Larison On Mohammed bin Salman, The Murder Of Jamal Kashoggi, And Trump's Quasi-Complicity
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Another case in which Trump is leaning hard in the direction of autocracy, seemingly straining to find some excuse for doing the wrong thing.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:41 AM
2 Comments:
This is the sort of thing that makes me want to completely facepalm. There's a good, if not morally pure, reason to be cautious about leveling a punishment against SA here: they have the leverage to send the entire world's economy into depression if they desire, and still come out way ahead. That's what comes with having direct control over 10 million barrels of oil production, you can take 2 million off, send prices to 300, and end up tripling revenue or more (even worse, they can use the chaos to buy assets at fire sale prices, now that they are very aggressive international investors). It might be unfortunate, but that leverage needs to be respected when we try to play international school marm. It also means that once we do have proof of guilt, we are going to be limited in policy retaliation, maybe some sort of financial sanction on Mohammad Bin Salman, but we aren't removing him from power.
I think Larison understands that when we're talking about imposing Iranian sanctions, which had similar risks, but nowhere near as acute (Iran produces less than 4 million barrels). He can't figure it out here.
This is funny:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Sturgeons_Law/status/1053063942510010368/photo/1
I can't tell if it is satire, however. "My girlfriend left me because I am a Peterson groupie, but I don't understand it at all."
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