By Richard Mellor in California
Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has had benefits beyond the bank accounts of investors in the US defence industry. Benefiting from the rising oil prices in the wake of the war, Saudi Arabia’s state owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, has seen its profits increase 124% in 2021 to a hefty $110 billion from $49 billion in 2020.
It should be noted here that Saudi Aramco has a market value of $2.4 trillion which puts it at the pinnacle of corporations world-wide, (Microsoft $2.2 trillion, Facebook $604 billion, Tesla $900 billion, Apple, just under $3 trillion.) But Saudi Aramco is not a private company, the Saudi Government owns 94% of the company. Such an intensive state involvement in production is demonized when it comes to China but not in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi regime bolstered by US military support
The Saudi government is headed by a ruling family whose main character is crown prince Mohammed bin Salman who, according to the CIA, organized the dismemberment of the US citizen and Saudi reformer Jamal Kashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. In response to US president Joe (“worker Joe”) Biden’s concerns about this Salman responded, “We don’t have the right to lecture you in America…the same goes the other way.” That’s the end of that.
Despite Biden’s concern about the dismemberment of a campaigner of democracy and US citizen ordered by a top Saudi official, Biden just sent another bunch of missiles to Saudi Arabia to bolster that country’s war on the people of Yemen to their south. In November 2021, the United Nations estimated that Yemen’s seven-year-old war cost 377,000 lives by the end of the year and that most of those killed by this US Saudi war, were children. This ongoing war is considered by many commentators to be the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen. Sadek, S. (2020).War in Yemen: Costs and benefits to the United States Texas State University (Unpublished thesis).
Disparity in media coverage of Ukraine and Yemen
Over the past weeks I have had to look at pictures of the tragic costs of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the US mass media and almost nothing about Yemen, a horrific and brutal war that would not continue without US arms. And the reason for the US sending billions of dollars of weapons of mass destruction to the thuggish, undemocratic Saudi regime is the “rumour” that the Houthi’s in Yemen who are one side of the dispute there, are backed by Iran. The US and British governments orchestrated the overthrow the democratic secular government of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 (Guatemala the same year on behalf of the United Fruit Company) and installed the murderous Shah. If we want to ask how the mullahs achieved power in Iran we will find the answers in British and US foreign policy.
The US is the main supplier of arms, weapons of mass destruction, in the world selling 36% of all arms internationally between 2015 and 2019. This was a 23% increase from 2010-2014 which is clearly a result of the murderous US/Saudi assault on the people of Yemen which began in 2015. Saudi Arabia is the US war machine’s most valuable customer. Between 2015 and 2019, Saudi Arabia bought 25% of all U.S. arms exports.War in Yemen: Costs and Benefits to the United states.
The US and those, many reluctant, allies it is dragging to the edge of the abyss in Ukraine under the banner of NATO, which is not a defensive organization but an offensive one (since when is Afghanistan or Libya in the North Atlantic), is under threat from Chinese economic power and to a lesser extent Russia. The Ukraine is a pawn in this conflict between world powers in the struggle for control markets, raw material and labor power. The US, and its allies, as in Yemen, is merely increasing the suffering that Putin’s invasion is inflicting on the Ukrainian working class and on the workers of Russia, Europe and the world. The sanctions placed on all aspects of Russian life will not personally hurt Putin and his inner circle any more than those on Saddam Hussein hurt him. Reports today pointed out that wealthy Russians under threat of sanctions, “…are pouring money into Dubai.”
How to support opposition to the war
There are other countries that have rejected sanctions as harming ordinary people. I read today that airport workers in Italy discovered that what they thought was humanitarian aid being sent to Ukraine were weapons. They refused to load them claiming they would simply increase and extend the suffering. This is an important development but it has to go beyond that. While workers have an obligation to oppose the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, the US team is no innocent party here. There is no side that working people can claim is acting in our interests, Ukrainian, Russian, European, all of us throughout the world.
Where we can, we must assist in any way the opposition to this war within Russia itself. It is the independent, direct intervention of the workers of the world, organized, conscious of what we must do and which path we must take, that can prevent further chaos and the real threat of nuclear annihilation at some point in the future.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
