Saudi Arabia

Over the past week in Saudi Arabia a dozen princes and a few various gajillionaires (and undoubtedly hundreds of lesser-known citizens) were arrested for the nebulous crime of corruption. Among the arrests was the head of the Saudi National Guard, Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, the nephew of King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz al Saud. Having already ousted the head of the Saudi Land Forces, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (another nephew), this past summer, the entire military and police apparatus of the Saudi state falls to the king's son, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. There are vague reports suggesting a coup was in place and that these maneuvers staved off a revolution, but claiming victimhood while being the aggressor is just what bullies do. With the vanquishing of the last of the previous king's sons, the path to the throne of Saudi Arabia has been laid for MBS.

MBS has already issued a decree (called Vision 2030) to make Saudi Islam more kindly and gentle, allowing for more women's rights and cultural activities, and swearing off Jihadi violence, all in recognition that as fossil fuels wane (*), the Kingdom's entire economy and society will soon be in flux. The Kingdom needs to change, to modernize and MBS is set up to be the man to try. It seems to me, though, that the recent arrests will create something like a gov't in waiting, a revolutionary force ready to snap into action should MBS make any fatal mistakes. So though MBS shored up his grip on power at home, he will likely have a pack of vultures hovering over him for the foreseeable future, to say nothing of the foreign enemies he is now preparing to go out and face.

As the Saudi purges were taking place, the Yemenis assassinated another Saudi prince and launched a ballistic missile at Riyadh's airport (shot down with an American Patriot missile). MBS has been the Saudi point man on the war on Yemen and while I think the Saudis are ready to be done with it, the missile launch (of Iranian origin?) and the high profile assassination will undoubtedly keep the Saudis in Yemen for a while.

Amidst all this activity, the Saudis were able to force Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri to resign (and remain in house arrest in Riyadh...?), which is meant to undercut the Iranian-backed Hezbollah faction in Lebanon. I don't understand how this is the effect, Hariri and Hezbollah were not natural allies, but I assume the Iranians understand the game has changed in the Levant.

Likewise, earlier this year the Saudis (along with Egypt, the UAE and Kuwait) blockaded Qatar, home to al-Jazeera and the 2018 World Cup (which the Americans won't be attending...), a straight-up bully maneuver. Again, I don't understand the purpose of this, it seems to me it pushes the Qataris into the orbit of Iran (and possibly Turkey), which doesn't necessarily seem like a good thing for the Saudis.

A grand confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been brewing for decades. The Persian Shia and the Wahhabi Saud have nowhere to go but at each other. The Iranians resent the wealth and influence the Saudis have accumulated by sucking up to the West, the Saudis reject the notion that Iran is a great empire of people. The Shia-Sunni divide is less philosophical at this point than logistical: for hundreds of years Shia have allied with Shia, Sunni allied with Sunni, the grand networks of the Muslim world are long since built out and in place.

But it looked for a while that the Saudis were backing away from the fight. With the Kingdom's economic stagnation due to flat oil prices (an effect they themselves created, I think, to forestall Iran's economic growth in the face of their 2015 deal with the Obama White House) and their new touchy-feely young Crown Prince, it seemed like they were turning their attention elsewhere. But considering the massive arms shipment President Trump (following through on an arrangement with  Obama) sent to Saudi Arabia earlier this year, the Saudi detente with the Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, the deepening relationship with Israel, diplomatic interaction with Russia (including a missile defense system--to go alongside the American Patriot missiles I presume) and now this complete restructuring of the military and political forces in Riyadh, it seems like the Saudi war machine is gearing up.

Traditionally the West's natural ally in the Middle East was Iran: the Persian Shia are the most like us and the least like everyone else in that region. They relied on Western support for centuries until the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. Since then Iran has disdained the West, forcing the Europeans and Americans to cozy up to the Saudi regime instead. I've long thought this was gradually flipping back and that the key to American foreign policy was recognizing that the Iranians are the good guys and the Saudis are the bad guys.

I've long thought that the Saudis were the enemy. When one compiles a list of nations with repressive cultures and broken economies where the citizenry are devoid of economic opportunity, social mobility or self-expression, Saudi Arabia goes right near the top. The regime is richer than God and utterly without regard for their own people. The people of Saudi Arabia are basically the property of the royal family in the way the trees and the dirt of the land are. Iran, on the other hand, is a vibrant democracy (well, sorta...) where women are allowed to participate (well, sorta...), where the people are allowed to come and go freely and interact with the outside world (well, sorta...) and where the oil riches are plowed back into a civic structure rather than diverted to some royal family's coffers.

Now we've come to a new milestone in Saudi Arabia's history. Don't get me wrong: palace coups and subtle back-stabbings are long how the Saudi royal family (most all royal families really) has handled their business. But the fact that this is so public, so obvious, and such a seemingly desperate maneuver is all together new. And the fact that it coincided with an attack on their capital and an enemy assassination of one of the still favored princes is eye-opening. (Indeed, why isn't this bigger news in the USA? Because Americans don't care about the rest of the world, I suppose)

Some will see this as a weakening of the American position in the Middle East. I think getting out of the Middle East is probably a good idea. When Obama removed the bulk of the American troops from Iraq in 2010 and began working with Russia in Syria, that signaled our shift out of the greater Middle East. After 9/11, we cleared out Iran's enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq with forces that we removed from Saudi Arabia. We went from protecting the Kingdom to strengthening the Kingdom's adversaries (and why not? 9/11 was carried out by Saudi hijackers with Saudi coordination and Saudi funding, not Iranians with Iranian coordination and Iranian funding). Then we invited in Vladimir Putin to take our place as the major meddling foreign power in the region. It didn't seem like a good idea at the time but at this point I'm embracing it. And I think the sudden dissolution of the Saud Kingdom is probably a step in the right direction--indeed, it suddenly seems like the culmination of George Bush's strategy in 2001.

My pause is the effect this will have on the global economy. Since going off the gold standard in the early 1970s the underlying basis of the American economy is oil. As long as there is oil in the world pumping up out of the ground and flowing into markets around the globe, the American economy has its bedrock. This is why American presidents have been so willing to sacrifice much blood and hardware for the preservation of ocean shipping and propping up dictators. But our interest is merely that it flows, not who owns it or who uses it (**); but as long as Iran and Saudi Arabia and Russia are interested in pumping up the oil and selling it around the world, that's all that needs to happen. If our enemies will keep doing that, then what interests do we have left in the Arab world? We have established the oil economy infrastructure, as long it keeps running--and our enemies are motivated to keep it running--then why do we need to be there? (Other questions, like, as the world's energy needs cycle away from oil, how does this effect the value of the US dollar?, will be answered over time, whether or not there is war in the Middle East)

So how does the coming war play out? Well, part of MBS's plan for the future of the Saudi economy means bulking up industrial production and expanding the work force to becoming a consumer class (standard feature in the West, kinda brand new in the Arab world). Undoubtedly that industrial production will be military materiel probably to be sold to Sunnis throughout the Arab world to fight the Shia. This is all together new for the Saudi regime and the Saudi people, are they prepared for this kind of massive cultural shift? We've seen in America the leveling force of social media, how will the Saudi population take to more openness? Will the Saudi economy prosper? The bulk of the industrialization will undoubtedly be military in nature, will the Saudis make war or just the materiel?

The larger area is still in flux. Lebanon is suddenly in need of a new prime minister, Syria may be on the cusp of a Putin-led Constitutional Convention, Yemen is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster, Iraq is still figuring out how to react to Kurdish separatism (and is there room for the Saudis to maneuver in Kurdistan?), Egypt is still in a serious identity crisis, Qatar is still blockaded, Turkey is going through its own recent set of purges, and the recent merger of Hamas and the PLA has yet to fully take shape.

And what of the Americans? I've long believed in supporting the Iraqi Kurds (Syrian Kurds, too) but otherwise I'm cool with standing back and letting the area re-shape itself. Trump's blustery talk, I suspect, is just talk and he may well see the wisdom of not putting Americans into the coming fray. Imagine that: a major global war without American marines. And if Iran comes out the victor...well, you know Americans love a winner.


(*) The concept of "Peak Oil" I think is generally misunderstood. The phrase doesn't indicate the end of supply of oil but rather the end of demand for oil We've already discovered that renewable energies (wind, water, solar, biofuel) are increasingly efficient for more local needs (making the average consumer less dependent on the grid) while nuclear is cleaner, faster, cheaper, etc., for large scale industrial or emergency production. Ideally the recent move toward cleaner natural gas (and corn) will guide us to the necessary mix of renewable and nuclear that will obviate the need for oil or coal or timber soon.
(**) The oil market itself is the basis of the American economy. Who actually owns the oil or uses the oil is not of interest to me. It may be of interest to politicians, plutocrats and business men but that is of secondary interest to the USA itself. And they are not my concerns, so I don't give a fuck about the businessmen that won't get rich off the oil they don't control.