry from Russia and China.
2. There is a real possibility that this deal can backfire if the Saudi monarchy is overthrown by a radical group of people (the Saudi monarchy is not exactly a model of stability as a recent analysis of regime fragility around the world ranked Saudi Arabia’s fragility at par with North Korea’s). If a radical regime takes hold in Saudi Arabia this weaponry becomes a problem for the U.S. and for Israel.
3. This arms deal is a slap in the face to Israel. Obama contemplated denying weaponry that Israel needs to combat Iran earlier this year, but he has no problem selling the Saudis weaponry now. Israel could interpret this deal as a sign that Obama favors Saudi Arabia more than them. In addition, I imagine the Israeli government feels a bit uneasy today knowing that the U.S. is arming an adversary with more quality weaponry.
4. This weaponry could be used in the End Times against Israel as the Saudis are likely going to be an enemy of Israel during the End Times.
Overall, I would not have done this deal if I were President of the United States because of the potential, long-term geopolitical ramifications that I’ve listed above. The deal certainly has some short-term benefits like potentially preserving U.S. jobs and providing some business for U.S. companies. However, the potential problems this deal could cause in the long-term outweigh the benefits this deal would provide in the short-term. Sadly, most political decisions are based on how much the decision-maker benefits in the short-term.
Whatever you think about this arms deal it shows that the U.S. is willing to sell just about anything to anyone for the right price. I wonder if the U.S. government would be willing to sell ownership of Boeing or Raytheon to China when it has difficulty repaying China the hundreds of billions of dollars that it owes them in the future…
