Saudi Arabia-UK: At stake was one of the most valuable arms deals in history. ibid.
In 2003 The Guardian printed new allegations … [arms deal] secured by corruption on a massive scale. ibid.
Why is Britain selling arms to the repressive Saudi state? ibid.
Donald Trump had authorized a special forces raid in central Yemen … What was meant to be a precision raid turned into a chaotic hour-long battle. The White House insisted the operation had been a success. ibid.
Throughout history the journey of mankind has been shaped by a race to develop the most effective weapon. To decode mankind, we need to understand how the arms race has helped us to survive and made us what we are today … Civilisation also has a dark side. Secret History of Humans II
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was a triumphant assertion of Britain’s power in the world. But it was held in a city that was still ruined from the bombing ten years before. Britain had been bankrupted by the War. Many of those clustered around the new Queen knew that it could no longer afford to rule the world. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set I: Who Pays Wins ***** BBC 1999
Colonel David Sterling, a war hero famous for founding the Special Air Service, the SAS. What Sterling would do was to sell to other countries Britain’s military power: Britain would supply them with modern weapons and with mercenaries who would fight their wars for them. ibid.
Sterling set up his own political party called Capricorn Africa. He proposed an alternative form of power where people like himself would civilise the black majority. It attracted widespread support among the white middle-class settlers. But it was firmly rejected by politicians in London. ibid.
In 1962 John Aspinall opened his own gambling club, the Clermont Club in Mayfair. Stirling was one of its members. The Clermont was deliberately designed to recreate a time when Britain had been rich and powerful. The set that Aspinall gathered around him at the Clermont were like Stirling disaffected right wingers, men who felt themselves out of tune with the consensus politics of the post-war world: they included James Goldsmith, a playboy and ferocious gambler who was to become a close friend of Stirling’s; the tycoon Tiny Roland who Stirling already knew from his time in Africa; Lord Lucan, a descendant of the man who had led the Charge of the Light Brigade; and Jim Slater, a takeover tycoon and asset-stripper who ran the notorious Slater-Walker. What united all these men was a belief in decisive action: it was this they believed that made Britain great not moderate post-war governments. ibid.
Then an event occurred in the Middle East which have Stirling the chance to reassert Britain’s power abroad but in a new different way: in September 1962 Egyptian troops invaded the Yemen. ibid.
They proposed a plan: a group of ex-SAS men would mount an operation to fight the Egyptians but they would do it privately. ibid.
[Prince] Faisal was terrified that Nassar would invade his county next and agreed to the British idea: the Saudis would pay for the war. ibid.
The Saudis agreed to pay for the British mercenaries but also to smuggle weapons into the Yemen. ibid.
What was invented in the Yemen was a new private form of foreign policy for Britain, paid for by other countries’ money. But then at the very moment when Stirling’s team seemed to be on the brink of success, an economic crisis hit Britain which threatened his whole concept: in 1964 a new Labour government was elected; almost immediately there was a run on the pound. ibid.
To save the pound Labour decided on wide-ranging spending cuts, and one of the main targets was defence. Denis Healey had been made minister of defence, and in 1965 he began a series of enormous cutbacks; he closed the overseas’ bases and brought the troops who had once protected the empire back home. ibid.
[Denis] Healey believed that instead British defence industries should make money for the country. The Americans were selling weapons throughout the world and Healey wanted Britain to compete with them and earn precious foreign currency. But Britain was not very good at selling weapons until David Stirling decided to get involved. ibid.
He [Khashoggi] told Lockheed that the only way to win the [arms] deal was to bribe the Saudi government. Ten years later in a Senate investigation Lockheed’s chairman admitted what had happened. Stirling told the British government they would have to do the same as the Americas: pay commission to their agents in King Faisal’s entourage. If they didn’t, Britain would lose the deal. In December 1965 the Saudis announced they would buy the British planes: the bribes had worked. It was the biggest export deal in Britain’s history. And King Faisal came on a state visit to celebrate it. It was also the beginning of the modern arms trade with the Middle East which has grown to dominate Britain’s economy. And from it also came a much wider commercial relationship with Saudi Arabia. ibid.
By the late ’60s many of Britain’s former colonies were being torn apart by civil war. In Nigeria the federal government were fighting a vicious campaign to stop Biafra from seceding. The British government were secretly supplying the federal side with weapons. Their aim was to protect Britain’s oil interests in Nigeria. ibid.
The federal government won helped by the British arms. But the resulting scandal clearly showed the limits of openly using arms sales as a tool of foreign policy. As coups and civil wars spread throughout the Third World, Stirling was determined to find a subtler way to maintain Britain’s influence in the world. He set up a secret organisation called WatchGuard: its job was to provide Africa and Middle-Eastern leaders with a private army of British mercenaries. They would prevent the rulers that Stirling approved of from being overthrown. WatchGuard was a great success. Stirling organised protection for leaders in Africa and the Middle East. ibid.
In Oman many of the Sultan’s advisers were ex-SAS men. They ran the Sultan’s guerrilla war against Marxist rebels. The rebels made a propaganda film attacking the Sultan and his British mercenaries. But the British won. ibid.
By the early ’70s [David] Stirling had become a successful businessman. He arranged enormous arms deals, and his mercenaries kept many third-world leaders in power. Almost single-handedly Stirling had created the foundations of Britain’s modern privatised foreign policy. It is a hidden world of vicious guerrilla wars fought by British mercenaries, a world that occasionally surfaces in scandals like the Sandfire affair. It all began with Stirling selling Britain’s military power to countries he approved of. ibid.
The price of oil had been massively increased as a result of the Arab/Israeli war. The oil-producing states led by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia were furious at American support for Israel. Their action had catastrophic effects for Western economies. ibid.
Government attempts to hold down wages led to violent strikes. To Sterling it seemed that the country he had fought to keep great was now collapsing from inside. ibid.
David Stirling returned to his traditional recruiting ground, the clubs of Mayfair. He formed an organisation called Great Britain 75. It was a group of military men, many of them ex-SAS. They planned to take over the running of Britain if the strikes led to the collapse of civil order. Stirling also formed a secret organisation within the trades unions itself; its job was to fight and undermine the leftwing union leaders. Much of the money to fund Stirling’s operations came from his friend at the Clermont Club – James Goldsmith. Like Sterling, Goldsmith believed that politicians no longer had the power to control Britain. ibid.
Through the summer of 1976 Arab oil money continued to leave London. The heads of Arab banks now became powerful figures ... Denis Healey began a series of savage cuts in public expenditure. It was the only way he believed for Britain to get a loan from the IMF and avoid bankruptcy. But it was clear to many in his party that he had given away control of the economy to the markets. ibid.
Stirling’s mercenaries returned home after twenty years of trying to keep Britain powerful. The country they came back to was very different from the one they had left. ibid.
The arms business kept growing. And in 1985 Mrs Thatcher announced what was going to be the biggest arms deal in history … Ever since there have been allegations that really it was secured by vast bribes to key members of the Saudi establishment. Adam Curtis, Bitter Lake, BBC 2015
The Atomic Age has begun. For the next four decades two global superpowers remain poised for swift and terrible action. Annihilation just the push of a button away. It’s an arms race, propaganda battle and deadly game known as the Cold War. Cold War Armageddon s1e1, Discovery History 2017
An era of mutually assured destruction known simply as MAD. ibid.
One by one the nations of eastern Europe were falling into Soviet hands. ibid.
Wire and watchtowers seal off the East. ibid.
An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan by Winston Spencer Churchill: ‘They were a condensed mass: 2,800 yards from the 32nd field battery and the gunboats. The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery. The mind was fascinated by the impending horror. I could see it coming. In a few seconds swift destruction would rush on these brave men … It was based on a fatal underestimation of the effectiveness of modern weapons. Within the space of five hours, the strongest best armed and savage army yet arrayed against a modern European power had been destroyed and dispersed with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk and insignificant loss to the victors. Thus ended the Battle of Omdurman, the most striking triumph ever gained by the arms of science against barbarians … only a sporting element in a splendid game. Exterminate All the Brutes s1e3: Killing at a Distance or … How I Thoroughly Enjoyed the Outing *****
The United States, a capitalist imperialist state. And having more arms allows more expansion. More expansion means more wars. For which you then need more arms. A profitable chicken and egg would ensue in a totally incestuous relationship between military industry and governments. ibid.
The symbol of all evil: it is something odd, hidden deep behind two words: Hiroshima, Nagasaki. It was said that it was a war against fascism. It was said it was to prevent further American death, but hundreds of thousands died, the accounting is irrefutable. In a chess game, the objective is to checkmate the opponent’s king. All of the pieces then become collateral. Their respective value depends on the strategic value you assign to them. In the present case the King is an emperor, and Japanese death will provide the collateral. Shock and awe. A massacre determined by an algorithm. It came at eight o’clock on August 6th 1945. Nobody was expecting it. They were pawns in a sordid game. Killing at a distance had just taken on a new meaning. No explanation required, no cries tolerated. No pity. ibid.