{"id":38688,"date":"2018-10-04T09:26:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T14:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38688"},"modified":"2018-10-04T09:26:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T14:26:29","slug":"is-saudi-arabia-the-middle-easts-next-failed-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38688","title":{"rendered":"Is Saudi Arabia the Middle East\u2019s Next Failed State?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is Saudi Arabia the Middle East\u2019s Next Failed State?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Ibn Khaldun\u2014the famous Tunisian historian, geographer and social theorist\u2014believed that decadence leads to collapse for Muslim dynasties. Such a scenario may be playing out with the Saudis, reports Daniel Lazare.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Reports are growing that Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia\u2019s hyperactive crown prince, is losing his grip. His economic reform program has stalled since his father, King Salman, nixed plans to privatize 5 percent of Saudi Aramco. The Saudi war in Yemen, which the prince launched in March 2015, is more of a quagmire than ever while the kingdom\u2019s sword rattling with Iran is making the region increasingly jumpy.<\/p>\n

Heavy gunfire in Riyadh<\/a> last April sparked rumors that MBS, as he\u2019s known, had been killed in a palace coup. In May, an exiled Saudi prince urged top members<\/a> of the royal family to oust him and put an end to his \u201cirrational, erratic, and stupid\u201d rule. Recently, Bruce Riedel, an ex-CIA analyst who heads up the Brookings Institution\u2019s Intelligence Project, reported that the prince is so afraid for his life<\/a> that he\u2019s taken to spending nights on his yacht in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.<\/p>\n

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A statue of Ibn Khaldun in Tunis, Tunisia. (Kassus \/ Wikimedia)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Channeling Ibn Khaldun<\/strong><\/p>\n

What does it all mean? The person to ask is Ibn Khaldun, the famous Tunisian historian, geographer, and social theorist. You might have trouble getting him on the phone, though, since he died in 1406. But he\u2019s still the single best guide to the deepening Saudi crisis.<\/p>\n

If you do somehow channel him, the message might be grim. In a nutshell, it\u2019s that if MBS goes, he\u2019ll likely take the Al-Saud with him, and that the people waiting in the wings will not be the \u201cmoderates\u201d beloved of Washington, but ISIS and al-Qaida. A modern state bristling with shopping malls, superhighways, and high-tech weaponry thus will succumb to a ragtag militia riding Toyota pickups and waving AK-47s.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Saudi Arabia the Middle East\u2019s Next Failed State? Ibn Khaldun\u2014the famous Tunisian historian, geographer and social theorist\u2014believed that decadence leads to collapse for Muslim dynasties. Such a scenario may be playing out with the Saudis, reports Daniel Lazare. Reports are growing that Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia\u2019s hyperactive crown prince, is losing his grip. […]<\/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":[6963,7398,292,6620,701],"class_list":["post-38688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-daniel-lazare","tag-failed-state","tag-muhammad-bin-salman","tag-saudi-arabia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38688","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=38688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38689,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38688\/revisions\/38689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}