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RCP features an interview with Ian Bremer, the author of "The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall." He issues some dire predictions for Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia is facing a demographic disaster. With a high birthrate and virtually no family planning its population is growing at a radical rate. And while the country's energy resources are enormous its economy has never really diversified beyond the energy industry. That's not changing anytime soon. The way they've been able to hold the country together so far has been by using that oil money for unprecedented amounts of state sponsored patronage. This ensures the loyalty and dependence of local leaders, creates temporary make-work projects to appease the angry unemployed, and buys off the regime's critics. But over time per capita income has declined and a significant percentage of the population lives below the poverty line.

The country is slowly moving in the direction of becoming a normal developed state. They're trying to join the World Trade Organization, improve education, improve the political process, and bring women into the workplace. But these moves will also sow the seeds of instability. Saudi Arabia has always functioned with an iron hand. Dissent was never tolerated. (You get the benefit but you also don't question it.) The more you provide education and open the country to the global economy--things that will allow the Saudis to survive long term--the more you also free the government's grip on dissent. That's a real problem in a country where per capita income is slipping, where the population of young people is growing, where there are no jobs for them, and where their only opportunities to find a place for themselves are in Wahhabi-controlled schools and mosques run by men well armed with money and influence who are at war with the modern world. It's a sure-fire recipe for instability.

As previously discussed, this assessment highlights many of the problems that stem from globalization mixing with the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and their Islamic fundamentalist alternative.

Posted by Bill at September 7, 2006 03:15 PM | TrackBack (2)

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Posted by: tester at October 16, 2006 01:59 PM