Is There Method to the Clinton and Obama Middle East North Africa Madness?

Oil oozing from US Middle East madness
15 July, 2012 – By Colin S. Cavell – PressTV

Because of the excesses, multiplicity of scandals, and unbelievable outrages of KSA’s ruling family members (as well as that of fellow (Persian) GCC royals), it has been an unwritten practice of the American media to maintain a veritable silence regarding news from the Kingdom. The average US citizen has little to no idea who America’s biggest ally in the Persian Gulf is nor any notion of what passes for its government, culture, or society in general.

One objection to the contention that current US policy in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region is committed to implanting a new US democratic model to replace the formerly autocratically-ruled US client states in an attempt to perpetuate its historic dominance over the region and thus ensure continued access to relatively cheap and unimpeded crude oil and natural gas is the fact of apparent American steadfast support for the Persian Gulf monarchies.

These Persian Gulf monarchies, relics of a bygone era of fairy tales and fantasy, have been grouped together politically and economically into the so-called [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council [P (GCC)] since 1981, in response to the genuine fear that the revolutionary example posed by the Iranian Revolution would engulf these reactionary regimes. Their continued existence in the modern world is an artificial contrivance constructed by and for the benefit of the two main imperialist powers in the region: the USA and the UK. Unhampered access to relatively cheap oil and natural gas is the raison d’être of this regional configuration. Preserving this access is the number one priority of these imperial powers.

Encompassing the kingdoms or sheikhdoms or sultanates or emirates of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, these six sovereign states-recognized as such by the United Nations-collectively sit on an estimated 50% of the world’s petroleum reserves and are the world’s largest providers of liquefied natural gas and, hence, boast an impressive GDP of over $33,000 per capita as of 2012. Of course, we must remember that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the overall value of goods and services produced over a specific time period (usually a year) in a particular (usually national) social formation or economy divided by the number of people in the economy.

In the case of each of the Persian Gulf monarchies, wide asymmetrical divides in wealth exists between the ruling families, their court followers and obsequious and parasitic stooges as compared to average citizens. In other words, the high GDP levels of these countries mask the existence of widespread poverty throughout the realms. The extensive divide is even further exacerbated when the wealth of the royal family and their immediate supporters is compared with that of the migrant workers who make up the majority of almost all of the (P)GCC countries’ populations. Yes, you read correctly that most of the human population of these regimes is comprised of expatriate, i.e. foreign, workers. [In the UAE, over 91% of the population are expatriate workers. In Kuwait, over two-thirds of the population are expatriates. In Oman, expatriate workers comprise nearly 30% of the population. In Qatar, expats outnumber native citizens by a factor of seven. In Bahrain, more than half of the population are expatriates. In Saudi Arabia, nearly a third of the population is expatriates.]

“Does unfettered access to cheap oil and gas trump America’s avowed support for democracy?” it is asked. More to the point, “Will not American hypocrisy and double standards guarantee that whatever new doctrine the US has for the MENA region be rejected, as subject populations refuse to be hoodwinked for another generation?” Detractors say that the policy-if there is in fact one-is not coherent, uniform, nor convincing. It is, some say, illogical, chaotic, and mad. It is asserted that the Americans and the British are only interested in solidifying and expanding their hegemony in the region, and they don’t care who they have to kill, control, or manipulate in order to accomplish this task. It is easy to understand this reaction, especially by those directly affected by these imperial policies, but all systems act to moderate conflict, stabilize its component parts, regularize its operations, and create scenarios for predictable outcomes, and contrive remedies to address system instability-if they are to last. The USA/UK regional system of control over the MENA region is no different, and many practitioners of statecraft in these hegemons are and have been quite aware for some time that the current structure of this imperial structure for the MENA is unsustainable.

If money alone could buy social peace, then surely the (P)GCC countries would be the imagined paragons of paradise long sought for by adventurers and explorers. However, such is not the case. With more than half of the (P)GCC member-states’ 42 million people and by encompassing more than 80% of the member-states’ land area in addition to possessing the world’s second largest reserves of oil while remaining the world’s largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia is the bellwether of the (P)GCC union. Incorporating the aggregate of the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia is the second-largest Arab-speaking country behind Algeria in terms of land area, though Egypt remains the Arab world’s most populous nation by a factor of three over Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy established in 1932 and ruled over by the sons of the Kingdom’s Bedouin founder Abdulaziz ibn Saud, who had a reported 22 wives and at least 37 sons. Its current ruler is the 88-year-old Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the sixth ruler of the Kingdom since its inception and King since 2005. With a reported 13 wives and at least 25 children, the aging monarch is said to be in deteriorating health and, hence, a succession crisis looms large over the Kingdom.

Just last October, 80-year-old Crown Prince (and successor to the throne) Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, father of at least 32 children with over eleven different wives, died reportedly of cancer in New York City, becoming the first Saudi Crown Prince to die before becoming king. More recently, just a month ago in June of 2012, one of the King’s brothers, 79-year-old Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who succeeded Prince Sultan as Crown Prince of the Kingdom, died reportedly of cardiac problems in Geneva, Switzerland and was succeeded by 76-year-old Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud as the new Crown Prince. Nayef, a staunch opponent of democracy and women’s rights and an unyielding defender of the Kingdom’s absolute monarchy, had been acting as de facto ruler of the Kingdom due to the King’s illnesses, and it was he who reportedly gave the order to send in Peninsula Shield Forces into Bahrain in mid-March of 2011 to stamp out pro-democracy activists there. Both men each have had three wives with Nayef siring ten children and Salman currently the father of 13. …more