Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom

[applegrove]

Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom

by Sarah Chayes and Alex de Waal at the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/saudi-arabia-collapse/463212/

SNIP.............


Understood one way, the Saudi king is the CEO of a family business that converts oil into payouts that buy political loyalty. They take two forms: cash handouts or commercial concessions for the increasingly numerous scions of the royal clan, and a modicum of public goods and employment opportunities for commoners. The coercive “stick” is supplied by brutal internal-security services lavishly outfitted with American equipment.

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Looked at another way, the Saudi ruling elite is operating something like a sophisticated criminal enterprise, when populations everywhere are making insistent demands for government accountability. With its political and business elites interwoven in a monopolistic network, quantities of unaccountable cash leaving the country for private investments and lavish purchases abroad, and state functions bent to serve these objectives, Saudi Arabia might be compared to such kleptocracies as Viktor Yanukovich’s Ukraine.

Increasingly, Saudi citizens are seeing themselves as just that: citizens, not subjects. In countries as diverse as Nigeria, Ukraine, Brazil, Moldova, and Malaysia, people are contesting criminalized government and impunity for public officials—sometimes violently. In more than half a dozen countries in 2015, populations took to the streets to protest corruption. In three of them, heads of state are either threatened or have had to resign. Elsewhere, the same grievances have contributed to the expansion of jihadist movements or criminal organizations posing as Robin Hoods. Russia and China’s external adventurism can at least partially be explained as an effort to re-channel their publics’ dissatisfaction with the quality of governance.

For the moment, it is largely Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority that is voicing political demands. But the highly educated Sunni majority, with unprecedented exposure to the outside world, is unlikely to stay satisfied forever with a few favors doled out by geriatric rulers impervious to their input. And then there are the “guest workers.” Saudi officials, like those in other Gulf states, seem to think they can exploit an infinite supply of indigents grateful to work, whatever the conditions. But citizens are now heavily outnumbered in their own countries by laborers who may soon begin claiming rights.



.............SNIP

[Wilms]

1. I sure hope we put kill switches in all those F-15s Hillary/CGI brokered for them. n/t

[applegrove]

2. Canada is giving them a billion in armoured trucks or something too. It was controvertial for a bit.

That is a change in how we think about the middle east. The worst thing for the Saudis may be the attention the middle east has garnered over the last 30 years. Now people know what is going on.

[Wilms]

3. "or something" is right.

Canada’s arms deal with Saudi Arabia shrouded in secrecy

The Canadian government is refusing to say whether it obtained assurances that light armoured vehicles being sold to Saudi Arabia in a massive $15-billion deal would not be used against the Saudi people – a key guarantee required by federal export controls when arms are destined for countries with a “persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens.”

This controversial 2014 agreement to ship made-in-Canada light armoured vehicles to the Mideast country is coming under increased scrutiny after much-publicized incidents of torture and mistreatment by Saudi authorities, including the videotaped beheading of a woman in Mecca this month and the flogging and jailing for blasphemy of a writer who has Canadian ties. Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, has a wife and children who’ve been granted asylum in Canada.

The Harper government calls the export contract a major success, one that will sustain 3,000 advanced manufacturing jobs for the 14-year length of the deal as well as thousands of other jobs for suppliers across the country. Ottawa went to great lengths to make the transaction happen, taking on contractual obligations for the sale through a Crown corporation. It’s by far the largest export deal ever brokered by the government’s Canadian Commercial Corp. and the manufacturer is General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London, Ont.

snip

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-arms-deal-with-saudi-arabia-shrouded-in-secrecy/article22547765/

[applegrove]

4. Okay. I was not really listening to the tv. Point is the tides have changed. Saudis are beginning to

have to answer for some things.

[Wilms]

5. I thought the article underscored the point you are making.

Sometimes you don't have to hear every piece of info because you already have a finger on the issue.

[applegrove]

6. I have a habit of skimming sometimes. I could have looked that up myself and often do.

Thanks for doing it for me. You made my point. Yes the worm has turned. I think the internet is a big reason for it. Internet is changing the nature of power everywhere. Look at the American election.

[Wilms]

7. The internet (and wikileaks!) indeed have changed everything.

It's A LOT easier to put the pieces together.

[applegrove]

10. I am actually not a fan of releasing government documents willy, nilly. I still trust government to

decide what should be public. I want government to have a leg up on their and my foes, like ISIS, the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

[Wilms]

11. Their hand in creating foes is damning.

But I think you'd agree that it upended a lot. And it's that "disruptive" force that is the internet.

[SCantiGOP]

8. One of the less pleasant things I've read today

Scary to think of the implications of a collapse of their regime. All I know is it probably involves American ground troops and adding another few decades to the Great Middle East War.

[applegrove]

9. Unless they see the writing on the wall and become like Jordan. The people within Jordan

see the chaos around them these days and must think....we will go incrementally towards democracy please and thank you.

[SCantiGOP]

12. Hard for me

to be that optimistic, but I hope you're right.

[applegrove]

13. True. And the Royal Family in Jordan did keep marrying well educated commoners from outside of

Jordan, women who had real jobs, so they didn't become divorced from cause and effect as royals can be.