THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL FOR SAUDI ARABIA?

In the wake of some 48 executions in Saudi Arabia this last weekend, and the outbreak of protests in the Middle East against the (out)house of Saud, some of which have come from within that mediaeval kingdom itself for more freedoms (and are we really all that surprised?), this article by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed was shared by Mr. W.M.":

The collapse of Saudi Arabia is inevitable

The article says it all: declining revenues from oil, the eventuality(?) that the kingdom's oil reserves, its chief source of revenue, will play out, lack of agriculture, lack of water, expensive deslination, and an increasinigly reckless regime that has sponsored wars, has been a long term sponsor of terrorist organizations, and now most recently is engaged in what can best be a "crackdown" on "dissidents," none of this bodes well for the desert kingdom.

In addition to this, the regime is entering increasingly reckless geopolitical ventures, in this article shared by Mr. T.M.:

Saudi Arabia and Turkey agree to set up a 'strategic cooperation council'

While one might wonder at the long term geopolitical wisdom of entering strategic planning with the regime of Sultan Erdogan with its own special blend of Ottomania revisionism, one can clearly see the signs of urgency. The kingdom needs friends, and needs friends fast. The reason for this urgency is contained in this profound observation of Dr. Ahmed:

Renewable energy is one avenue which Saudi Arabia has tried to invest in to wean domestic demand off oil dependence, hoping to free up capacity for oil sales abroad, thus maintaining revenues.

But earlier this year, the strain on the kingdom’s finances began to show when it announced an eight-year delay to its $109 billion solar programme, which was supposed to produce a third of the nation’s electricity by 2032.

State revenues also have been hit through blowback from the kingdom’s own short-sighted strategy to undermine competing oil producers. As I previously reported, Saudi Arabia has maintained high production levels precisely to keep global oil prices low, making new ventures unprofitable for rivals such as the US shale gas industry and other OPEC producers.

The Saudi treasury has not escaped the fall-out from the resulting oil profit squeeze – but the idea was that the kingdom’s significant financial reserves would allow it to weather the storm until its rivals are forced out of the market, unable to cope with the chronic lack of profitability.

That hasn’t quite happened yet. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia’s considerable reserves are being depleted at unprecedented levels, dropping from their August 2014 peak of $737 billion to $672bn in May – falling by about $12bn a month.

At this rate, by late 2018, the kingdom’s reserves could deplete as low as $200bn, an eventuality that would likely be anticipated by markets much earlier, triggering capital flight.

To make up for this prospect, King Salman’s approach has been to accelerate borrowing. What happens when over the next few years reserves deplete, debt increases, while oil revenues remain strained?

As with autocratic regimes like Egypt, Syria and Yemen – all of which are facing various degrees of domestic unrest – one of the first expenditures to slash in hard times will be lavish domestic subsidies. In the former countries, successive subsidy reductions responding to the impacts of rocketing food and oil prices fed directly into the grievances that generated the “Arab Spring” uprisings.
(Emphases added)

And there's the rub: capital flight. In the long term, with nothing else to export other than oil and terrorism and beheadings and a barbaric and medieval "culture," the kingdom has little to offer the world at large. With declining oil revenues, the long term risk to investors even in Saudi sovereign securities would be risky. While the kingdom has been successful in acquiring technological expertise through its various large and powerful corporations like the Bin Laden group, ultimately the ability to purchase these technologies and maintain technological growth are imperiled by these long term trends. Indigenous development of technologies does not work well under tyrannies, especially tyrannies in league with a kind of fundamentalism that occasionally expresses itself in the form of imams speaking in favor of "recent creation" theories or other equvalents of flat-earth mentalities.

The other prospect is equally risky for the regime: foreign investment into the country inevitably exposes it to the influences - cultural and otherwise - that inevitably accompanies external capital influx. And for a fundamentalist regime, any such influence can only be viewed with suspicion(and we're being "soft" in our choice of words here). And while its role in the support of Islamic terrorism has long been known, the fact that in the last year increasing focus on this role has finally been broached in major media outlets of the west could be taken as a signal that there has been a "sea change" in the West and its "power oligarchs" regarding the desert kingdom.

In short, the regime is fragile, and increasingly reactionary, and is showing no signs of change. Change will inevitably overtake and overwhelm it, of course, but in the meantime, that very fragility means that the kingdom will play an increasingly destablizing role. For 2016, it's a story to watch closely.

See you on the flip side...

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

12 Comments

  1. 8thdegreeofj on January 13, 2016 at 3:55 pm

    #Milton, and the CIA-inspired plot thickens with a terrorist attack in Turkey yesterday. Erdogan is blaming the IS and claiming the bomber came from Syria. I suppose there had to be some kind of scapegoat event staged after Putin called out Turkey for buying ISIS’s stolen oil. And since Erdogan’s government has been claiming that they are fighting ISIS, now we have a convenient reason to believe…



  2. Nathan on January 8, 2016 at 9:29 am

    Yes indeedy the Sauds are crazy, even crazier now with their circumstances



  3. abadavas on January 7, 2016 at 10:17 pm

    All “Kingdoms must fall.” So be it with the House of Bush/Saud.



  4. zendogbreath on January 7, 2016 at 1:13 am

    interesting that i got a link to watch bitter adam curtis documentaries from brasscheck.org tonight. his latest is bitter lake. they linked me to a trailer on non-linear war.

    putin’s geared the economy to run at lower oil prices than this as well. when he was being crushed in Q1 2015, ruble dropped 50% several times. Russia’s central bank kept on buying – gold. interesting that adam curtis outlines putin’s propaganda hacking oligarch who keeps everyone guessing by financing everyone on all sides. similar to rockefellers’ routine for last century of planned chaos.

    we’re all not taking into account the pervasive israel/saudi ties.

    on top of it, does anyone have a clue about recharge times that come with abiotic oil? wonder how long ghawar takes to refill. is that how long it will be before the next genocide to wipe the masses’ memories clean of what we’re all learning now about abiotic oil, electric universe, tesla, egypt,…..

    wayne madsen’s been reliable for awhile. as stated elsewhere, he wrote recently that saudis can not turn down the spigot. they fracked as they were told pumping in more seawater than oil they got out. i think they started before their 2004 (most likely when ghawar peaked). in that event they were warned, resisted and were forced by their godfathers to frack and pump. the results of such engineering is overproduction beyond being able to slow it down. madsen’s looking for 2 to 5 more years of low prices.

    can putin survive that? can he make a profit off enough organic food to survive that? can he keep 19 old, beat nukes in ukraine from chernobyling? putin’s insiders got their work cut out. ironic that his loss really does no favors to the harkonnen/bush cabal in the west. if russia collapses again and/or more, there will be worse costs that eu, nato and the west will be hit with than after 89.



    • zendogbreath on January 7, 2016 at 1:13 am

      sorry that’s bitter lake by adam curtis



    • goshawks on January 7, 2016 at 10:02 pm

      “Harkonnen/Bush cabal.” I love it! (Good to see another “Dune” reader out there. Much knowledge within that series…)



      • zendogbreath on January 8, 2016 at 12:21 am

        for sure. we talked before about herbert’s ties with intel and the predictive programming involved right? so who is mr global setting us romantics up with now? who gets to be the fremen? who gets to be saudakar? who’s the planetary ecologist?



  5. goshawks on January 6, 2016 at 10:17 pm

    I disagree with “the kingdom’s own short-sighted strategy to undermine competing oil producers” as the primary motive. That is just the ‘cover story’. Saudi princes were ‘told’ to reduce prices in order to foment ‘regime change’ in Russia. Since Russia’s main dollar-generator is oil export, certain Powers would like to hit it’s ‘soft spot’ and produce financial chaos – as was done successfully, circa 1989. They want Putin out, and Saudi Arabia – being a vassal state – has no choice but to bow and obey. As long as this strategy might bear fruit, Saudi Arabia is expected to just grin and bear it…

    (This strategy has actually backfired, as the Russian population has guessed the motivation and has rallied behind Putin.)



  6. DownunderET on January 6, 2016 at 2:36 pm

    The “Royal” house of Saud, there is nothing “royal” about this murdering bunch of white knights. The one saying that comes to mind here is….live by the sword die by the sword.



  7. Robert Barricklow on January 6, 2016 at 11:14 am

    The US Tool is pas its expiration date. Also brings to mind Kissinger’s/ To be an enemy of the U.S. is dangerous; to be a friend is fatal.



  8. marcos toledo on January 6, 2016 at 10:55 am

    To call Saudi Arabia a mediaeval state would be and insult to Warring States China. European Dark Ages Kingdoms Tribal Warfare Greece minus the culture that went with that yes. Think more The Two Thousand Year Man Cave Seventy Six Arabia-Turkey partnership well barbarians r us deserve each other lets hope they go over cliff together as soon as possible takin the CSA with them.



  9. Milton Zentmyer on January 6, 2016 at 10:49 am

    This makes the inbred house of Saudi Arabia very dangerous. Especially when aligned with Turkey and it’s designs on a new Ottoman Empire. Very dangerous.



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