Can
Washington Mitigate The Death Of The Gulf
States?
By
Moon Of Alabama
July
17, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
-
U.S. Secretary of
State Tillerson is angry that Saudi Arabia and
the UAE
rejected his efforts
to calm down their spat with Qatar. His revenge,
and a threat of more serious measures, comes in
the form of a WaPo "leak" -
UAE orchestrated hacking of Qatari government
sites, sparking regional upheaval, according to
U.S. intelligence officials:
The
United Arab Emirates orchestrated the
hacking of Qatari government news and social
media sites in order to post incendiary
false quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir,
Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May
that sparked the ongoing upheaval between
Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S.
intelligence officials.
Officials became aware last week that newly
analyzed information gathered by
U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on
May 23, senior members of the UAE government
discussed the plan and its implementation.
The officials said it remains unclear
whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself
or contracted to have them done.
That the UAE and/or the Saudis were involved in
the hack was pretty clear from the get go. They
were the only ones who had a clear motive. Qatar
already
had specific
evidence for the source of the hacking.
Congressional anti-Russian sources ignored that
and
accused,
as usual,
Russia and Putin.
Tillerson's real message is not the hacking
accusation. The hacks themselves are not
relevant to the spat and to Tillerson's efforts
to defuse it. The "leak" sets the UAE and Saudi
leadership on notice that the U.S. has sources
and methods to learn of their government's
innermost discussions. The real threat to them
is that other dirt could be released from the
same source.
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It is doubtful that this threat will change the
minds of these rulers. They believe in their own
invincibility. Ian Welsh describes the mindset
in his prediction of
The Death of Saudi Arabia
and other Gulf states:
This
is fairly standard: all dynasties go bad
eventually because the kings-to-be
grow up in wealth and power and think it’s
the natural state of things: that they are
brilliant and deserve it all, when it was
handed them on a platter. Perhaps
they are good at palace intrigue and think
that extends beyond the palace.
It
doesn’t.
Welsh comes to the same conclusion
as I did when
the recent GCC infighting broke out:
No
matter how the spat with Qatar ends, the GCC
unity has (again) been exposed as a sham. It
can not be repaired. Saudi "leadership" is
shown to be just brutal bullying and will be
resisted. U.S. plans for a united GCC under
Saudi leadership and U.S. control are in
shambles.
...
The Saudi under their new leadership
overestimate their capabilities. So did
Trump when he raised their role. The
Saudi "apes with Macbooks" do not have the
capabilities needed for a serious political
actor in this world. Their money
can paper over that for only so long.
The
step Tillerson and some "intelligence officials"
now took may be a sign panic. The "leak"
revealed "sources and methods". Like every other
government the UAE senior officials suspect that
the U.S. is trying to listen to their internal
deliberations. But they now know for sure. The
specific date given in the "leak" will help them
to take some countermeasures. Leaking "sources
and methods" is not done lightly. That it has to
resort to such measures shows that the U.S.
administration is not in control of the
situation.
During the fall of the Ottoman empire Britain
created today's
Saudi Arabia. Two world wars exhausted Britain's
power. The U.S. took over the management of the
empire including the Gulf states. It needs Saudi
Arabia for its fossil energy and the related
reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar.
Unrest in Saudi Arabia is not in the U.S.
interest but such is now in sight. The "leak" is
just a tactical measure of an inexperienced
administration. It is not enough to defuse or
mitigate the conflict and its consequences.
What
strategies will Washington develop to counter
the foreseeable instability in Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states?
This
article was first published by
Moon Of Alabama
-
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
