[mamonster]

I think the notion that US Defense Pact is a sign of the countries being true allies needs to be examined. It's clear what the benefit for Saudi is, but it isn't so clear what the benefit for the US is/what the cost for Saudi is(beyond spending money on US arms which they wanted to do anyway).

The reason why I say this: Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything. I think MBS is going fully down the Erdogan/Orban route where he is nominally "West aligned" but is going to be playing both sides as much as he can. When I said allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm).

[alephnerd]

> Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything

You're overreading into what is a fairly routine demand and response.

Saudi is in the process of implementing MBS's Vision 2030 [0], which requires a lot of financing, and oil prices have been dropping significantly over the last few years.

Most US allies outside of Europe are indifferent to Russia because the bigger bad to them is China or local rivalries.

Even in the US, Ukraine (and Israel and China) almost never comes up in conversations outside of Reddit. Adviika and much of the Russia-Ukraine war is barely mentioned in any mainstream American news because it doesn't hold much relevance to most Americans compared to domestic concerns [1]

> allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm)

Nothing you've said is proof to the contrary. Oil price decreases are always a no-go for Saudi given that 75% of state revenue is financed by oil.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Vision_2030

[1] - https://apnews.com/article/2024-top-issues-poll-foreign-poli...

[mamonster]

I mean that's kind of my point. I don't really understand what the point of calling US and Saudi allies is when this clearly only extends to the Iran issue in which Saudi is only too happy to freeload on US commitments to the region/Israel as it matches their goals. Its also my more general point, US doesn't really have a lot of allies in the sense "I help you out you help me out", most of these so-called "allies" are interested in freeloading on US's back as much as possible whilst trying to get as much from Russia/China elsewhere as possible.

>Oil price decreases are always a no go for Saudi

Factually false, remember 2015? Saudis tried to kill US shale pretty aggressively.