The chapter in Perkin's book on the post-oil shock economic entanglements with Saudi Arabia is very relevant. It's fundamentally about the establishment of the petrodollar recycling scheme that was intended to solve the balance-of-payments crisis - i.e. dollars flowing into Gulf Arab dictatorships represented a current account imbalance on the US/Europe side, which in turned required a capital account imbalance on the Saudi side. Thus, buying Saudi oil with dollars required the Saudis to invest those dollars back into the USA and Europe, and in exchange for agreeing to this scheme the House of Saud got military protection, engineering assitance, etc., with outfits like Chas T Main and McKinsey and Vinnell serving as the glue that held it all together (along with extensive arms sales). While many have forgotten, the Shah of Iran was also a key player in that system before the Islamic Revolution.
Notably, the vast majority of Saudi citizens live in near-Third World conditions, particularly the Shias in the east and the tribal groups in the south, not that this gets widely reported, while the 15,000+ members of the House of Saud and their hangers-on (the bin Ladens, bin Mahfouzes, etc.) collect the vast majority of the wealth that isn't re-invested back into the USA.
Understanding current world events really requires an understanding of this balance-of-payments dynamic, because that was essentially the same deal that was offered to Russia in the 1990s under Yeltsin, via the same entities, and which Putin eventually rejected after 2003 in favor of using Russian oil money to rebuild the Russian military and generally increase the general standard of living inside Russia. Prior to that, Putin was regularly praised in the US media (much like Syria's Assad before his 2009 deals with Iran and Russia).
This also accounts for the differential treatment of various authoritarian government leaders by the USA and its economic partners like Britain, i.e. Saudi Arabia is not treated like Iran or Russia. For example, if Putin had taken that deal, then today's war in Ukraine would likely be called 'a fight against neo-Nazi terrorist elements' in corporate media, much as the Saudi assault on Yemen is protrayed as a struggle against Al Qaeda and so on.
This is certainly no defense of Putin, who has held onto power for decades now - but there aren't really any 'good guys' in this storyline, the 'democratic norms and humanitarian values' claims are all nonsense. It's more like how the New York City mafia organizations or the Mexican drug cartels fought each other over access to territory and profits than anything else.
> Notably, the vast majority of Saudi citizens live in near-Third World conditions, particularly the Shias in the east and the tribal groups in the south, not that this gets widely reported
This is... just not true. There absolutely is poverty in KSA, and the wealth of the elite is obscene, but the average Saudi citizen lives a pretty cushy life of sinecure jobs and vast subsidies (gas is cheaper than water). The official median income is around US$50k, and while you probably shouldn't trust that number, I think we can safely say it's not more than an order of magnitude off.
The people really living in Third World conditions in Saudi are the vast armies of migrant workers, who make up something like 80% of the labor force and do all the literal heavy lifting at construction sites, service industry jobs, domestic work, etc.
What are your thoughts on Biden's efforts to force a move away from oil for much of the US energy needs.. will this/is this intended or related to an effort to eliminate or replace the petrodollar system in any way?
That looks more like political posturing, nothing more. Consider that 99% of US vehicles are gasoline/diesel powered, there's no move to end the fracking revolution, US oil & gas production levels are not projected to decline over the next decade by any credible analysts, US export terminals for LNG are being expanded, and so on.
Even a relatively modest proposal like a 3% per year replacement of fossil fuel production with renewable production is not at all likely, I mean look at EIA projections [USA] through 2023:
> "The EIA believes that oil production will hit 11.9 million barrels a day (b/d) by the end of the year. Next year, the agency expects the 2019 record of 12.3 million b/d to be shattered, with production hitting an average of 12.7 million b/d."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chas._T._Main
The chapter in Perkin's book on the post-oil shock economic entanglements with Saudi Arabia is very relevant. It's fundamentally about the establishment of the petrodollar recycling scheme that was intended to solve the balance-of-payments crisis - i.e. dollars flowing into Gulf Arab dictatorships represented a current account imbalance on the US/Europe side, which in turned required a capital account imbalance on the Saudi side. Thus, buying Saudi oil with dollars required the Saudis to invest those dollars back into the USA and Europe, and in exchange for agreeing to this scheme the House of Saud got military protection, engineering assitance, etc., with outfits like Chas T Main and McKinsey and Vinnell serving as the glue that held it all together (along with extensive arms sales). While many have forgotten, the Shah of Iran was also a key player in that system before the Islamic Revolution.
Notably, the vast majority of Saudi citizens live in near-Third World conditions, particularly the Shias in the east and the tribal groups in the south, not that this gets widely reported, while the 15,000+ members of the House of Saud and their hangers-on (the bin Ladens, bin Mahfouzes, etc.) collect the vast majority of the wealth that isn't re-invested back into the USA.
Understanding current world events really requires an understanding of this balance-of-payments dynamic, because that was essentially the same deal that was offered to Russia in the 1990s under Yeltsin, via the same entities, and which Putin eventually rejected after 2003 in favor of using Russian oil money to rebuild the Russian military and generally increase the general standard of living inside Russia. Prior to that, Putin was regularly praised in the US media (much like Syria's Assad before his 2009 deals with Iran and Russia).
This also accounts for the differential treatment of various authoritarian government leaders by the USA and its economic partners like Britain, i.e. Saudi Arabia is not treated like Iran or Russia. For example, if Putin had taken that deal, then today's war in Ukraine would likely be called 'a fight against neo-Nazi terrorist elements' in corporate media, much as the Saudi assault on Yemen is protrayed as a struggle against Al Qaeda and so on.
This is certainly no defense of Putin, who has held onto power for decades now - but there aren't really any 'good guys' in this storyline, the 'democratic norms and humanitarian values' claims are all nonsense. It's more like how the New York City mafia organizations or the Mexican drug cartels fought each other over access to territory and profits than anything else.