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61. Turkey and Saudi Arabia: Newly Discovered Partners?

Author:
Muhittin Ataman
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
When we consider Saudi Arabian large population, territories and natural resources, it is obvious that it will continue to preserve its geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-cultural importance in future. The assumption of King Abdullah as the ruler of the country provided an opportunity to restructure the country's foreign policy. The new king began to follow a more pragmatic, rational, interdependent, multilateral and multidimensional foreign policy. He pursues an active foreign policy required to be less dependent on a single state (the United States) and on a single product (oil).
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Oil, Political Economy, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Turkey, Middle East, Arabia, and Saudi Arabia

62. Globalizing West African oil: US 'energy security' and the global economy

Author:
Sam Raphael and Doug Stokes
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
This article examines the nature of US oil intervention in West Africa and in particular the ways in which US strategic policy is increasingly being wedded to energy security. It argues that academic debates of a 'new oil imperialism' overplays the geostrategic dimensions of US policy, which in turn underplays the forms of globalization promoted by Washington in the postwar world. Specifically, the US has long sought to 'transnationalize' economies in the developing world, rather than pursue a more mercantilist form of economic nationalism. This article argues that US oil intervention in Africa conforms to this broader picture, whereby processes of transnationalization and interstate competition are being played out against the backdrop of African oil. The recent turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa will add to these dynamics in interesting and unpredictable ways.
Topic:
Security and Oil
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Middle East, North Africa, and West Africa

63. America's Energy Security Options

Author:
Trevor Houser
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Like clock-work, as US gasoline prices approached $4 a gallon in spring 2011, energy security moved to the forefront of the American political debate. Global oil prices have recovered from their collapse during the financial crisis more quickly than expected due to resilient developing-country demand and political instability throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As with past oil price spikes, politicians have been quick to offer silver bullet solutions to lower gas prices and make America more energy secure. But given the complexity of the US energy system and global energy markets, it is difficult for even informed observers to evaluate how far current proposals go in solving the country's energy security challenge.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Oil, Natural Resources, and Biofuels
Political Geography:
United States, America, Middle East, and North Africa

64. Iraq's Last Window: Diffusing the Risks of a Petro-State

Author:
Johnny West
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Although Iraq's oil industry is 80 years old, it has an opportunity to introduce an oil dividend based on the expansion of production currently being undertaken. Even assuming a conservative price for crude, the resulting predicted rise in revenues will allow the government to allocate a significant dividend which halves poverty, helps diversify the economy by creating demand at all income levels for goods and services, and stimulates capital formation—all without cutting into the government's capital spending plans. A dividend, starting at $220 per capita in October 2012 and rising with expanded production, could also cement the affiliation of all citizens to Iraqi territorial integrity, act as a powerful disincentive to secession in oil-producing regions, and create popular pressure among all sections of the population to discourage acts by the ongoing insurgency which disrupt economic reconstruction. Logistically, dividends could be mapped onto the nationwide and universal rationing system, as the electoral roll has been, and combined with Iraq's ubiquitous mobile phone networks and new biometric ID cards. A partial dividend would create a strong domestic political constituency for transparency to reinforce international technical efforts to help the government manage oil revenues and create efficient management structures. It would also help Iraq develop an alternative economic model to a future, which the country's present trajectory now threatens, of a bloated state as the country's only significant employer, with all the attendant problems of patronage networks, politicization of the civil service, and outright corruption. Support for an oil dividend policy is growing among some politicians, notably those seeking votes among the Iraqi poor such as the Sadrists and Fadhila party. International support could help the government structure a dividend which functions well and in the public interest.
Topic:
Development, Oil, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia

65. Will Oil Drown the Arab Spring?

Author:
Michael L. Ross
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Summary: No state with serious oil wealth has ever transformed into a democracy. Oil lets dictators buy off citizens, keep their finances secret, and spend wildly on arms. To prevent the “resource curse” from dashing the hopes of the Arab Spring, Washington should push for more transparent oil markets -- and curb its own oil addiction. MICHAEL L. ROSS is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of the forthcoming book The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations. Even before this year's Arab uprisings, the Middle East was not an undifferentiated block of authoritarianism. The citizens of countries with little or no oil, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia, generally had more freedom than those of countries with lots of it, such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. And once the tumult started, the oil-rich regimes were more effective at fending off attempts to unseat them. Indeed, the Arab Spring has seriously threatened just one oil-funded ruler -- Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi -- and only because NATO's intervention prevented the rebels' certain defeat. Worldwide, democracy has made impressive strides over the last three decades: just 30 percent of the world's governments were democratic in 1980; about 60 percent are today. Yet almost all the democratic governments that emerged during that period were in countries with little or no oil; in fact, countries that produced less than $100 per capita of oil per year (about what Ukraine and Vietnam produce) were three times as likely to democratize as countries that produced more than that. No country with more than a fraction of the per capita oil wealth of Bahrain, Iraq, or Libya has ever successfully gone from dictatorship to democracy. Scholars have called this the oil curse, arguing that oil wealth leads to authoritarianism, economic instability, corruption, and violent conflict. Skeptics claim that the correlation between oil and repression is a coincidence. As Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Haliburton, remarked at a 1996 energy conference, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments." But divine intervention did not cause repression in the Middle East: hydrocarbons did. There is no getting around the fact that countries in the region are less free because they produce and sell oil.
Topic:
NATO, Government, and Oil
Political Geography:
Iraq, Ukraine, Middle East, Kuwait, Libya, Vietnam, California, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Tunisia

66. Saudi Arabia in the New Middle East

Author:
F. Gregory Gause III
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
There is arguably no more unlikely U.S. ally than Saudi Arabia: monarchical, deeply conservative socially, promoter of an austere and intolerant version of Islam, birthplace of Osama bin Laden and fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. Consequently, there is no U.S. ally less well understood. Many U.S. policymakers assume that the Saudi regime is fragile, despite its remarkable record of domestic stability in the turbulent Middle East. “It is an unstable country in an unstable region,” one congressional staffer said in July 2011. Yet it is the Arab country least affected in its domestic politics by the Arab upheavals of 2011. Many who think it is unstable domestically also paradoxically attribute enormous power to it, to the extent that they depict it as leading a “counterrevolution” against those upheavals throughout the region. 2 One wonders just how “counterrevolutionary” the Saudis are when they have supported the NATO campaign against Muammar al-Qaddafi, successfully negotiated the transfer of power from Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and condemned the crackdown on protestors by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and how powerful they are when they could do little to help their ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Islam, Oil, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Arabia, and Saudi Arabia

67. Global Transformations and the MENA: A Comparative Political Economy Analysis

Author:
Sadik Unay
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The regional geographical entity known as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been at the epicenter of global power struggles over the course of the last centuries with an ever-increasing intensity. While the region has been a popular subject in the literature of political science and international relations due to the sheer volume of conflicts raging within the parameters of its borders, writings on international/ comparative political economy focused on alternate regions such as East Asia characterized by a sustainable economic growth potential. This study aims to make a critical contribution to the political economy literature by conducting a theoretically and historically informed analysis on the transformation dynamics in the MENA region. To this end, the multi-faceted legacy of colonialism; the role of oil as a strategic resource; structural changes in the world economy; and divergent politicoeconomic reform trajectories in the wake of economic globalization will be evaluated.
Topic:
International Relations and Oil
Political Geography:
Middle East, East Asia, and North Africa

68. The Development of a Gulf Carbon Platform: Mapping out the Gulf Cooperation Council Carbon Exchange

Author:
Justin Dargin
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have some of the highest greenhouse gas emissions rates per capita in the world. This paper argues that in spite of the extremely high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rates, GCC members will benefit economically, environmentally and geopolitically by constructing a harmonized pan-GCC carbon trading platform that will allow them to make cost-efficient decisions about greenhouse gas abatement. A thorough analysis is undertaken to determine which GHG abatement mechanism would be the best suited for the GCC, with maximum cost and environmental benefits. Based on the unique characteristics of the GCC members, a pan-GCC cap-and-trade framework is suggested. Optimally, policy makers would institute it in a phased, voluntary introduction, to be gradually replaced by a mandatory scheme. If the GCC countries implement such a system, they would be able to rationalize their energy usage for domestic power production, and conserve their oil and gas production for future generations.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, and Oil
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arabia

69. The Oil Boom in the GCC Countries: Old Challenges, Changing Dynamics

Author:
Ibrahim Saif
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The recent oil boom (2002 to mid-2008) generated a large volume of revenues for the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia (SA). Estimated at an annual average of U.S. $327 billion over the period 2002– 2006, the revenues more than doubled their average as compared with the preceding five years. The abundant revenues were instrumental in boosting economic growth; and macroeconomic indicators such as growth and investment in the GCC were also robust over the period 2002–2007. On the other hand, other indicators pertinent to the labor market, the structure of the economy, and governance were less positive.
Topic:
Economics, Energy Policy, International Organization, and Oil
Political Geography:
Middle East, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman

70. Saudi Oil Policy: An Unlikely Weapon to Pressure Iran

Author:
Simon Henderson
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Among the policy suggestions for heading off Iran's emergence as a military nuclear power is the notion that Saudi Arabia should use its position -- as the world's largest oil exporter and effective leader of the OPEC oil cartel -- to apply pressure. The kingdom is increasingly concerned that nuclear weapons capability would confer on Iran the status of regional hegemon. But any hope that Saudi Arabia would intervene to stop that possibility, by pumping extra supplies to lower prices and decrease Iran's oil revenues, is probably misplaced.
Topic:
International Organization and Oil
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, Arab Countries, and Saudi Arabia