Christopher Hitchens on Bill & Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabia, and the War Economy (1992)

• published: 22 Sep 2014
• views: 1713

Saudi Arabia (Arabic: السعودية‎ as-Su'ūdiyyah or as-Sa'ūdiyyah), officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Arabic: المملكة العربية السعودية‎ al-Mamlakah al-'Arabiyyah as-Su'ūdiyyah), is the largest Arab state in Western Asia by land area (approximately 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula) and the second-largest in the Arab world (after Algeria). It is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, Yemen in the south, the Red Sea to the west and Persian Gulf to the east. Its population is estimated to consist of 16 million citizens and an additional 9 million registered foreign expatriates and 2 million illegal immigrants. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded by Abdul-Aziz bin Saud (known for most of his career as Ibn Saud) in 1932, although the conquests which eventually led to the creation of the Kingdom began in 1902 when he captured Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud, referred to in Arabic as Al Saud. The regime has been an absolute monarchy since its inception. It describes itself as being Islamic and is highly influenced by Wahhabism. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca), and Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam. Saudi Arabia has the world's 2nd largest oil reserves, which are concentrated largely in the Eastern Province. Oil accounts for more than 95% of exports and 70% of government revenue, although the share of the non-oil economy has been growing recently. This has facilitated the transformation of an underdeveloped desert kingdom into one of the world's wealthiest nations. Vast oil revenues have permitted rapid modernisation, such as the creation of a welfare state. It has also the world's sixth largest natural gas reserves. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world which bans women from driving. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_arabia A war economy is the set of contingencies undertaken by a modern state to mobilize its economy for war production. Philippe Le Billon describes a war economy as a "system of producing, mobilizing and allocating resources to sustain the violence." Some measures taken include the increasing of tax rates as well as the introduction of resource allocation programs. Needless to say, every country approaches the reconfiguration of its economy in a different way. Many states increase the degree of planning in their economies during wars; in many cases this extends to rationing, and in some cases to conscription for civil purposes, such as the Women's Land Army and Bevin Boys in the United Kingdom in World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt said that if the Axis Powers win, then "we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on the basis of war economy."[1] In what is known as total war, these economies are often seen as targets by many militaries. The Union blockade during the American Civil War is regarded as one of the first examples of this.[citation needed] Concerning the side of aggregate demand, this concept has been linked to the concept of "military Keynesianism", in which the government's military budget stabilizes business cycles and fluctuations and/or is used to fight recessions. On the supply side, it has been observed that wars sometimes have the effect of accelerating progress of technology to such an extent that an economy is greatly strengthened after the war, especially if it has avoided the war-related destruction. This was the case, for example, with the United States in World War I and World War II. Some economists (such as Seymour Melman) argue, however, that the wasteful nature of much of military spending eventually can hurt technological progress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_economy