Subtitle: "Is the expanded force designed to defend against Iran or to prevent an Arab Spring in the oil rich Gulf?"
Posted on 07/04/2011 3:06:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A proposal to boost the Peninsula Shield, the Gulf Cooperation Council's combined military force, has been approved by its six member states, and could increase to include 100,000 troops before the end of the year...
The Peninsula Shield currently consists of about 40,000 troops and has its permanent base in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. The proposed expansion would be a huge boost from the previous force's incarnation, whose numbers fluctuated between 5-10,000 troops during its existence.
Its permanent military base could also be moved to Bahrain... Back in March, when the protest movement in Bahrain was gaining the same kind of momentum that toppled Egypt's Hosni Mubarak the month before, the GCC issued a mandate to send nearly 2000 troops to the tiny island to suppress protests and restore public order. What followed was a bloody confrontation between activists and troops in Manama's Pearl Roundabout, the focal point of protest for the opposition...
Analysts suggest that the entry of GCC troops into Bahraini territory on March 14 and its decision to strengthen itself on a massive scale has numerous other implications for the region.
"The decision to expand the army is of huge geo-military significance," says Barak Seener, a Middle East research fellow with the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) in London. "What we are seeing now is the militarisation of societies. One of which is to preserve the GCC's own security from domestic unrest and the other to counter external insecurity from Iran. So the military build-up is two fold.
"Often there is no distinction made between the internal and external unrest because the GCC perceive unrest in Bahrain as not a legitimate request for democracy and freedom but manipulation from Iran."
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
Can’t say I blame ‘em. Germany’s going to sell ‘em tanks, they’re also buying fighter jets, I’m sure there’s more I’ve forgotten.
They’re just preparing to deal with the newly nuclearized Iran; since it will take some time for S.A. to develop it’s own nukes.
Subtitle: “Is the expanded force designed to defend against Iran or to prevent an Arab Spring in the oil rich Gulf?”
interesting
WW III Is gonna be a whopper!!
Yup. But, it will be quick.
Don’t bet on it being quick. As some wit observed, the four major effects of a nuclear detonation are blast, heat, radiation, and paperwork.
Oddly enough, Israel might be the wild card in a fight between Sunnis and Iran. While it has enough nuclear weapons to wipe out everyone else, if its missile defenses are enough, it may choose to just throw a few at selected targets in Iran, or to do nothing at all.
The US will shoot down any missile from Iran in the vicinity of its naval or airbases, and may even provide some cover for Arabia. And without missiles, Iran is effectively neutered. Any attempt to cross the waterways would be suicidal. So that is pretty much it.
They can’t trust any of their neighbors, and vice versa. :’)
One problem in the Kdm is that the groups most likely to want to follow a military career are also the ones most likely to pull the trigger on the sheiks.
Saudi Arabia drafts in up to 10,000 troops ahead of protests
The Telegraph | 3/5/2011
Posted on 03/04/2011 5:38:48 PM PST by chickadee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2683896/posts
Saudi has *always* been a huge balancing act - that’s just one more example.
the answer is both.
Iran helped to fund the protests in some of the Gulf states. Many of the Arabs there are Shiite, like Iran, but the princes are Sunni, like Saudi.
Think “Revival of the Persian Empire” vs the Arabs and you get the idea...and the same thing goes for Afghanistan, since Persia traditionally ruled eastern Afghanistan...
I wholeheartedly agree. There’s little risk of an “Arab Spring” in Saudi Arabia — but there’s a sizable Shiite population, and Yemen’s coming apart in the south. Gosh, it’s almost as if unofficial financing of worldwide jihad was a bad idea or something.
the Saudis might be trying to put their youth to work too...it probably didn’t get much coverage in the US, but they passed some kind of a law saying employers must hire a certain percentage of local workers.
Right now, most Saudis work in cushy state jobs or get unemployment, so lots of boys who can’t get the cushy jobs because they are too stupid or not highly educated end up a suicide terrorists.
So it sounds like they are figuring to get the boys to work getting their hands dirty, not sitting around praying/getting religious.
At the same time, most private employers hire outsiders to do all the work (Mostly Pakistanis, Indians, Indonesians, Egyptians, and Filipinos). So now the private employers will have to hire locals (and they aren’t happy about it).
The Philippines is a bit worried, because we have a lot of drivers and oil workers there who might be displaced by these deadbeats...
Thanks LadyDoc.
My apologies to all — that goofy map won’t load until I go visit the originating page. Must be because it’s a secure page? Anyway, it’s the CIA World Factbook map.
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