Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
Do not supply arms. The point here is not so much that this will deprive them off arms (others will sell them), but it'll make the army less happy and thus more inclined to not support the dictator in a critical moment.
Not supplying arms is a tough one at the moment, especially to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. We're not giving the stuff away to them. They are paying, and paying plenty: the Saudis alone are in for $60 billion. I've read that this amounts to some 75k US jobs, no doubt strategically distributed among key legislative districts... that total is probably massaged a bit, but any way you slice it the number will be large. The other Gulf states have another $60 billion on order, with similar implications for US employment figures.

Withdrawing these sales would leave much of the US defense industry is a position of doubtful viability and would generate a significant domestic backlash. I don't think any US politician is going to propose blocking $120 billion in orders from US factories in this economic climate... to put it simply, it ain't gonna happen.

People who think the US has leverage over these regimes badly need to recalibrate their assumptions. If anything the leverage is running in the other direction.