[adamnemecek]

> the US has a very long history of providing advanced weapons to the Saudis

Well it was not always obvious that SA isn't exactly a US ally. On the contrary actually.

> I don't think it is at all obvious that donations + arms deal = bribes for arms deal.

So why exactly did they do it? There's a time table somewhere online which compares the dates of donation with dates of approval. Care to guess how quickly these things happened after one another?

[jonknee]

> So why exactly did they do it? There's a time table somewhere online which compares the dates of donation with dates of approval. Care to guess how quickly these things happened after one another?

Because we don't have many friends in the Middle East and we desperately want some help combatting IS. It's not rocket science. We have sold arms to Saudi Arabia for generations. For example, Reagan approved a large deal in the early 1980s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_AWACS_...

[adamnemecek]

Why the donations then? Why is SA not really doing much about ISIS then?

Also lol at bringing up Reagan. Does Iran Contra right a bell?

[jonknee]

I imagine that SA donated to be seen as a player on the world stage, much like everyone else. The US is the largest arms exporter in the world by far, you don't have to grease the wheels to be able to purchase our weapons.

[adamnemecek]

> The US is the largest arms exporter in the world by far, you don't have to grease the wheels to be able to purchase our weapons.

It's my understanding that there are several factors that play into the decision of allowing the sales. One such factor is for example human rights violations. You know the thing SA is not exactly doing well in.

[dredmorbius]

Who would think that politics and international relations might be ... complicated.

Saudi Arabia, along with much the rest of the Middle East, owes itself to a chain of events which I'll arbitrarily start with the Roman empire, its split into east and west, the fall of first the West (410 AD), the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, a/k/a Byzantine Empire (~330 BC - 1453 BC), when it was taken by the Ottoman Empire (1299 - 1923), whose region of control since 1683 included most of what little of the Arabian Peninsula supported what little population it had.

The US helped Saudi Arabia emerge in the first place (though some guy named Lawrence had more to do with that), the Saudis not particularly caring for the British and finding them too near (an old and perhaps wise Arab doctrine encourages making distant allies -- they're less likely to cause trouble).

Oil was found and developed beginning in the 1930s, largely with American assistance.

1945 saw the Quincy Agreement, between the US and KSA, establishing a long-term strategic alliance. The US needed oil, the house of Saud needed help developing that, money, and protection from other unhappy families (each unhappy in its own Tolstoian way). A fact which didn't preclude multiple attempts at oil embargoes against the US and Europe, including particularly over the Suez Crisis (1956) and Six Day War (1967), but coming to a head after the Yom Kippur War (1973), by which point the US had experienced peak oil extraction and various Arab states had more fully realised their pricing power.

KSA tone changed quite markedly after a visit from US finance officials in 1974, and generally tightened with disruptions in Iran, Iraq, and internally with various sects of islam.

The relationship, in a word, is distinctly complex. A mutual dependency, with fairly strong mutual levels of unhappiness at the dependency.

By the 1950s, the US was beginning to import Saudi Oil, and