A New World Order is long overdue in Saudi Arabia

A new Saudi Arabia is emerging that is worth analyzing.

The recent declines in oil income and the demise of an OPEC that one day could twist arms and shock Consumer Price Indexes are over. The west managed to remove that threat with a determination of a surgeon and his Gallium scalpel. A watered down OPEC is hanging by its threads unable to decisively take control of its destiny. So OPEC producing countries are adjusting to the New World Order with boldness and imaginative market driven policies. Most have survived using IMF instituted tools and WTO guidance. Except for Saudi Arabia.

There are several reasons why Saudi Arabia is unable to adjust to these new realities. Most center around a mix of a market economy style government to benefit the very few and a socialist style state to regulate the leftover population. Saudi Arabia is rich and poor at the same time. Saudi Arabia has the highest concentration of billionaires per capita in the world, yet we have less than $4000 per capita income and declining. Saudi Arabia has no taxes (Ulemma ordained fatwa) and yet its revenues have exceeded its expenditures since 1982. Saudi Arabia has instituted a corrupt system of land granting, contract fixing and creative accounting oil sales that has worked in the good old days but that is faulty in depressed oil markets era. It is faulty to the point of eroding public confidence in the government and threatening its rule.

With that historical canvas, Saudi Arabia is attempting to change. How it is doing it is what is interesting.

Al-Saud have always set their priorities in that order:

1. Their personal well being and security,
2. Their continuous rule of Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent their neighboring countries through aid programs,
3. Their image as Guardians of Islam combined with moderation,
4. Their friendly overtures to the powers around the world through a pact to keep oil prices low against security and protection,
5. Their balancing acts of selling their soul to the devil while looking like angels

This bogus Pavlov pyramid is starting to crumble at the seams from the bottom up.

5) Saudi Arabia is a society battling inconsistency everyday. On one hand it has Ulemmas whose extreme Wahabbi movement still lives in medieval times and on the other hand it has a new generation of learned middle class who is at odd with that extremism. On one hand, al-Saud claim to be Guardians of Islam and on the other hand they break every Islamic rule and fatwa. On one hand al-Saud claim to be moderate and on the other hand they still cut-off hands and behead people like no other nation in the world. The balance is wavering and the equilibrium is crumbling. Saudis, not only have they realized it, but the majority cannot accept it.

4) The disappearance of Russia from the political scene has thrown open multiple options to the United States. Some are obvious but immaturely addressed (the economic arm twisting of your allies), some are reality driven with time to sink in (China, using D-Weapon (Dollars as Weapons) has replaced Russia), and some are hidden because not enough time has gone by for the US to enjoy its solo stage presence. One of those hidden options or benefits is the realization that the US foreign policy needs to adjust to the New World Order. The same people who have planned against communism are still running our societal portals. New blood is needed to understand that regime changes in the Middle East may be the solution to unrest whose presence is manifested with car bombs and violence. Where would al-Rasheeds or al-Rajhis or al-Ibrahims have to go to sell the oil? All roads lead to Rome and all policies will lead to Washington. That realization has not yet dawned on the Pentagon and more importantly on the National Security Agency of the United States. We are standing by old, rotten regimes whose time is past and whose presence is more of a threat than their absence.

3) Hajj quotas, politicization of Islam, personal habits and lifestyle, overtures to the enemies of Islam, apathy towards Islamic humanitarian causes re all combining to distill a chilling results expressed by a nervous and shifting population. King Fahd embraced the title of Guardian of the Two Holy Sites and expected it to simulate a dog driving sheep home. The people are shedding that sheep skin and are more and more looking like rabbits, scared of the dog but also free to decide and roam. The Guardian looks like a deranged fox to the rabbits.

Three out of the five priorities set by al-Saud are being threatened. The last two will be their dethroning and their economic demise (Marcos) and if things continue as they have been, it won’t be long before a whole population rises in Saudi Arabia, which cannot be controlled and whose idea of a new society is the other extreme. Iran, Mecca and Medina, History all point to that direction. Albright and her team are not savvy enough to realize it and the intelligence community is fallible as we have seen in car bombings by extremists.