The Arab countries had been duped and taken for a cruel ride for decades by the Americans and the West. They played up their differences, and behind their backs, instigated them to fight with each other, using one to threaten another. Other than so many lives lost, animosity, mutual suspicion and hatred, both sides wasted a lot of money buying weapons to fight each other, even became dependent on the Americans and the West for their national securities. The biggest victim and loser was Saudi Arabia, rich and vulnerable with Iran as their biggest threat and enemy.
The Americans took full advantage of this, kept stirring and provoking the Iranians to attack or threaten to attack Saudi Arabia, making them more paranoid with their own security. The Americans then continue to feed them with all kinds of threats, fictitious, imagined, cooked up by the Americans, to frighten the Saudis to high heavens. And Trump offered to protect the Saudis for a handsome sum of US$500b annually as protection money. On top of this, Trump wanted full control of Saudi's oil production and setting the price of oil. And there will be many American bases in Saudi Arabia. It all added up to turn Saudi Arabia into a protectorate of the Americans, paying a huge ransom to the Americans with practically all its oil revenue, and no freedom, totally under the control of the Americans.
With one ingenious move, China removed the Iranian threat completely by patching up the century old enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They are now friends, no more enemies, no need to fight with each other, no need to waste billions and billions of dollars in weapons and war machine, no need to pay protection money to the Americans, no need to lose their sovereignty and dignity as an independent nation state. Can you imagine how the Americans are fuming?
The Saudis are in a way free from the clutches of the Americans and the West, caveat, the American bases are still there, and their trillions of assets in the USA and western cities are still held as ransom by the Americans and the West. Anyway, the Saudis have freed themselves from paying US$500b annually and free from American control of their oil production and oil prices.
Saudi Arabia now has plenty of free money to buy whatever weapons they need from the protection money they saved. And there is no threat and no enemy threatening them, other than the Americans and Israel. So they are on a shopping spree in Zhuhai, buying and buying whatever latest weapons China can sell to them on a willing buyer willing seller basis, not under any coercion.
The Saudis must be very grateful to China for the peace and freedom their are now enjoying, and with a lot of money to spare and to spend.
The Saudis are not using US$ to buy Chinese weapons I believe. Now, this is de-dollarization under the radar.
ReplyDeleteIf the Saudis do spend US$500b in Zhuhai, that is a lot of money being added to the de-dollarization wagon. Now, Saudi Arabia better not flaunt its move, lest the green-eyed monsters fabricate reasons to seize their investments in USA and EU. They are already under pressure from the USA and the West and deterred from joining BRICS. That move needs no explanation.
Just do barter trade - oil for weapons. That is still de-dollarization, right?
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