Xi Unites Sunni & Shiite Factions

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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a boost to China’s efforts to rival the United States as a broker on the global stage.

After the agreement was announced, a White House National Security Council spokesperson told NBC News that the U.S. welcomed “any efforts to help end the war in Yemen and de-escalate tensions in the Middle East region.”

That’s what the US said publicly. But methinks privately they are in the Israeli camp.

Initial reaction from Israel was not positive. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted that it was “a dangerous development” for his country and “a fatal blow” to the effort to build a regional coalition against Iran, which has said it intends to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

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That is not true at all. The NYT ran a piece yesterday that was disgusting about Bibi’s and MBS’s plans. The plans might have been leverage to help this deal the Chinese brokered. DC is not in the dark. What Israel under Bibi wants is crap.

Most, and I mean more than a super majority, of American Jews wish to support Israel and do not at all accept the current government. There is a real wish for change in Israel among American Jews. Including a firm lack of support. That is forcing the Israelis nonstop towards the Evangelicals. It sucks. Israelis who pride themselves on intelligence are showing a lot of stupidity and meanness.

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Well. We will see if the candidates for POTUS all make their pilgrimage to AIPAC to pledge fielty to Israel, as they usually do.

Steve

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There is fielty to Germany and Japan who actually fought against us. The Germans and Japanese actually each see more military aid by far than Israel gets. We are talking possibly over $10 billion or over $20 billion per year in military support…and I could be way under counting what our military consumes in Germany and Japan. SK similarly.

We do not have boots on the ground in Israel. We have Israel on the cheap.

What does Israel do for us more than any other country? Israeli technical knowhow adds to our commerce per capita more than any other nation effectively adding to our tax coffers much more money than what we support Israel with money wise. That money actually going to US contractors and not in fact directly to Israel. Those Israeli innovations also support the tax coffers of other western nations similarly.

Israel gives far more than it takes compared to any other nation.

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The following article goes into Saudi Arabia’s movement from US orbit to the China & Global South orbit of influence. Authorcratic Xi is a better fit with the Saudi monarchy.

As an analyst of Saudi foreign policy, I’ve seen how the kingdom’s decision to engage in this way with Iran and China is part of a broader diversification of the kingdom’s international relationships that has unfolded over the past decade. To close observers of geopolitical trends in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the China-brokered deal fits into a pattern.

From being firmly a part of the anti-communist camp during the Cold War and closely tied into U.S.-led regional security networks in the Persian Gulf, Saudi foreign policy is now taking a nonaligned stance that has become increasingly consequential for how Saudi Arabia pursues its interests.

But since the Arab Spring protests in the early 2010s, U.S.-Saudi relations have frayed, both in Riyadh and in Washington. The perception among Gulf leaders that the Obama administration abandoned former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the Egyptian revolution in 2011 left them deeply rattled. They feared that the U.S. could abandon them just as it had done Mubarak, a longtime partner of 30 years.

Well Mubarak fell into the non useful category like the Iraqi Kurds, Montegards, & S Vietnamese and thus was discarded. Loyalty to allies whom are no longer useful is not a US strong suit.

Finally, in 2021, the chaotic nature of the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, served to reinforce deeply-rooted perceptions about U.S. disengagement from the Middle East, irrespective of the situation in reality.

It is against this backdrop of pragmatic acknowledgment of its own vulnerabilities to regional and global tensions – and entrenched uncertainty about the role of the U.S. as a long-term partner – that Saudi Arabia began to broaden its international relationships, with particular attention on China.

Officials across the Gulf believe China will replace the U.S. as the dominant economic and energy superpower in the 21st century. For more than a decade, a majority of oil and gas from the six Gulf monarchies has flowed east to Asia in quantities that far exceed the cargoes heading west to Europe and North America.

Saudia Arabia’s unwillingness to take sides in great power competition is also evident in policy responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates, has resisted pressure to take sides in an era of strategic rivalries.

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Saudi-Iran Pact just the first step in China’s stategic plans.

China is pushing hard to expand its footprints across the West Asia North Africa region riding on the atmosphere created by the Saudi-Iran deal that was brokered by it. There has been a flurry of visits from China across the region since the deal was concluded.

April 2022 Xi issued his Global Strategic Initiative Concept Paper. In effect annoucing China’s intent to claim a much more significant role in international politics.

Xi Jinping, the leader of the People’s Republic of China, arrived in Saudi Arabia on December 7, 2022, to lead three summit meetings with the host country, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and leaders of twenty-one of the twenty-two Arab League members (Syria was absent). During the visit, China and Saudi Arabia signed memoranda of understanding worth tens of billions of dollars, and the two sides reached a comprehensive cooperation plan encompassing 182 cooperative measures in eighteen fields, such as politics, the economy, trade, and investment.

China’s interests in the Middle East have grown far beyond energy security. China has been the Arab world’s largest trading partner since 2020, surpassing $330 billion in two-way trade in 2021.[2](javascript:void(0)) It was the largest foreign investor in the Middle East during Xi’s first visit to the region in 2016, with $29.5 billion (including construction), though the upward trend has sharply decelerated and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have remained at roughly $5.5 billion since 2009.[3](javascript:void(0))

Most notably, China actively participated in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) and the moot negotiations for its revival.[6](javascript:void(0)) It also has not shied away from using its United Nations (UN) Security Council veto ten times to stymie Western initiatives regarding the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, to the consternation of its neighbors.

The Global Security Initiative: China Outlines a New Security Architecture - Jamestown.

On February 20, Xinhua released a statement on “U.S. Hegemony and its Perils,” which claims to expose “U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields” and bring “international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples” (Xinhua, February 20). The polemic charges the U.S. with “clinging to the Cold War mentality,” intensifying “bloc politics” and “stoking conflict and confrontation.”

In April 2022 XI announced his Global Strategic Initiative Concept Paper to claim a much more significant role in international relations.

A direct challenge to US dominance. I expect US-China confrontation to heat up. Will the US-Russian confrontation in the Ukraine ebb prior before the China fireworks begin? Can the US fight a 2 front war? Is the US weapon/munition industrial base up to the challenge?

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Note China’s industrial output slid a bit in April. China wont have any longer run GDP growth. Yes on the services side they can report some growth but at a huge cost…does the US $32 trillion in debt sound familiar? Yep supply side economics…the rip off…

SA is aiming longer term at Chinese arms to keep its constant bull going on the west and Israel.

The problem for SA is the digital hardware in Chinese arms will be easy to hack for Israel.

Meanwhile US and western hardware wont be hackable. Or the mouse trap will get larger and harder to crack again.