I’ve been giving your remarks on oil income some more thought. Maybe the market itself could provide us with a solution.
An article I read this morning
http://euanmearns.com/opec-cant-win/
Reduce the content of the party bowl (oil income) for quite some time and they will need to adapt. Most other ME countries have already lowered their defense spending while SA increased it by 27 % this year (it already quadruppeled its defense spending over the past decade – high oil prices allowed them to do so – and for the year 2014 the expenditures amounted to § 80B). Good! The more they spend now the worse the hangover will be.
A reduction of defense spending would also harm their symbiotic relationship with the US and other Western countries. After the nuclear deal with Iran, they already tried to shift their defense spending towards Russia and even China but there is little symbiosis there.
Moreover rumours about an internal revolt in SA are mounting. It happened once, why not again?
GV
Antwoord:
The importance of oil will diminish sharply in the coming decades.
Saudi Arabia buys this massive amount of weapons in the Middle East as a way to buy the silence of western governments. They tried this with Russia but they weren’t fooled by them.
Het belang van olie zal de komende decenia sterk afnemen.
De reden waarom Saoedi Arabië deze enorme hoeveelheden wapens koopt is omdat ze zo het stilzwijgen kopen van deze westerse regeringen. Ze poogden op die wijze ook Rusland om te kopen maar met hen lukte dat niet. Ze waren slimmer.
Willy Van Damme