Empire Conquest-Chapter 900 - 120: Money as Defense

To let Saudi Arabia, or rather to force Saudi Arabia to invest more troops and participate in frontline ground battles, at least to take on the task of maintaining order in occupied areas, was not something that the over-thirty-year-old who had just been promoted to Army Brigadier General, the Alliance Chief of Staff, could accomplish.

Upon returning to King Khalid Military City, Ding Zhennan immediately sought out Shi Shouliang.

Afterwards, the two took a helicopter to Riyadh.

At the palace, Shi Shouliang left Ding Zhennan outside and went alone to see the King of Saudi Arabia.

As for whether Shi Shouliang could persuade the King of Saudi Arabia, Ding Zhennan had no confidence, or rather he just hoped that Shi Shouliang’s personal appearance would be of some help.

Having been in Saudi Arabia for over two months, Ding Zhennan gained a deeper understanding of this country.

To be honest, before the outbreak of the Boss Bay War, he basically had only a superficial understanding of Saudi Arabia, after all, the New Moon Region where Saudi Arabia is located is not under the management of the Western Battle Zone.

Simply put, relying on abundant oil resources and the huge profits from oil exports, Saudi Arabia’s 30 million people could live a prosperous life, and the ruling Saudi Royal Family could maintain stability without facing constant internal unrest.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia’s national security is also built upon this wealth.

Over the past few decades, Saudi Arabia has been the world’s most major arms importer.

According to unofficial statistics, since gaining independence from the colonial rule of the Bulan Kingdom after the end of the Second Global War and formally establishing the nation in the past 40-plus years, Saudi Arabia has been the world’s number one arms importer. Using the currency system of New Calendar year 150 as reference, Saudi Arabia imported about 800 billion Gold Yuan worth of arms in the past 40-plus years, equivalent to spending 20 billion Gold Yuan annually on arms purchases.

That’s not a small amount of money.

In New Calendar 149, out of nearly 200 countries globally, only 11 countries had military expenditures exceeding 20 billion Gold Yuan, and not even 50 countries had government budgets exceeding 20 billion Gold Yuan, with around 100 countries having a GDP less than 20 billion Gold Yuan.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia doesn’t solely import arms from the Liangxia Empire.

For decades, Saudi Arabia has adhered to a policy of weapon imports diversification, importing arms simultaneously from multiple countries, including the three superpowers.

For example, while purchasing "War-11" fighters from the Liangxia Empire, Saudi Arabia also intended to introduce the similarly capable F-15 from the Newland Republic. Eventually, because the Liangxia Empire agreed to export the "War-11AG", Saudi Arabia did not import the fully overlapping F-15A. Perhaps to "compensate" the Newland Republic, Saudi Arabia still imported a batch of M109A3 self-propelled howitzers.

In fact, when importing arms, Saudi Arabia first considers the "balance" policy.

Put simply, it’s about accommodating multiple superpowers.

For instance, after initially importing arms worth hundreds of billions of Gold Yuan from the Liangxia Empire, Saudi Arabia purchased dozens of medium-range ballistic missiles from the Tiaoman Empire at a unit price of 100 million Gold Mark, even though these missiles remained in storage and were never used after entering service.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Saudi Arabia’s "balance" policy played a crucial role.

To put it simply, Iraq’s Hussein Regime acquired a substantial amount of weapons and equipment from the Eastern Group through oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia.

The most representative case is that through Saudi Arabia, Iraq obtained hundreds of ZT-80 main battle tanks from the Liangxia Empire.

These tanks played an extremely crucial and irreplaceable role in the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War, especially in the battles over the Two Rivers Delta region.

If not for these main battle tanks, Iraq might have lost Basra.

If that were the case, the Iran-Iraq War certainly wouldn’t have ended in New Calendar 148.

At that time, the Military Intelligence Bureau conducted a confidential investigation.

The result was the discovery that these tanks were manufactured in Bakistan, initially intended for Bakistan’s armored forces, but were sold to Saudi Arabia at high prices instead.

If that were all, it wouldn’t be much of a problem.

In any case, Saudi Arabia was a quasi-ally of the Empire at the time and more important than many allies, and its relationship with Bakistan was very close.

However, the problem was that the Empire did not permit the sale of arms, especially main battle equipment, to Iraq.

After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, the Imperial Authority announced neutrality, imposing strict sanctions and embargoes on both warring sides.

Of course, these mainly targeted arms.

After the investigation results came out, the Imperial Authority immediately put Saudi Arabia on the embargo list.

Unable to purchase ZT-80 main battle tanks from the Liangxia Empire, Saudi Arabia had to seek alternatives, eventually purchasing a batch of AMX-30 tanks from the Locke country of the West Continent Group for emergency use. However, before the Iran-Iraq War ended, these tanks were withdrawn from the Saudi Royal Army. Besides gifting a few to friendly countries, the rest of the AMX-30s were stored by the Saudi Royal Army.

However, the Saudi Royal Army did not intend to redeploy these tanks.

Not because of inconvenience, but because of the poor performance of the AMX-30, which was not only inferior to the ZT-99AG but also significantly worse than the ZT-80.

According to the Empire Army’s standards, the AMX-30, with a combat weight of 36 tons, was considered only a light tank.

It was due to the impact of this incident that Saudi Arabia, in choosing advanced fighters, included the F-15A from the Newland Republic on its procurement list.

This situation persisted until the Iran-Iraq War was nearing its end when the Liangxia Empire finally lifted the military embargo on Saudi Arabia.