I have not posted about the recent GCC summit of kings and rulers and potentates that was held in Kuwait. Not much ‘there’ there as someone said so many years ago about a particular place across the Bay in California. The rulers and potentates of the GCC held their annual summit conference in December. Not as much headline news this time as usual:
- The Saudi princes and their Bahrain boot-lickers probably wanted to talk about, push for, the idea of ‘unity’ (they have already decided to drop the past talk about a Gulf GCC ‘confederation’). Oman, as I expected, sensibly would have none of it. Nor would many of the others, but all the rest apparently have decided to kill the idea in ‘studies’ and ‘consultations’. More polite and diplomatic that way. Which shows that there is some wisdom among the leaders once you get out of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
- They also agreed to some joint military leadership structure, which I expect will be no better than the current lousy Peninsula Shield. The recent experience in Yemen showed that the Saudis can’t organize a ‘piss-up in a brewery‘, from a military point of view. Some would argue that the U.S. Navy may be a cheaper, less harmful, and more effective alternative as a shield against
external trouble, if there is any, real or imagined. More ominously for the peoples of the Gulf, they also agreed on some unified ‘police force’, which usually means unified repression of dissent. This evokes the role of Saudi Arabia in the repression of the Bahrain uprising. - They also blasted Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad and his regime. They might have added, with a straight face, that the Syrian people deserve the same freedoms and democracy as the peoples of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain enjoy.
- They completely ignored the old Saudi invitation of 2011 to Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC. Hence deserving a futile but still appropriate: WTF?
- My secret source also reported, claimed from her hiding spot on the wall of the conference hall, that the summiteers spent the final session in good cheer, singing a medley of Auld Lang Syne, Kumbaya, and L’Internationale. One of the many eager Lebanese columnists who write for the Saudi newspapers owned by the princes (Asharq Alawsat or Al-Hayat) tearfully wrote about the significance of the fact that many of the summiteers and their retainers have trim goatees, just like Lenin. WTF that might mean.
Cheers
mhg
