The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

Chapter 701 Chain Reaction
As if thinking of something.

King Fahd finally realized that he had a powerful weapon in his hands.

A total of thirty-five powerful weapons!
He said seriously, "Dongfeng Express purchased from the East, we must show this killer weapon at the critical moment, so that Saddam, the bastard, will be careful. As long as he dares to let his army invade us, I will use Dongfeng Express to send him some good things!"

"By the way, is Dongfeng Express ready for service?" King Fahd looked at Prince Sultan.

"Your Majesty, please rest assured! The air defense force has completed training and can be deployed to the war at any time. As long as your Majesty gives an order, the Dongfeng Express will be launched soon!" Prince Sultan said. He was very clear about this matter. "Our friends from the East are very serious. The bases have been built and the training is also very serious."

"That's good!" King Fahd looked satisfied.

"Your Majesty, our Aegis air defense missiles are now enough to ensure the safety of Riyadh. Once the Iraqi planes arrive, they will never return. We will fight them one by one!" Prince Sultan said confidently.

Iraq does not have medium-range missiles, only short-range missiles, which are not sufficient to accurately strike targets in Riyadh.

Besides, Riyadh has deployed half of Saudi Arabia's "Aegis" air defense missile system, half of the Type 80 self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, and a quarter of the "Vanguard" air defense missiles, so its air defense capability is still very strong.

"By the way, how are our friends' mercenaries? How many are there now?" asked King Fahd.

When the situation started to become tense, Saudi Arabia began to increase its hiring of mercenaries just in case.

"Currently, there are 10,000 mercenaries of our friends in our country, and another 10,000 will arrive in the next period of time!" said Prince Sultan. He is in charge of this matter and he is very clear about the current progress.

"With these 20,000 mercenaries, our armed forces will be much stronger." King Fahd showed a look of satisfaction.

Although these mercenaries were called mercenaries, King Fahd knew that they were actually an army, a well-trained army that had been on the battlefield.

Fahd had dealt with those mercenaries before and was very satisfied with their performance.

Saudi soldiers refuse to train if the weather is a little hot, refuse to train if the training intensity is a little increased, and make a fuss if the food is a little worse.

However, the training intensity of mercenaries is more than ten times greater than that of Saudi soldiers, and they never complain about being tired. The food and drink they receive is far inferior to that of Saudi soldiers.

Therefore, these mercenaries undertake a considerable part of national defense tasks.

This time, in order to strengthen national defense, under the king's authorization, an emergency agreement was signed with the security company to increase the number of mercenaries to 20,000.

Although the agreement was signed with dozens of security companies, King Fahd knew that there was actually a single force behind them.

"Order all domestic troops to be prepared to resist the Iraqi invasion and publicly condemn Saddam for affecting regional peace. At the same time, Dongfeng Express and air defense forces are ready to broadcast launch exercises to the whole country when necessary!" King Fahd said firmly.

Now, Saudi Arabia has no way out.

If Saudi Arabia does not act tough, the dynasty may be overthrown!

At that time, these royal families will have to go into exile overseas.

Although the Saudi royal family has many assets overseas and can live well even in exile, everyone knows that exile is not as comfortable as owning Saudi Arabia, which can earn a lot of money through oil exports every year.

Therefore, unless it really comes to the last moment, the Saudi royal family will never give up Saudi Arabia and run to Europe and the United States to become rich and idle.

At this time, Iraq mobilized armored forces to the Kuwaiti border and the Saudi border, which changed the entire world situation.

As the world's energy center, any disturbance in the Middle East will spread throughout the world immediately.

The first to react was the price of oil. The international oil futures trading price began to rise slightly.

Those who had previously gone long on international oil futures and lost money made up for their losses in just one day.

Rising oil prices are not a good thing for oil importing countries.

But for oil exporting countries, this is definitely a good thing.

The ones who are most happy to see this happen are the Soviet Union and the oil-producing countries in Latin America.

The Soviet Union was also a major oil producer in the world. It could earn huge profits every year by exporting oil, and then import other items needed by the Soviet Union, thus maintaining the Soviet economy.

The importance of oil exports to the Soviet Union is self-evident.

When oil prices are high, the Soviet Union can earn more by exporting the same amount of oil.

Several oil-producing countries in Latin America have received a lot of investment from the United States in recent years, and their oil production has continued to rise. The economies of these oil-producing countries have developed very rapidly and have all emerged from the difficulties of the economic crisis.

If problems arise in the Middle East and oil prices rise, the United States, Canada, and Europe will increase their oil imports from Latin America, and the oil-producing countries in Latin America will earn a lot of dollars.

In Latin America, the best currency is the US dollar.

For the Soviet Union and Latin American oil-producing countries, they would like the price of oil to reach $100 a barrel or even higher.

The higher the price of oil, the better it is for the Soviet Union and the Latin American oil-producing countries.

For those energy giants, the rise in oil prices is naturally a good thing. After all, they can earn more lucrative profits. These energy giants control many oil fields, and the increase in oil prices is all profit.

As for the damage to the country, what does that have to do with the energy giants?
This is the market mechanism. So what if you are dissatisfied?
Everything has two sides. When someone cries, someone else will laugh; when someone is sad, someone else will celebrate.

This involves game theory.

In the futures market and stock market, there is a game between short sellers and long sellers.

In international relations, there is a game between countries.

For example, in this case of Iraq, although Saddam had personal ambitions and always wanted to expand his territory, possess more oil, and gain dominance in the Gulf Region, there were also Americans behind the scenes fanning the flames, secretly working to instigate Iraq.

If the Americans had taken a tough stance and strongly opposed Saddam's destruction of regional peace, Saddam would not have been so bold.

Not only the United States, but also another superpower, the Soviet Union, condoned Saddam's actions.

After all, except for a very few countries, the shadows of the United States and the Soviet Union can be seen behind most countries and regions.

The bipolar structure is not just talk, it is real and affects every corner and every field of the world.

It’s just that there is more competition and confrontation between the two sides, and less cooperation.

However, in some aspects, the two sides have common interests and often cooperate with each other, and their cooperation is very tacit.

The biggest example is that the two sides worked together to force Britain and France to lose control of the Suez Canal.

(End of this chapter)