It's Never Wise To Feed Feral Dogs (Or Negotiate With Armed Robbers)

In the complicated, interconnected web of international finance and investment, it turns out that Western capital ofttimes ends up funding its enemies. In this way, it’s like feeding a feral dog, hoping to domesticate it, or at least that if it bites someone, it won’t be you. This is never wise.

In Saudi Arabia, for instance, Western, specifically American, dependence on oil has sent billions, if not trillions, of dollars to the Saudi kingdom to purchase oil. This investment has enriched Western energy companies and pleased the citizenry with cheap gas. But we were feeding a feral dog.

It blindsided us when on 9/11 we were finally bitten.

In the preceding decades, US administrations and businesses largely ignored the reality of the founding house of Saud’s allegiance to the Wahhabi branch of the Sunni sect of Islam. A rigid, fundamentalist sect, it continues to be instrumental in Saudi domestic and foreign policy. It inculcates a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam committed to denouncing and destroying Western values by subjugating them to Sharia Muslim law.

The public face of the Saudi monarchy gladly takes western money along with industrial and technological support for its only valuable resource, oil, while behind the scenes that same dynastic family placates fanatic Islamic extremists with “benevolent” gifts to Islamic charitable organizations that are sometimes little more than cutouts for jihadist terrorist groups. When confronted, or exposed, that same royal family is willing to brutally kill its opponents. See, the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.

For decades, practices like these caused the West to fund its enemies. Then, we were shocked and scandalized when those wild dogs we kept feeding out of our pockets turned and bit us in a brutal terrorist attack. But, since American blood was drawn, the American military responded to put down the dogs. Maybe…

Maybe not. Because now, we’re shocked that our ally, Saudi Arabia, won’t condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s simple really. They’ve found a new benefactor they think will feed them better.

Similarly, the West has been using its capital to play the same game with Russia and China. Current events prove they aren’t trading partners. They’re ravenous, feral dogs.

We naively believed that doing business with these closed countries would expose them to our open, free-market, democratically ruled economic systems and that magical political osmosis would occur. The scales would fall from their eyes and those authoritarian regimes would see the error of their ways.

Not so much.

Doing business with criminal autocracies and totalitarian regimes, and taking their investment dollars, doesn’t change them. It corrupts the recipients.

And that is where we find ourselves. Both China’s and Russia’s hands are so deep in Western pockets that no Western leaders dare to meet military might with military might. Some Western businesses (i.e. Italian luxury goods) were reluctant even to meet Russian military might with an economic weapon—it might hurt their profits—Ukrainian lives be damned, I suppose. So long as profits don’t get bit, and crooked oligarchs can keep laundering ill-gotten money buying luxury goods.

We foolishly thought engagement with our economies would soften and seduce Putin and Xi and make them friendly to us. Instead, they’ve used our Western laissez-faire attitude and lack of concern over their political character and motives against us. Our governments and businesses' willingness to seek profits via investment dollars, allowed Russia and China to infiltrate Western economies for their political ends.

US and European monies have funded the ability of Russia and China to ignore worldwide condemnation. Our money fed them and made them wealthy to the degree they’ve grown strong enough to threaten the very stability that made that wealth creation possible.

Western governments and capitalist businesses have enriched themselves — while turning a blind eye to the massive war chests Putin was building to fund his war machine and protect himself from Western sanctions. And in communist China’s case, the US finds itself in a massive creditor-lender relationship, to the delight of Xi.

Our myopic political and business leaders have forgotten the proverb — “The borrower is the slave of the lender.”

Now, facing the sack of Ukraine, the response has been to close up the Western candy shop.

(Forgive me and stay on board while I change metaphors from feral dogs to lawless looters.)

What we aren’t willing to face is that Putin the looter is already inside and has largely emptied the shelves. He’s taken hostages with guns drawn, threatening to kill them, the owners, and whoever responds to help. If we empty the cash registers to save our skins and sacrifice the skins of Ukrainians, what wishful idiocy makes us believe he won’t hit the toy store next door?

When facing armed robbery, there are limited options. You can give in and lose everything. You can cut a deal to keep some things in return for your agreement to submit to the robber in the present and in the future. Or you can take a stand. If you want to end armed robbery, eventually someone’s got to shoot or subdue the robber.

The US spends $750 billion annually on some supposedly sophisticated guns—allegedly purchased for just such an occasion.

Who is courageous enough to pull them out of their holsters? Preferably before it's too late for the Ukrainian hostages inside.