Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

What will a post-oil Middle East look like?

What will a post-oil Middle East look like?

'The only officials present were American and Saudi," tweeted the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, but he was lying. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really did fly in to Saudi Arabia to spend a few hours with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
We owe this knowledge to that indispensable journalistic resource, the flight-tracking websites. They revealed that the private plane Mr Netanyahu usually charters for secret visits abroad departed from Tel Aviv on Sunday and flew to Neom in Saudi Arabia, taking off for the return flight three and a half hours later.

Once upon a time this would have been headline news around the world. "US superpower and oil-rich Saudi Arabia get together with embattled Israeli leader to carve up the Middle East", or something along those lines. Whereas today this "summit", if you can call it that, barely gets noticed.

Mr Netanyahu is indeed embattled, but it's corruption charges he's fighting, not a foreign enemy. Mr Pompeo is a soon-to-be-unemployed politician polishing up his CV for a senatorial nomination in 2022 or the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Prince Mohammed bin Salman is still effectively the dictator of Saudi Arabia, but that no longer cuts much ice in the rest of the world. The meeting was meaningless.

Some of this collapse in relevance is temporary. Mr Netanyahu will eventually go to jail or retire, but Israel will still be the dwarf superpower that bestrides the Middle East militarily.

Mr Pompeo and his employer will soon be out of office, and the United States will recover some of its former position as a "world leader", at least for a while.

But Saudi Arabia will never be back as a mover and shaker. The decline is permanent, because "oil-rich" is a phrase destined to become as obsolete as "carbon copy". The oil revenue of the Arab producers has fallen by more than two-thirds, from US$1 trillion (30.3 trillion baht) in 2012 to only $300 billion this year, and it's never coming back up. The decline so far has been driven mostly by a steep fall in oil prices -- demand rose steadily but oil production persistently rose faster -- but now an absolute collapse in demand looms as well.

As the climate emergency deepens, motor vehicles (which account for half of all oil use globally) are switching to electricity instead. The UK and France are now committed to end all sales of new cars with internal combustion engines by 2030, which means in practice that nobody there will buy a new petroleum-fuelled car after 2025. Many other countries are debating similar measures.

So what happens to a country like Saudi Arabia, where four-fifths of the government budget comes from oil revenues? Budget-cuts are already happening, of course, but revenues will continue to fall. Moreover, the population in almost all the oil-producing Gulf states is still growing fast.

The extraordinary stability of these states -- not a single change of regime in the six "oil-rich" monarchies of the Arabian peninsula in the past 50 years -- has been based entirely on the ability of the traditional rulers to buy the acquiescence of their subjects. Once the wealth goes, so does the stability.

The Arabian peninsula has been briefly a major centre of power only twice in world history: once in 632-661 CE, after which the capital of the early Islamic empire moved to Damascus, and once from 1973 to the present -- but not for much longer.

Even the unity of Saudi Arabia itself, which was imposed by force less than a century ago, may not survive the transition. The dominant power centres of the post-oil Middle East will be exactly where they were for most of the past thousand years: Turkey, Egypt and Iran. And at no time in the last thousand years have any two of those three powers been able to cooperate for long.

They do have some things in common: Islam (although in two different and generally hostile versions), relatively modern, semi-industrialised economies, and around 100 million people each. But they are divided by language (Turkish, Arabic and Farsi have nothing in common except loan-words), distance (the capitals are more than 2,000 kilometres apart), and by history and politics. Egypt occasionally got conquered by one of the other two, but that doesn't count as collaboration. So it might be argued that the "Middle East" itself is about to disappear as a meaningful concept. No great loss, really.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
House Republicans Move to Defund OECD Over Global Tax Dispute
France Opens Criminal Investigation into X Over Algorithm Manipulation Allegations
Trump Steamrolls EU in Landmark Trade Win: US–EU Trade Deal Imposes 15% Tariff on European Imports
ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman says people share personal info with ChatGPT but don’t know chats can be used as court evidence in legal cases.
Intel Reports Revenue Beats but Sees 81% Rise in Losses
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
Tulsi Gabbard Unveils Evidence Alleging Political Manipulation of Intelligence During Trump Administration
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Trump Announces Coca-Cola to Shift to Cane Sugar in U.S. Production
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A New Open-Source AI Model
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
EU Delays Retaliatory Tariffs Amid New U.S. Threats on Imports
Trump Proposes Supplying Arms to Ukraine Through NATO Allies
US Opens First Rare Earth Mine in Over 70 Years in Wyoming
Bitcoin Reaches New Milestone of $116,000
Severe Heatwave Claims 2,300 Lives Across Europe
Declining Beer Consumption Signals Cultural Shift in Germany
Emails Leaked: How Passenger Luggage Became a Side Income for Airport Workers
Polish MEP: “Dear Leftists - China is laughing at you, Russia is laughing, India is laughing”
Western Europe Records Hottest June on Record
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
China’s Central Bank Consults European Peers on Low-Rate Strategies
France Requests Airlines to Cut Flights at Paris Airports Amid Planned Air Traffic Controller Strike
Poland Implements Border Checks Amid Growing Migration Tensions
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Amazon Reaches Milestone with Deployment of One Millionth Robot
Yulia Putintseva Calls for Spectator Ejection at Wimbledon Over Safety Concerns
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
×