Arab Counterrevoltion, Arabian Peninsula, Economics, Finance, GCC, Gulf states, Jordan, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Leadership of GCC: Three Major Failures, Three Strikes but not Out, not yet……..

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

        BFF        

The GCC summit of the Gulf states this week again proved the failure of the shaky type of leadership the Saudis have tried to impose. This last summit marks three major “projects” that have failed.

  1. The GCC leaders gave the usual lip service to the ‘latest’ Saudi proposal that they should work toward some form of a political union. Gulf Salafis and Saudi media had been calling for a “confederation” since Bahrain joined the Arab revolutions in February. The leaders decided to start discussions and talks about that in the future, which is the usual way to kill any proposal.

  2. With this Saudi suggestion for a confederation dead on arrival (DOA), the leaders turned their attention briefly to killing another earlier strange Saudi proposal. They quickly killed the earlier Saudi proposal to allow Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC. They agreed to allow some form of limited “partnership” for Jordan and Morocco (I hate to say I told you so, but these people don’t listen to me anymore: that is what I predicted here, more than once). The potentates also voted US$ 5 billion in aid for the two countries to ease any disappointment after raising their hopes with the ill-advised Saudi membership proposal that was a product of fear. That will not exactly entertain the notoriously humorless Jordanians but it should keep the scowls moderate. Besides, Bahrain, and probably the UAE, will continue to import security agents and interrogators (know as torturers in less genteel parlance) from Jordan.

  3. Long before all that, before the Arab uprisings, the GCC quietly shelved the unified currency proposal, although they keep pretending they are still working on it.This is something they have been working on for almost three decades. I knew it would fail simply because they had not done the necessary preliminary work for it. And they do not need it: they tried it at the whim of some ignoramus potentate (you know who I mean).

  • That is three strikes for the Saudis, or three downs and short of a first down (three failures in American-ese).
  • Let’s see what other gems of proposals they will come up with next. Maybe the Saudis’ next proposal should be more modest, something within the capabilities of their bureaucrats. I shall post more on this sometime later.

  • I strongly suspect that any Saudi proposal about anything would not succeed unless they throw a lot of money at it.  Even then the money is no guarantee of success. They are trying feat, but I doubt it will succeed. Fear of Saudi domination, close up and right next door, may be stronger than fear of the Iranian mullahs who are far across the Persian-American Gulf and beyond the American navy.


Cheers
mhg


[email protected]