As Saudi Arabia pushes to join the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan’s next-generation fighter jet alliance, Tokyo is reportedly opposed to Riyadh’s bid for technical and geopolitical reasons, even as it tries to improve relations with the Gulf kingdom.
Saudi Arabia’s request to be the fourth addition to the tri-national Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) was confirmed by senior officials from London, Tokyo and Rome.
Of the three member countries, Japan is the only one to boldly oppose their induction due to technical and geopolitical reasons.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) gave orders to pay Japan with billions of dollars to accept the Saudi request.
MBS is believed to have made a formal request during Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Jeddah in mid-July.
On July 31, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman met with his Japanese counterpart, Yasukazu Hamada, and discussed bilateral defense cooperation and exchanges, as well as Tokyo’s new National Defense Strategy formulated last December, according to a Japan Defense Ministry press statement.
Saudi Arabia ranked as the second-largest arms importer globally in 2018-2022. The Kingdom received 9.6 percent of all arms imports during that period.
Saudi arms purchases during 2022 included aircraft, air defense systems, armored vehicles, missiles, naval weapons, sensors, and ships.
Saudi Arabia’s main suppliers and their share of its total imports: US (78 percent), France (6.4 percent), and Spain (4.9 percent).
MBS’s large arms purchases are aimed at whitewashing his poor human rights record, especially after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country’s consulate in Istanbul.
MBS has spent a third of the kingdom’s budget on weapon purchases, despite the high unemployment rate.
According to the 2017 Congressional Research Service report, Saudi Arabia spent $30 billion worth on military expenditures from 2008 to 2015. A total of $16 billion of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports came from the US , and $11.4 billion from Western Europe, 1.6 billion dollars from Eastern Europe, and 1.3 billion dollars from China.
The report considered Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest arms importer from 2013 to 2017.
Saudi Arabia has spent a fortune buying arms from the US to prosecute a war that has killed almost a quarter of a million people — the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in our lifetime.
However, no real achievement was reported, as Saudi Arabia failed to stop Houthi attacks on the Kingdom.
