@gjohnsit But until they run out of oil, that won;t happen. The minute it does, watch out Saudi Royals.

link

The Houthi-allied Yemeni armed forces have retaken Al-Labnat military base in Al-Jawf province from the Saudi-backed mercenaries fighting to reinstate exiled President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. This is the first time in five years that it has been under Houthi control.

The pro-Hadi Islah militia at the base was reported to have handed weapons over to the Houthi forces...

The Houthis’ advance now means that they are getting closer to encircling the remaining Islah-stronghold of Marib. Saudi-supported ground forces are close to losing another northern Yemen province following most of Al-Jawf falling to the Houthi-led forces at the beginning of the month.

The collapse of the Saudi-backed ground forces could necessitate a Saudi withdrawal according to academic Samuel Ramani. He has drawn parallels with the strategic impact of the Syrian government retaking control of the city of Aleppo.

@CB

aka "It's Always Somebody Else's Fault".

on Russia and Saudi Arabia?

The Saudis are currently increasing production while Russia is staying the course. Why do the US producers expect the Saudis and Russians to decrease production when it was they who were overproducing?

@CB
can't even pretend that it just happened.

on Russia and Saudi Arabia?

The Saudis are currently increasing production while Russia is staying the course. Why do the US producers expect the Saudis and Russians to decrease production when it was they who were overproducing?

@CB  
but for what? When you get right down to it, mainly for bringing huge amounts of military pork to the Islands as longtime ranking D member of the Senate committee overseeing “defense” spending.

It’s an economic cargo cult, but I guess you can’t blame the Islanders — sugar and pineapple are of a bygone era; prosperity surrounding the 1%’s celebrity real estate is confined to a few exclusive places as on Maui; tourism is dicey and falls precipitously anytime there’s an Asian or U.S. recession (let alone the current total shutdown).

So behind the “paradise” façade, except for the military money pump there’s nothing really rock-solid robust and steady.

no longer has much to do with access to oil other than preventing it's 'enemies' from profiting or circumventing embargoes.

The US now has sufficient secure domestic access of oil supplies to power it's global war machine.

War planning now has more to do with unfettered access/denial to select natural resources, specially those that are in limited supply and used in the high tech industry. Another factor, this war machine needs a major enemy (or two) to justify it's expense and even it's very existence. The world is not nearly as dangerous as they make it out to be. The truth of the matter, the Defense Industry has been corporate America's largest pork barrel since the end of WWII and the PTB have no intention of letting it run empty. (Even Bernie Sanders has been caught with his hand in this barrel.)

The amount of anti-China propaganda in Western MSM has been rapidly escalating in the last several years and is now starting to match that of Russia in the last decade. We all know what that means.

It's gonna be déjà vu all over again....

Esper’s dark vision for US-China conflict makes war more likely
March 19

The Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban may not successfully bring our war in Afghanistan to a close. Some number of U.S. forces will remain on open-ended counterterrorism missions, their presence in harm’s way creating a constant risk of escalation, and a lot could change in the “many months” that Defense Secretary Mark Esper says it will take to complete the U.S. drawdown.

Still, the deal is welcome news and could be the beginning of the end of the longest conflict in U.S. history. American troops who have seen three, four, even five or more deployments to the Middle East may finally be able to come home — or not. If Esper’s grim vision becomes reality, they may soon be fighting China instead, embarking on a new and far larger conflict that would make Afghanistan look like child’s play, put U.S. security in unnecessary danger and plunge the world into lasting turmoil.
...
The rationale here, as Esper summarized in a recent interview on CNBC, is that the United States is in a new “era of ‘great power competition,’ and that means we need to focus more on high intensity warfare going forward.” For the United States, “our long-term challenges,” Esper continued, “are China, No. 1, and Russia, No. 2. And what we see happening out there is a China that continues to grow its military strength, its economic power, its commercial activity, and it’s doing so, in many ways, illicitly — or it’s using the international rules-based order against us to continue this growth, to acquire technology, and to do the things that really undermine our [and our allies’] sovereignty, that undermine the rule of law, that really question [Beijing’s] commitment to human rights.”

Esper’s argument is compelling because it includes a bit of truth: China is a rising power and our economic rival. It is growing in military strength, and it does engage in illicit business practices, including hacking and theft of trade secrets. Beijing has acted without regard for other nations’ sovereignty (which is not to say Washington is innocent of the charge), and its treatment of the Uighur people and response to the new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan have settled, once again, any remaining question of whether the Chinese government has adequate respect for human rights.
...

We will be seeing an escalation of these talking points as China pulls out of the COVID-19 pandemic successfully in the coming weeks. As usual, China will be damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.