{"id":12775,"date":"2015-09-29T08:18:03","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T13:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12775"},"modified":"2015-09-29T08:18:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T13:18:03","slug":"the-collapse-of-saudi-arabia-is-inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12775","title":{"rendered":"The collapse of Saudi Arabia is inevitable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The collapse of Saudi Arabia is inevitable<\/a>\"\"<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n

Deep-rooted structural realities means that Saudi Arabia is indeed on the brink of protracted state-failure, a process likely to take-off in the next few years<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

On Tuesday 22 September, Middle East Eye\u00a0broke<\/a>\u00a0the story of a senior member of the Saudi royal family calling for a \u201cchange\u201d in leadership to fend off the kingdom\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n

In a letter circulated among Saudi princes, its author, a grandson of the late King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, blamed incumbent King Salman for creating unprecedented problems that endangered the monarchy\u2019s continued survival.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not be able to stop the draining of money, the political adolescence, and the military risks unless we change the methods of decision making, even if that implied changing the king himself,\u201d warned the letter.<\/p>\n

Whether or not an internal royal coup is round the corner \u2013 and informed observers think such a prospect \u201cfanciful\u201d \u2013 the letter\u2019s analysis of Saudi Arabia\u2019s dire predicament is startlingly accurate.<\/p>\n

Like many countries in the region before it, Saudi Arabia is on the brink of a perfect storm of interconnected challenges that, if history is anything to judge by, will be the monarchy\u2019s undoing well within the next decade.<\/p>\n

Black gold hemorrhage<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The biggest elephant in the room is oil. Saudi Arabia\u2019s primary source of revenues, of course, is oil exports. For the last few years, the kingdom has pumped at record levels to sustain production, keeping oil prices low, undermining competing oil producers around the world who cannot afford to stay in business at such tiny profit margins, and paving the way for Saudi petro-dominance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But Saudi Arabia\u2019s spare capacity to pump like crazy can only last so long. A new peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering anticipates that Saudi Arabia will experience a peak in its oil production, followed by inexorable decline, in 2028 \u2013 that\u2019s just 13 years away.<\/p>\n

– See more at: http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/columns\/collapse-saudi-arabia-inevitable-1895380679#sthash.m9EuQel9.dpuf<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The collapse of Saudi Arabia is inevitable Deep-rooted structural realities means that Saudi Arabia is indeed on the brink of protracted state-failure, a process likely to take-off in the next few years On Tuesday 22 September, Middle East Eye\u00a0broke\u00a0the story of a senior member of the Saudi royal family calling for a \u201cchange\u201d in leadership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[150,9389,6621,6741,2092,701],"class_list":["post-12775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-collapse","tag-king-abdulaziz-ibn-said","tag-king-salman","tag-middle-east-eye","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-saudi-arabia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12776,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12775\/revisions\/12776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}