** 04-Jun-2019 Iran, Saudi alignments in next world war
Xeraphim1 wrote:
> @John One of the premises of your theory is that the Sunni Muslim
> countries will be on the other side of a war against the
> West. Given that Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Sunni world and
> that the US and Saudi Arabia have had a tacit agreement for
> decades, (Saudi Arabia will keep the oil flowing and the US will
> protect Saudi Arabia against external threats) when and how do you
> see this linkage breaking?
> I don't see a change in the Iranian leadership in the near future
> and I think the current regime is sufficiently entrenched to keep
> dissent suppressed in the medium term. Given that Iran is the
> existential threat to Saudi Arabia, SA is unlikely to move into
> the Chinese orbit unless China becomes anti-Iranian. That looks to
> be unlikely given that China tends not to take sides for or
> against countries it isn't in close proximity to.
> The only thing I can think of is if Iran actually tests a nuclear
> weapon. The US would oppose Saudi efforts to build their own
> weapons which would massively strain relations. There is the
> possibility that the US would build up the same kind of
> anti-missile infrastructure that it has in South Korea with THAAD
> batteries and patrols of Burke class destroyers mounting SM-3/6
> missiles which could allay Saudi concerns.
I've answered this question probably hundreds of times in the last
15 years. Political deals may last a few months, but centuries of wars
and hatreds lead to hatreds and attitudes that ignore ephemeral
political deals and lead to generational crisis wars. For example,
Russia and China have a political deal these days, but the Russian
and Chinese people have deep hatred for each other, going back
at least as far as the Mongol invasions, and the two countries
were close to war as recently as the 1960s.
Here's a summary of the reasoning that I've posted before:
China is very closely allied with Pakistan, which is very closely
allied with the Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia. China and India
are bitter enemies, as are Pakistan and India. Russia and India are
very closely allied, and India is very closely allied with Iran, as
Hindus have been allied with Shia Muslims going back to the Battle of
Karbala in 680. So the US is going to be allied with India, Russia
and Iran, versus China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim states.
Just remember that Russia was our bitter enemy before WW II, was our
ally during WW II, and was our bitter enemy after WW II.
But those political attitudes completely dissolved during
WW II, when both Russia and the West faced existential crises.
You can't make judgments from today's fatuous political alignments to
how nations will act when they're forced to make hard choices in the
context of a generational crisis war. These major decisions are made
by the populations, large generations of people, not by a few
politicians when a nation and its way of life are threatened.
The alliance that you described between Saudi Arabia and the US (oil
for security) is really a remarkable one, and has been in place since
the 1930s. Nonetheless, that's a government to government alliance,
not one that the ordinary people are involved in, and there's a great
deal of hostility between Saudis and Americans, especially since 9/11,
and also hostility between Christians and Sunni Muslims.