Selling weapons to all sides in the middle east and then offer to negotiate peace -- I thought I was a cynic. Wow. Even better sell weapons to nuclear powers on the same subcontinent who don't life each other. Well done.
I thought the same thing. To be fair, though, I would think it's more likely that if things really blow up in the Middle East, the countries we export to in the Middle East would be united because they are fighting a common foe.
eh... while I don't disagree necessarily that the US ought to stop selling arms to certain countries... if they did of course they would only be allowing Russia, the UK, China, etc. to step in and supply the demand as they have in many other places. The United States did not create the conflict in the Middle East nor the demand for weapons there. Israel was originally armed mostly by the Czechs. Other sides got their arms from the British, the French, and the Soviets primarily. and of course these conflicts go back far far longer than 1948, back to before the United States even existed, actually.
iDon is mostly right, too. The US sees Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar as a check on the power of Iran, not Israel. They see Egypt and Turkey as playing a stabilizing role in the region contrary to Syria or Lebanon. They see Iraq as a bulwark against the expansion of ISIS, and Afghanistan and Pakistan as a check on the Taleban.
Which shows the propagandistic BS that is spread in some of these comments sections, and a lot of people buy it. The US was actually backing ISIS there for a while, but hey, that's not the official narrative, so shush.
How is this "all sides"? Nothing to Iran or Syria. The rest of these countries have made some sort of peace with each other (often with US pressure and help in diplomacy).
Yeah, with each other perhaps (although actually mostly not really), but internally they are fighting drawn out civil wars with foreign powers (particularly the USA, Russia, China, UK, France) supporting different factions within the war, and leading to an incredible amount of suffering, all so those countries can continue to sell their weapons for their own profit. And then they wonder why there are so many refugees. Duh!
Don't take that too litterally, singapore is basically a huge port that buys and redistributes many types of goods, including arms. They don't actually buy these for themselves
You don't have to. The US has weapons at our bases in Europe and we also maintain war reserve stocks in many European countries. We have nuclear weapons stored in Europe, too, but we don't give out the codes to detonate them.
France and the UK still have gigantic defence and aerospace industries. They're some of the biggest and most influential employers in both countries, and in the UK at least a lot of international relations is basically about propping them up.
Oz is no. 2, wow. I guess xenophobia against Asians plays a role in high defence spending. There was a bad film about an Asian invasion of Oz called 'tomorrow, when the war began' which illustrated that fear (when Oz is arguably actually part of Asia in any case). Also that spending will prob. pick up given Oz is in a military alliance with the US and UK vs China (aukus, awful name) which included Oz buying nuke subs from US/UK and not France.
If there weren't an alliance of westernised democracies with competent militaries like Japan, South Korea and Australia (backed by the US and NATO) in the Indo-Pacific region, imagine how long it would be before China would attempt to expand into those areas. You only have to look at their current behaviour towards Taiwan and the Philippines to get a taste of it...maintaining world peace is a delicate diplomatic and economic game
It's extremely unlikely that the USA would invade most of these places any time in the conceivable future. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Egypt... maybe. But I don't think they're going to invade Australia.
I find it amazing how many small countries rank highly on this list: UAE, Singapore (well it was explained they are just a middleman), Taiwan, Qatar, and Israel.
Taiwan, Qatar, and Israel are all relatively rich for their size, with lots of neighbors that don't like them. Taiwan obviously has China breathing down its neck, Israel is hated by a lot of the middle east , and Qatar had that incident with the GCC a couple years back
I was a bit surprised when I tried Saudi Arabia and it didn't get accepted but then I went back later to try it again just in case and I must've spelled it wrong the first time so then I'm like "yeah that's more like it"
Really? As a Spanish, we know Morocco and USA are strong allies. That's why Morocco's policies in W.S. stand, even though the whole African Union is against it...
I know that Morocco and the US have a long history of positive relations. Actually, I think that Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize US independence from Britain. I just didn't think they spent that much on weapons.
This aged poorly lmao.