Saw this book in the bookshop the other day and it is definately on my wish list.The Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia and its five smaller neighbours: the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain) have long been governed by highly autocratic and seemingly anachronistic regimes. Yet despite bloody conflicts on their doorsteps, fast-growing populations, and powerful modernising and globalising forces impacting on their largely conservative societies, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience. Obituaries for these traditional monarchies have frequently been penned, but even now these absolutist, almost medieval, entities still appear to pose the same conundrum as before: in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring and the fall of incumbent presidents in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, the apparently steadfast Gulf monarchies have, at first glance, re-affirmed their status as the Middle East s only real bastions of stability. In this book, however, noted Gulf expert Christopher Davidson contends that the collapse of these kings, emirs, and sultans is going to happen, and was always going to. While the revolutionary movements in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen will undeniably serve as important, if indirect, catalysts for the coming upheaval, many of the same socio-economic pressures that were building up in the Arab republics are now also very much present in the Gulf monarchies. It is now no longer a matter of if but when the West s steadfast allies fall. This is a bold claim to make but Davidson, who accurately forecast the economic turmoil that afflicted Dubai in 2009, has an enviable record in diagnosing social and political changes afoot in the region.
The author predicts that within the next five years the Gulf states will implode. Assuming that this prediction is true, what kind of implications does this pose?
It is interesting that the author believes the following;
Major instability spreading to many, if not all of the Gulf States would have major consequences for Gulf State oil exports/production and one would imagine the nations nearby.Davidson suggests that Saudi Arabia has been massively overstating its existing oil reserves in a bid to stave off trouble, and that increasing domestic energy demands means that the Kingdom could become a net consumer of energy within the next decade, `Saudi Aramco is having to run harder to stay in place -- to replace the decline in existing production'. Bahrain is now effectively depleted, with 77% of its oil production coming from the Saudi Al Safah oil field. Abu Dhabi has `a few decades of oil production left, while Oman is set to become a net oil importer, Dubai is oil-less and `swimming in an ocean of debt'. The increasing importance of gas means that only Kuwait and Qatar should be considered hydrocarbon-rich beyond the medium term.
