*** 16-Jan-16 World View -- Mideast trends: Sunni-Shia countries align along predicted lines
This morning's key headlines from
GenerationalDynamics.com
- Mideast trends: Sunni-Shia countries align along predicted lines
- Saudi Arabia faces increased social unrest with sudden austerity budget
****
**** Mideast trends: Sunni-Shia countries align along predicted lines
****
Saudi Arabia's Khurais oilfield (Reuters)
I want to extract one paragraph from the analyst report on Saudi
Arabia quoted at the end of this article:
<QUOTE>"As the Shiite-Sunni contest builds up, Riyadh [Saudi
Arabia] sees the two main world powers, America and Russia,
tilting towards the Shiite bloc of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hizballah
versus the Saudi-led lineup of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt,
Turkey and Pakistan."<END QUOTE>
This is exactly the alignment that I've been predicting for years,
based on Generational Dynamics analyses, long before it seemed
possible. As I've described dozens of times, in the coming Clash of
Civilizations world war, the "allies" will be the United States,
India, Russia and Iran, while the "axis" will be China, Pakistan, and
the Sunni Muslim countries. Quite honestly, I'm as astonished as
anyone is when the generational theory analysis and predictions turn
out to be true time after time after time.
I'm going to take this fortuitous opportunity to give some advice to
all the people who have expressed contempt and scorn every time I've
made one of these predictions, though they themselves couldn't predict
their way out of a paper bag.
If you're an analyst, politician, army general, or college professor
whose job depends on knowing what's going on in the world, you would
do much better if you took the time to learn generational theory.
Generational theory was first developed in the 1980s-90s by William
Straus and Neil Howe, who showed how it applied to Britain and America
since the 1400s. Generational Dynamics extends their work to include
all nations at all times in history, and it provides a forecasting
methodology that has been almost 100% successful, as proven by
hundreds of predictions in thousands of articles since 2003.
The theory behind the Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology
combines historical analysis with MIT's System Dynamics applied to
generational flows, the most significant and important application of
MIT's systems analysis found to this day. The theory also
incorporates Chaos Theory (to determine what can and cannot be
predicted), Mathematical Logic (to derive results from abstract models
of the world), Macroeconomics, Technological Forecasting and
Sociological Analysis.
If you or someone on your staff wants to master generational theory
and Generational Dynamics forecasting, the material is all on
the Generational Dynamics web site, and is freely available to anyone. You can start with the
2010 paper:
Generational Dynamics Forecasting Methodology (PDF). If you don't
take advantage of it, then your competitor might do so first.
****
**** Saudi Arabia faces increased social unrest with sudden austerity budget
****
With the price of oil now falling significantly below $30 per barrel,
and analysts expecting further plunges, the government of Saudi Arabia
is facing existential threats from several directions.
The most obvious threat is the loss of something like 75% of its
income from oil exports. This has forced the Saudi government to
adopt an "austerity budget" in 2016, cutting back massively on social
spending such as free health care, or subsidized gasoline, electricity
and other utilities.
Saudi Arabia is deep into a generational Crisis era, with its last
generational crisis war having been the Ibn Saud family's victory over
the Wahhabi Salafists that climaxed in 1925. The outcome of that war
was an uneasy peace between the two groups that allowed the Saud
family to govern but the Salafists to maintain much of the social
control in the country, including education and the "religion police."
It's rare for a country to go more than 60 or 70 years without a new
generational crisis war, and indeed as I wrote in September (
"12-Sep-15 World View -- Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque, site of huge construction accident, has links to 9/11"
), things really came to a head in 1979 with a major
terrorist attack by a Salafist group on the Grand Mosque, shaking the
Saudi government to its core. That attack lit the fuse that led to
the creation of 9/11 and al-Qaeda and, more recently, the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The 1979 attack might have been the first step towards a new crisis
war, but the Saudi government has been able to hold off the Salafists
since 1979 by using their vast oil wealth for immense social spending
to prevent social unrest. But now, with the new "austerity budget,"
the Salafist groups are threatening the government.
When the Saudis executed 47 "terrorists" earlier this month, the
government talked about protecting its security. As one
pro-government cleric tweeted, the executions were "a message to the
world and to criminals that there will be no snuffing out of our
principles and no complacency in our security."
However, one of the 47 was a Shia cleric Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr,
and his execution inflamed Iran, as well as Shias in Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, and Pakistan. After Iranians firebombed the Saudi embassy in
Tehran, the two countries severed diplomatic relations. (
"4-Jan-16 World View -- Saudi Arabia cuts diplomatic ties with Iran as violent Shia protests spread around region"
) So the Saudi government is facing social unrest
from both Sunni Salafists and Shias.
Saudi Arabia's new King, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, rose to power
in January 2015, almost exactly a year ago, after the death of King
Abdullah, and there are concerns about a power struggle and possible
coup.
Debka's subscriber-only newsletter (sent to me by a subscriber) says
there is a risk of a coup because of strong opposition to some of
Salman's policies:
[list=1][*] The Yemen civil war initiated by the defense minister has
reached a stalemate despite Saudi military intervention. The failure
to break through to victory has seriously weakened his position and
that of his father, King Salman.[*] The Yemen war is costing the Saudi exchequer an astronomical $1
billion per month, equal to a whole year's outlay for the Russian
intervention in Syria. With oil prices plummeting to below $30 dollars
per barrel, Riyadh has had to dip deep into its reserves. In 2015, the
Saudis drew some $90-98 billion out, $600 billion total. The oil
kingdom, with little experience of having to count pennies, is aghast
at its new situation.[*] The king's son is drafting a crisis plan for the sale of some 5
percent of Saudi stock in Aramco, the state-owned company that is the
world's largest oil producer and one of the most valuable in the
world. The royal family has yet to decide whether the shares will be
sold exclusively to Saudis or to foreign investors as well. The
possible sale of some of royal-owned lands is also under
consideration. ...[*] ISIS is a growing menace to the kingdom's security - internally
from disaffected young Saudi men and externally from Iraq and
Yemen.[*] As the Shiite-Sunni contest builds up, Riyadh sees the two main
world powers, America and Russia, tilting towards the Shiite bloc of
Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hizballah versus the Saudi-led lineup of the
United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan.
With regard to the last item, which I also quoted at the beginning of
this article, there is of course a third major world power, and that's
China, and Generational Dynamics predicts that China will be very much
on the side of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the months and years to
come.
Reuters (3-Jan) and
Washington Post (4-Jan) and
Energy Fuse and
CNBC and
Debka
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah,
United Arab Emirates, UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, China,
William Strauss, Neil Howe, MIT's System Dynamics,
Wahhabi Salafist, Grand Mosque, al-Qaeda, Yemen, Aramco,
Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr, Iran, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh
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Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
*** 3-Jan-16 World View -- Mideast sectarian tensions surge as Iranians burn down Saudi embassy in Tehran
