



Real News If you wonder why the banking/corporate occupied media in the West remain silent against Saudi Arabia, one of the most brutal regimes at the same time they declared war on the democratically elected government of Venezuela, here are three good reasons, for a start, as described by Vijay Prashad to Paul Jay and the





There are perhaps three reasons, and there are probably many more, why the United States in its current class configuration, in other words, the kinds of people who run the United States, have fealty and have a very close tie with Saudi Arabia.





The first one is Saudi oil. It's important to mention because when the Saudis decide to pump more oil or reduce oil, they can manipulate oil prices and break the power of OPEC, that is the oil cartel, without actually breaking OPEC. By the fact of their volume, they can make real mayhem in the world. It's a worthwhile question to ask when commodity prices were high, when these commodity prices enabled the new powers from emerging.





Brazil, Russia, Venezuela, these powers were given a kind of lift in the 1990s and 2000s in particular, when oil prices and energy prices in general were high. When the Saudis started to pump enormous amounts of oil against their own economic interest, it created Syria's problems in these emerging powers and weakened them. Their use of the oil weapon against adversaries of the world order, let's call them, Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, etc., is a worthwhile reason to have a close tie with Saudi Arabia. It's well worth asking why the Saudis have maintained low oil prices when this has hurt their own economy. It has to be political, it's definitely not economic.





The second reason where there's a longterm connection between the kind of class that rules the west and the Saudis, is that for at least the last 40 years, the Saudis have recycled their petro dollars. That is, the profits that they earn from selling oil, they've recycled these into western banks.





They don't hold them in their own banks in large amounts. Of course, there's a sovereign fund, but they put most of it into western banks. It's the Saudi money that essentially has underwritten whatever growth has taken place in the global north. It's the Saudi money that's enabled the explosion of Wall Street, of derivatives, etc. It liquefies the financial world. This is a very important role that the Saudis play. They are leaders among the Gulf countries in so-called recycling their profits into the west. This therefore makes the west somewhat complicate in Saudi relations with the world.





The third reason is really quite important and often neglected. This is that it's not that the United States has an alliance with Saudi Arabia for oil and money alone. It has an alliance with Saudi Arabia because it relies on both Saudi Arabia and Israel for intelligence in the region, and to operate a decisively anti-left, anti-nationalist kind of agenda across the so-called Muslim lands.





In 1960s, Saudi Arabia created a group called the World Muslim League, which was set up essentially as an anti-communist block. They would produce literature against the left, against Arab nationalism, against third-world nationalism, and distribute it from Indonesia, up to Dagestan, then in the Soviet Union, and out to Algeria. The point of this was, Saudi Arabia was the sort of sphere of the counter-revolution in the third-world block and played a very important role. This old role comes to a head in 1977, '78, '79 when Saudi Arabia basically provided the intellectual work, alongside the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, for the creation of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. This political role, and to some extent military role that the Saudis play is very important. The current class that dominates in Washington DC and in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, etc., they're interested in maintaining a kind of order in these lands at all costs.





If disorder is necessary, it's a kind of disorder that produces order for them. Continues to recycle petro dollars, ensures that there's no emergent power that can challenge western homogeneity. Saudi Arabia has been an absolutely invaluable ally for this. Whereas, somebody who's a liberal looks at this and says, "Well, why is the United States allied with Saudi Arabia? Look, they're beheading people." This is not how the ruling class sees it. The ruling class has a completely different understanding of Saudi Arabia and that is why this relationship for them is completely untouchable.









Now you see why the Western clowns, the banking/corporate puppets, have declared war on Venezuela, pretending that they care about human rights there, when at the same time they are doing business with the Saudis, the most brutal regime in the Middle East that continues to bombard Yemen, provoking a humanitarian disaster.





So, briefly, the real reason is oil, power and money, not human rights.



