Saudi is so opaque, they make the People’s Republic of China look like cellophane.
Oh, no doubt about that – Clinton never had enough clout during his eight years in office to blow off America’s oil needs without facing the consequences.
The last eight months have convinced me that the US populace will believe anything if it’s slickly wrapped in a jingoistic package. 
Just cite the Saudis as our long-time allies, paint the rebels as being backed by terrorists (Osama bin Laden! Booga booga!), toss in a little fluff about how “America stands for freedom,” and stand back.
Of course, coming off an invasion of Afghanistan and an invasion of Iraq, an invasion of Saudi Arabia would simply reinforce the notion worldwide that we’re in it for the oil and fuel more Islamic fundamentalism against us, but I don’t think anyone in the White House cares about that.
US troops matching into Mecca? That’d go over huge.
I hope the House of Saud doesn’t last long, but it’s hard to imagine anything better coming along to replace them.
Hell yeah! 
You have just “liberated” the worlds second largest reserves of the worlds second cheapest oil so then it would make good sense asking the worlds largest reserves of the worlds cheapest oil to take a flying leap. Hrm.
I rarely hear anyone in Saudi slam the royals, it ain’t healthy. They won’t have you shot or anything like that, foriegners just get deported and locals mysteriously fail to succeed. The only revolt I hear in Riyadh is a vague and general wish that the royals would go away so someone else could get that huge slice of the pie for a while.
The only people who are (somewhat) outspoken about getting rid of the royal family are the hard-core types from Qassim and they regularly get rounded up and sent back up there. The royals, for all their faults are infinitely preferable to these Taliban wannabes.
Testy
Interesting article.
Strikes me as generally a good read, but I feel it may be underestimating the distributive channels of the Ibn Saud. Not everything flowing through family coffres are spent on themselves, much is spent on side payments to clients.
In the end the Kingdom is a huge client network, not a real nation.
Unsustainable to be sure, but in the near term, next five years and even ten years, they’re probably sustainable. however a number of things about this series of bombings suggests that there are moles for al-Qaeda within the Saudi security apparatus. That’s… not a good thing.
Problem is the alternatives to the Ibn Saud are rather unpalatable. Rather. Saudi society is seriously dysfunctional.
I would note that the article is likely overstating the economic problems in SA. Per the information I have access to, which is certainly not classified, but I don’t feel the Intel folks have better econ. data, they’re managed some stabilization of PCI around $8k, but still… There are real efficiency gains to be had, and work on privatizations may be helping. Without a radical overhaul, of course, it is a matter of treading water.
A note on SA oil. If SA took its production entirely off stream, even with a fully operational Iraq on stream, oil markets would go crazy. Simply there is not much productive flex globally, and SA is the single largest and best quality swing producer. If they’re offline, the author is right, the world economy is truly fucked. Really, truly fucked. Everybody else, presuming moderate average demand, has to operate flat out for a sustained period. Short term rigidities mean very little excess supply in the system and that would mean prices go nuts, nuts enough depending on the circumstances one might see triple digit spikes.
Mr. Baer has some good points and his views agree very closely with the things I see on a day-to-day basis. Princes selling work visas, having property condemned and then resold to themselves at cut-rate prices, all of the little revenue earning scams that infuriate the average guy. Riyad’s tallest building, the Faisaliah tower was built on land acquired in this way. The ex-owner machine-gunned several of the cement trucks during the foundation pour. The thing was then settled out of court.
Baer is also right about Ras Tanura and Abqaiq being vulnurable. RT has always struck me as the world’s largest piece of unexploded ordnance.
As far as the moles in the Min. of Interior, that has to be much on the mind of the royals. How to isolate and contain the more rabid types without appearing too secular/westernized themselves? The royals have based much of their public-relations on being extremely devout and open distrust of their fellow believers would have some very negative consequences.
On a more personal note, I now have several truck-loads of armed security people in front of my compound, vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns, body armor, serious GI-Joe equipment. The problem is, many of them are of the heavily-bearded type. In the event of an attack, which side would they be on?
All the best.
Testy
Yup, I did not mean to seem to question his read. Matches what I hear and see as well, although you being in place you obviously get a deeper view.
I have an amusing story as an aside. You may have read in the Pit on Japanese Chicks and Camel Masters my slight aside on an Agency guy … spanking the monkey to surveillance. Same fellow has an amusing tale to tell of him arranging the writing of a certain Provincial Governor’s PhD thesis. The Emir wanted a nice set of letters and an American degree to help with advancement. So, he got it. Ghost-written.
However, I wanted to take slight exception to the idea (to be sure Baer was not predicting this) that the Ibn Saud are going to fall tomorrow. I read Baer as making a very public plea to start looking at the options for 5-10 years down the road, before it’s far too late.
My read.
Catch 22 they have themselves in. Not many people believe the family is devoit as far as I can tell, from convos outside the country. Certain parts, but in gross…
Yes, are they going to kill their cousin to protect the Kafir?
Don’t answer that.
I’ve got a good close friend going down to join you boys soon. Mil intel, and for the first time for his position, an Arabic speaker, just for the fucking novelty of it. Of course as he said to me, the Saud are going to ask why are we suddenly sending an Arabic speaker to this post.
Actually rereading, I am questioning his read slightly, on the adaptive capacity of the Ibn Saud. I think there is bit more flex there than might seem. Bit more. But as I think I conveyed in the first message, it’s flex that means delaying the ultimate crisis, not overcoming it. Although I rather think that the crisis will come as a Palace coup first.
It is said that the doctorate of a certain Sheikh in one of the Emirates was entirely ghostwritten. Its title: “The Myth of Arab Piracy.”
Agreed that the Sauds will be as flexible as they have to be and delay settling accounts with the fundamentalists as long as possible. My concern is that this will be a protracted process and will cause serious social unrest while they’re doing it. As I’m sure you know, they don’t encourage public demonstrations around here and my belief is that if there were to be one it would almost inevitably turn violent.
In Riyadh, the government has hauled away a few of the more vicious Imams in the past week. Rumor has it that they didn’t do anything drastic, just stashed them in some garden spot like Sharoura in the Rub Al-Khali. Aside from that, nothing much has changed except the mosque down the street has toned down the anti-western rhetoric a bit.
Speaking of which, I had forgotten it earlier but there is one source of public dissatisfaction with the royals. I have heard several denunciations of the them during Friday prayers. I am sure there is someone taking notes on who said what but, publicly at least, these diatribes seem to be ignored.
Tell the intel guy to stop by, I’m sure he’d be interesting to talk with and I could introduce him to the local equivelent of single malt. My hotmail account is testy_1@hotmail.com
Best regards.
Testy
I’ll forward this on. He’s off in Europe getting some R&R before being condemned to the pleasures of Saudiyah, told me he’d be in place sometime during the summer.
Myth? That must have been a tough one to defend! As Collounsbury mentioned, ghost-writing is fairly common around here. One of my employees just had a thesis written by a westerner working for one of our customers. I can’t wait for him to hit me up for a raise when his degree is granted. Saudi has an amazing number of “Doctors” to the square mile.
It is odd how many job applicants I get that did really well on Islamic studies. Unfortunately, being an IT company, I can’t really use them. This causes a lot of grief in the office.
All the best.
Testy
By the way, how are the Saudization decrees applying to you guys? Also how do you do local recruiting?
OK, this is a hijack, but what kind of masochist would ghostwrite someone else’s dissertation? All that work, and you’d never even get to take credit for it. What kind of scholar would have that little academic integrity? And how could one survive the defense of a dissertation written by someone else? I know when I had my defense, I’d done all the work myself over a period of years, and read a lot of material on the fringes of my topic that even my committee hadn’t read, and I still felt like a blithering idiot at the defense.
Cash and carry, my dear, cash and carry.
As to what kind of scholar would have so little “integrity” – well recall that this was not a… well recall who told me the story. Integrity is a saleable commodity.
I wish forces could not be used in any offensive measure without a vote for war done in the House and Senate. I really think we need that power check in place for own protection. If a President is unable to convince the House/Senate that his actions are justified, then he should not be doing them. This kind of vote could be done secretly, with the entire body sequestered if it has to be a covert start. This is getting off on a tangent, though.
The Saudi-ization decrees are a mess and technically apply to everyone. Somewhat surprisingly, the Saudi businessmen hate them the most as they are put in a truly bad position. They hate hiring Saudis as they can cost in lost productivity. Of course, the local businessmen can’t publicly say this as they would appear unpatriotic or worse.
The younger Saudis aren’t well trained. Extremely high grades in Islamic studies are the star of most resumes with technical training coming a VERY distant second place.
To add to the grief, there is the high expectations of most young Saudis. Department manager is seen as a good entry-level position along with a western-level salary and benefits.
Most western companies, including mine, do hire Saudis but compete with ARAMCO and the Saudi government. Like most governments, this one offers unlimited job security but a low salary. ARAMCO pays better along with the security. An additional issue is the possibility of being taken to labor court if a Saudi doesn’t feel he has been treated fairly. This is a guaranteed lose for the westerners and it is generally easier to just pay up and move on.
The local labor office is a sinecure for otherwise unemployable Saudis. The applicants pay to get their resumes on the top of the pile and the companies pay to be issued a Saudi-ization certificate saying they have met their quotas. The men working there make some good money. In one recent adventure, the labor office sent me a driver. It turned out he was both strabismic and epileptic. He had a seizure in the office. Quite an exciting day.
Frankly, given the unemployable nature of many younger men and the enormous (and increasing) quantity of them in the population, I’m not sure how this is going to work out. These men have been more-or-less educated and are theoretically good to work but nobody, including their own countrymen, wants to hire them. That causes some serious frustration. I don’t know the truth of it but have been told that one of the main reasons women are forbidden to work here is that it would simply exacerbate the unemployment issue.
Our own local recruiting is generally through personal recommendation by present employees. If someone is willing to put their own head on the block for their relative it is a good recommendation. Aside from that, we wind up hiring a lot of nephews and the like in return for contracts. It sounds bad, I know, but that is the way business is done here. Most of our Arabic technical talent comes from either Syria or Egypt.
I intended to simply answer a question, apologies for turning this into a bit of a rant.
All the best.
Testy
Yeah, but again the defense question. The university in your friend’s tale was American; I don’t claim to know anything about the Saudi educational system, but I’ve never heard of a U.S. university that would grant a non-honorary Ph.D. without a formal defense. So how did the guy survive the defense, if he didn’t do the work for the dissertation?
I do imagine there are a certain number of unemployed M.E. Studies Ph.D.s running around who would be willing to write a dissertation for a fee. I guess after one can’t get an academic job, one might figure that one might as well do something with one’s hard-won knowledge, even if it’s ethically slimy. And some extra cash probably wouldn’t hurt, either.
No surprise, I followed the Saudizaiton of taxi cab debacle with immense amusement.
I was actually curious as to the patterns of exceptions. Bit more familiar with UAE - but then Emirates is a better deal in general, Emiratis at least to my view having something approaching a relevant education in many circumstances. Not that the rentier class is not as lazy…
Yup. Legacy of the deal with the devil (aka Wahhabite ulema).
Of course structurally you get similar problems in the remainder of the Arab world. Too many kids opting for the Islamic studies department because one doesn’t have to work to get good grades.
A big joke in many respects – except that of course it creates a sort of lumpen proletariat of quasi educated but unemployable kids. At least outside the Gulf many turn to other venues such as private schools.
Devaluing education. It’s a crime, but that was the policy of the 1980s, only started to change a bit in the 1990s (speaking to outside the Gulf).
Ah you know that “work” is something best done by Egyptians and other low class people! What are you thinking?!? A real Saudi/Khaliji manages. Directs. Drinks coffee. Vacations.
Was wondering to what extent you have more or less set asides. Dealing with some Saudi ops my exp was we had to assume non-productive Saudis at X rate, and staff per that. Luckily one can build that into pricing, but then that just is a deadweight loss to the country.
Wondeful fucking circus. Or mess.
Ahhh. Yes. The stunningly unqualified …
Well, the Wahhabite obs. with women staying at home predates these issues, but certainly it makes it harder to move on in the present circum.
I was wondering if any of the new electronic recruit services have been of use to you folks.
No surprises on the talent pool. W/o the Shamis and the Egyptians, there would be no Arab talent in the Gulf. (Well and the Iraqis too, but I hope they’ll get sucked back to their own country in time.)
no, no. Not a real rant. It’s informative.