Epstein Secrets

it oil to markets in south and east Asia. Saudi trade and investment are increasingly directed toward Asian markets rather than Europe or America. Saudi Arabia's turn to the east began almost a decade ago. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz's first foreign trip after becoming king was to India and China in January

s; he sent an underling—former EFTA00684183 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano—to represent the United States as the Winter Olympics in Sochi and a delegation headed by gay athletes to protest a recent Russian law banning gay "propaganda." Obama's sending Napolitano was a gratuitous snub

al relationship. Indeed, the relationship would almost certainly survive even if Israel, contrary to US EFTA00706377 advice, were to attack Iran. Saudi Arabia's relationship with the US is more superficial. The Kingdom relies on the US military for protection, without which it would be unable to resist an a

also gain more leverage with the Kremlin as time goes on and as America's footprint disappears in the Middle East. When Netanyahu met with Putin in Sochi last May, he prevailed upon him not to deliver S- 300 missiles to Assad. At the time, Putin reportedly refused to comply, citing an outstanding cont

port to El Watan's laughable report on the new regional alliance Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is leading, which includes Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE against a Western regional alliance led by the US that includes Turkey and Qatar. Either way, this theory, while satisfying to

here was only a political solution to the crisis, said the White House, and Russia had the answers. Accordingly, traditional U.S. allies flocked to Sochi to petition Putin for relief. The Saudis promised to buy $15 billion worth of Russian arms if only the Russians would temper their support for Assa

United States. The second was the so-called Arab spring and what the Saudis regarded as its negative consequences throughout the Arab world. From Saudi Arabia's point of view, the relationship with the United States soured for a number of reasons. First, the Saudis felt that the announced "Asia/Pacific" reo

en muscled its tiny neighbor, eventually waging a war that ended with Russia taking control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In a recent Letter from Sochi, I tried to describe Putin's motivations: his resentment of Western triumphalism and American power, after 1991; his paranoia that Washington is so