Saudi Arabia's hell

David Goldman, who according to Wikipedia looks like the photo below, an American economist, music critic and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler, provides an impressive sweeping geopolitical overview of the present situation in the Middle East and with remarkable clarity, of the forces bearing upon the place. 

Asia Times, Saudi Arabia stews in policy hell.

Goldman writes, the mass executions of last week are the tell that Saudi Arabia is experiencing panic at the highest level. They've executed a lot of people all at once before, but that was immediately after jihadists attacked the Grand Mosque whereas this time the prisoners they killed had languished for up to a decade and this time included a prominent Shia cleric.

Goldman assumes readers have at least a beginner's understanding of internal Islamic tension.

But let's say that I don't. And let's say a mnemonic device could be helpful, however clumsy or inept. His discussion is about Saudi Arabian hell. I'm waving my arm saying, the other Islamic power center, Iran, is their own hell too. It's Sunni VS Shia sometime written Shiite, so then translated for memory help, Sunnys VS Shits. 

Apologies. Whatever adheres, heh. Arabs are Sunny and Irani Persians are Shits, and presently the Sunnies are having the shit beat out of them, their sphere and their future is shrinking frighteningly, and  both power centers are straight up paranoid to begin with. That's not a casual assessment either, you can see for yourself well enough and fun enough too by opening Google Earth. It's fascinating. Iran doesn't want you to see anything, they're that paranoid, so no street views for us. Bummer. So we rely instead on photographs that visitors pinned, their special places of interest. These are not spies. They're people who love the place. My point is however hellish for Saudi Arabia, Iran is always its own hell.

I'm taking this sidetrack from Goldman right off to discuss this small thing apart from Goldman's sweep. I urge people interested to look for themselves. Open Google Earth and allow the sidebar to have pinned photographs display and click on a few or several. Iran is a beautiful place and the photos collected quite interesting.  It could be so incredibly wonderful. It has everything going for it. It is very easy to see how people love the place deeply. A child's map today showed this more clearly than most, it came up by random search for Nimr al-Nimr, the cleric the Arab Sunni killed. The map showed only "Iran" and "Tehran." nothing else is labeled. I can't find it now, different from the map below.

I hadn't noticed before how Iran is geographically situated between two large bodies of water, North and South, that's the thing that sticks out from their section of a map, and by a cluster of nations to East with Iraq on the West and connecting to Turkey with two other nations coming to a point clustered  with the water at Northwest. 

Iran, centered.

The water at the South is the Persian Gulf with its pinch at the Strait of Hormuz that flows to the Gulf of Oman that opens to the Arabian Sea that beyond Iran opens to the Indian Ocean. A glance at their place on the map shows Iran located perfectly for commerce of material things and ideas, by ship and caravan. By the age of their culture and their place on the globe by all rights this place really should be the beacon of light and progress for all humanity, but it is not. 

Why not? Something has retarded observable progress for the place, kept it from keeping up far less from leading the world. Their society, its structures, its technologic feats, its art and architecture, entertainment, and every observable expression of humanity is stunted, apparent by the photographs that people who love the place pin. The photographs themselves give away frustrated progress, nothing is shot on anything better than antique Brownie cameras, apparently, even standard cell phone photos are much better and compare all that they've got to show the world what they love through Google Earth to one single park in Tokyo where every tree is photographed from a thousand aspects under every weather and light condition imaginable by apparently professional photographers with eyes for composition and with the latest photographic technology and techniques available. The random comparison between Tehran and Tokyo, two cities that keep things a bit low for different reasons, is extreme and it shows without trying why places like Tehran are so paranoid. You would be too if you were nothing if not religion and that religion is hegemonic and also causes the inescapably obvious fact to be known that your culture leaves you behind nearly everyone else on the planet. Forever. It's embarrassing.

So, now at least we're all at beginners's level page one, appreciating the difference between Sunnies and the Shits. Iran is the Shits, and Goldman's article is about the Saudi Arab's Sunny hell. That's how we keep them sorted, the Sunnies are not sunny after all, they're depressed and paranoid, and the Shits are paranoid as their culture's own photos cannot help but show even as they show off to the world all the things that they love. And who wouldn't? 

It's sad. 

*cues mood music: She's Come Undone *

Did I say sad?  I meant lovely. It's lovely observing them come undone, both of them, even as the undoing is terrible. They're so undone they must break themselves apart and disperse themselves into successful cultures and become remoras to them. It's not a power takeover, we keep focusing on our traitors to the romance of ISIS, but there's no real permanent attraction to it, it's a sick sad mean fizzling out. 

What's odd about Goldman's piece is he manages to discuss global powers pressing on Syria, he discusses the U.S., Russia, and China, and Iran and even says the following without mentioning Obama. Not once. Even though this is the first thing he gets at and it is the critical thing, the main pin that when pulled causes everything else to tumble, yet Goldman manages avoiding saying the name, Obama.

Why kill them all now? It is very hard to evaluate the scale of internal threats to the Saudi monarchy, but the broader context for its concern is clear: Saudi Arabia finds itself isolated, abandoned by its longstanding American ally, at odds with China, and pressured by Russia’s sudden preeminence in the region. The Saudi-backed Army of Conquest in Syria seems to be crumbling under Russian attack. The Saudi intervention in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi rebels has gone poorly. And its Turkish ally-of-convenience is consumed by a low-level civil war. Nothing has gone right for Riyadh.

See? Impressive slight of hand, there. Obama is the first thing mentioned, but written to avoid saying, Obama. He mentions Putin by name in the article, he's active, but not Obama who is actively inactive. 

It's not even annoying, at this point, it's adorable. Thank you Goldman for protecting us from culpability in your breathtakingly sweeping analysis.

Goldman goes on to discuss the collapse of oil prices and the affect that has on the kingdom. Why China is losing patience with Saudi Arabia, and the Wahhabi Islamists within the Sunni and their method of  proselytizing that causes China so much trouble. Goldman discusses the madrassas in Western China and their Uyghur population that are Sunni. He discusses the more pertinent issue of where China is getting its oil, from Russia in preference to Arabia because of the social problems connected with doing business with Arabia. China realizes what everyone realizes that doing business with Saudi Arabia automatically gives them the poison they use to kill you, and that comes necessarily from their essential selves, they can't help it if they wanted to, they MUST use their resources to expand their religion. There is nothing else beyond consumption and investment to do with it. Nothing. 

Goldman discusses how China's interests coincide with the Russia's, and the Kurds and Syria's border with Turkey. He follows the movement of gathering of forces over mountains across borders and rivers. He assesses China's reluctance to commit forces and their satisfaction with having Russia do the hard and unpleasant parts. 

According to Israeli sources, Russia is dumping vast amounts of its Cold War inventory of dumb bombs on Syrian Sunnis with devastating effect. The Russian bombing campaign makes up in volume what it lacks in sophistication, killing far more civilians than Western militaries would tolerate, but changing the situation on the ground. That explains Russian President Vladimir Putin’s newfound popularity among world leaders. He is doing their dirty work.

That is what being popular means? Popularity is everything, you know. Obama without being mentioned is looking smarter with each paragraph.

Saudi Arabia's proxies in Syria are in trouble losing its Army of Conquest's constituent militias.  

Everything seems to have gone wrong at once for Riyadh. The only consolation the monarchy has under the circumstances is that its nemesis Iran also is suffering from the collapse of oil revenues and the attrition of war.

Finally.

The oil price collapse turns the competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran into a race to the bottom. But the monarchy’s panicked response to its many setbacks of the past several months raises a difficult question. In the past, the West did what it could to prop up the Saudi royal family as a pillar of stability in the region, despite the Saudis’ support for jihadi terrorism. Soon the West may not be able to keep the House of Saud in power whether it wants to or not.

Yes, too bad there isn't another pillar of stability like Iraq, but that's all water under the bridge, and none of this would be happening were it not for Bush Jr. opening that can of worms, according to Democrat catechism. 

Reading the thing puts you at a table with the board game Risk. I had fun with that game a couple of times as a teen, and fun reading Goldman. With the game, it occurs right off to succeed you must abandon ideas about us good guys VS. them bad guys and approach hegemony disinterestedly expanding however possible until you take over the world. It's all about assets and how to use them to advantage, and geography and alliances and not about who's good or bad.