{"id":255372,"date":"2023-04-30T12:45:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T10:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=255372"},"modified":"2023-04-30T12:46:01","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T10:46:01","slug":"peace-breaks-out-in-the-middle-east-as-us-influence-declines-from-opec-to-opec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=255372","title":{"rendered":"Peace Breaks Out In The Middle East As US Influence Declines: From OPEC To OPEC+"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tilak Doshi writes at Forbes:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (R, 1882 -1945) meets with King Ibn Saud (1880- 1953)\u00a0… [+]GETTY IMAGES<\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historians will mark the low point of Pax Americana<\/em> in the Middle East by several rather brutal humiliations that American prestige has undergone under President Joe Biden\u2019s presidency. Examples would include having phone call requests by the US president declined by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates<\/a> in March last year and mass media pictures of the impersonal fist-bump<\/a> between Joe Biden and de facto<\/em> ruler and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Bin Salman (or \u201cMBS\u201d as he is familiarly called) in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US president had come to Riyadh with a begging bowl<\/a> but failed to convince the Saudis to rescue the US gasoline market from high prices by opening the Arab oil tap in time for the mid-term US elections. This was after the President Biden had promised to make the Kingdom a \u201cpariah\u201d<\/a> during his 2020 election campaign in response to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the decline of US dominance in Middle East security affairs, a spate of intra-regional diplomatic moves towards peace seems to have broken out. This might sound ironic to observers of American diplomacy and military power in the region. But an assertive Saudi foreign policy under its Crown Prince and the vastly altered circumstances caused by Western sanctions on Russia\u2019s oil and gas exports saw Riyadh distance itself from Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It instead turned to China<\/a> in March 2023 to underwrite its security guarantees in return for diplomatic rapprochement with Iran. In the event, MBS favored restoring diplomatic relations with Iran without Washington\u2019s assistance, a move described by an unnamed US diplomat<\/a> as \u201cgiving Biden the middle finger\u201d. At a stroke, MBS displaced the \u201coil-for-security\u201d deal that has lasted over three quarters of a century between the US and Saudi Arabia since Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s historic meeting with King Ibn Saud in 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 1926\u00a0Hemingway novel<\/a>, a character is asked how he went bankrupt to which he remarked \u201cTwo ways, gradually and then suddenly\u201d. The loss of US prestige in the Middle East, marked by the protracted military debacles in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, might be termed \u201cgradual\u201d by some historian\u2019s metrics. But last month\u2019s China-brokered resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia \u2014 historical enemies across the millennia-old Shia-Sunni divide \u2013 is a sudden and profound turn of events in Middle East affairs. All CIA Director William Burns could do in a surprise visit to Saudi Arabia in early April was to express Washington\u2019s \u201cfrustration\u201d and feeling \u201cblindsided<\/a>\u201d by Saudi Arabia\u2019s sudden move to get along with its neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Old Order<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud on February 14, 1945, aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Suez Canal. It was the first time a U.S. president had ever met with a Saudi Arabian king, and the encounter laid the foundation for U.S.-Saudi relations that would continue for over 75 years encompassing 14 presidencies until Joe Biden\u2019s. The celebrated quid pro quo traded US military power and regime security for the Ibn Saud family in return for the unhindered flow of Arabian oil to Western markets. This served as a key pillar of the Bretton Woods international economic order after the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first phase of Bretton Woods (1945 – 71), the US dollar \u2014 backed by gold \u2014 served as the world\u2019s international reserve currency. The US and Western Europe dominated the IMF and the World Bank, the twin Bretton Woods institutions overseeing the global economy outside the Iron and Bamboo curtains of the Soviet Union and Communist China.\u00a0Under pressure<\/a>\u00a0from rising inflation and creditor nations wanting to redeem gold, President Richard Nixon was forced to remove the dollar from its gold peg in 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second phase of Bretton Woods since 1971, the purely fiat US dollar \u2014 based on the \u201cfull faith and credit\u201d of the US Federal Reserve \u2014 serves as the global reserve currency. At a national debt<\/a> exceeding $30 trillion (117 per cent of US GDP in 2022), and increasing by $1 trillion a year, faith in the US debt market cannot be taken for granted. It took 215 years for US debt to reach $7 trillion; it has added another $7 trillion since March 2020. Political parties on both sides of the aisle do not seem too concerned about budget deficits and the national debt. This, to say the least, does not inspire confidence for lenders who want to hold dollar-denominated debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Yom Kippur War (1973) and resultant OPEC embargo that led oil prices to skyrocket in the United States threatened the status of the fiat dollar. In the wake of the oil price shock, President Nixon\u00a0empowered<\/a>\u00a0then secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, to get the Saudi monarchy \u201cto finance America\u2019s widening deficit with its newfound [oil] wealth.\u201d In a further elaboration of the original Roosevelt-Ibn Saud \u201coil-for-security\u201d deal, the Saudis under King Faisal promised to denominate global oil purchases only in dollars and in return Washington would provide military aid and materiel to the Kingdom. The quid pro quo came in the form of\u00a0guarantees<\/a>\u00a0that the Saudis would \u201cplow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance spending\u201d of every US administration since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Spate of Peace Moves<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Middle East regional order has undergone a dramatic realignment under President Biden\u2019s watch<\/a>. Following the landmark Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran on resuming ties last month, the US was again left on the sidelines a few weeks later. It could only passively observe yet another major diplomatic initiative<\/a>, this time between Saudi Arabia and Syria, mediated by Russia. After rounds of discussions in Moscow and Riyadh in recent weeks, the emerging Damascus-Riyadh rapprochement is signalled by a series of reciprocal state visits by the region\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following a previous trip to the United Arab Emirates last year, Syrian President Bashar al Assad arrived in the United Arab Emirates last month for his second official visit. Marked with greater ceremony this time, the March meeting<\/a> in Abu Dhabi with UAEUAE<\/a> +1.2%<\/a> President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan occurred when more Arab states have signalled openness to resumed relations with Damascus. Last week, President Bashar al-Assad received Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Damascus in the \u201cmost significant step<\/a>\u201d yet towards ending Syria’s decade-long regional isolation. Even though Assad\u2019s government remains under US and Western sanctions, Syria could be formally welcomed<\/a> back into the Arab League at next month\u2019s summit in Riyadh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined the US in backing rebels fighting to overthrow President Assad. The turnaround by the Gulf Arab states to now support bringing Syria back into the Arab fold has accelerated hopes for wider regional peace in the Middle East. The Saudis and its Gulf allies have resumed diplomatic relations with Qatar<\/a> and have begun improving ties with Turkey<\/a>. The proxy wars in Yemen and Syria have de-escalated as part of the China- and Russia-brokered rapprochement processes in the regional order. The US is no longer the prime \u2014 or even peer \u2014 mover in the Middle East security stakes. One analyst of regional affairs was led to observe<\/a> wryly that \u201cMiddle East nations are making peace without Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From OPEC to OPEC+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the Russia invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago, the U.S., U.K. and the European Union along with their closest allies imposed the most comprehensive and unprecedented set of sanctions<\/a> on a sovereign nation in modern history. These included the expropriation of Russian Central Bank\u2019s foreign exchange reserves held offshore and expulsion from the SWIFT international payments system. Expectations in Washington and Brussels that this would \u201crubble the rouble<\/a>\u201d, devastate the Russian economy, and help lead to regime change with the ouster of President Vladimir Putin quickly proved wishful<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian economy is now slated by the IMF\u2019s latest economic outlook<\/a> to outperform Britain and Germany this year. Russia posted a record current account surplus <\/a>of $227 billion in 2022, up 86% from 2021. Russia replaced revenues lost from its oil and gas exports to Europe with a pivot<\/a> to China, India, UAE, Turkey and other countries not participating in the Western-led sanctions (i.e. the rest of the world outside the \u201ccollective West\u201d). Its oil export levels have not seen any significant reduction. Last week, Reuters reported<\/a> that oil loadings from Russia’s western ports in April rose to the highest since 2019. Though sold at discounted prices, Russian oil and gas exports to markets in the \u201cGlobal South\u201d have enjoyed relatively high international commodity prices even if below the peaks immediately after the Ukraine invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gone are the days when the OPEC cartel with its Saudi lynchpin played a role as the US-allied \u201ccentral banker of oil\u201d, opening the oil spigot if oil prices went too high for the Western-dominated global economy. It is the OPEC+ group that is now in the driver\u2019s seat, combining Saudi Arabia (and its Gulf allies) with Russia. The former is the world\u2019s largest exporter of crude oil while the latter is the world\u2019s second largest oil exporter and largest natural gas exporter. Absurdly enough, the third heavy weight contender in the global oil and gas trade, the US itself, is hobbled<\/a> by an administration which boasts a \u2018whole-of-government\u2019 commitment to anti-fossil fuel climate policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2022, the IMF\u2019s Economic Counsellor Gita Gopinath said<\/a> that \u201csanctions on Russia could erode the dollar’s dominance by encouraging smaller trading blocs using other currencies.\u201d That is precisely what has happened. An increasing number of countries are trading oil in currencies other than US dollars. Russia\u2019s oil and gas exports have been paid for in roubles or gold, and now increasingly in yuan, as the US dollar and the Euro are \u201ctoxic<\/a>\u201d on its sanctioned books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indian refiners have started paying for most of the Russian oil purchased through Dubai traders in UAE dirhams<\/a> (pegged to the US dollar) instead of US dollars. China has reportedly agreed<\/a> to pay for imports of Russian oil, gas and coal in some combination of rubles and yuan. Speaking at an educational event this week, Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation, said<\/a> that the country is \u201cactively working with partner countries in order to have its own \u2018circulatory system\u2019 of international payments\u201d and that the ruble and yuan are increasingly replacing the dollar in trade between China and Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving At A Multi-Polar World<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent interview on Fox News, Senator Marc Rubio\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cIn 5 years…there will be so many countries trading currencies other than the dollar that we won’t be able to impose sanctions on them.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently announced his candidacy as the democrat nominee for US presidency in 2024,\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0the decline in the efficacy of US financial sanctions more forcefully: \u201cThe collapse of U.S. influence over Saudi Arabia, and the Kingdom\u2019s new alliances with China and Iran are painful emblems of the abject failure of the Neocon strategy of maintaining U.S. global hegemony with aggressive projections of military power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peace has a chance of breaking out in the Middle East. OPEC now is better understood as OPEC+, the new oil cartel. Russia and China have emerged as full-fledged actors in the Middle East security outlook despite limits to their military force projection capabilities. And the US \u2014 the exceptional country or, to its critics, the hitherto global hegemon \u2014 now operates in a multipolar world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow me on Twitter<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/a>Tilak Doshi<\/a>Follow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have worked in the oil and gas sector as an economist in both private industry and in think tanks, in Asia, the Middle East and the US over the past 25 years. I focus on global energy developments from the perspective of Asian countries that remain large markets for oil, gas and coal. I have written extensively on the areas of economic development, environment and energy economics. My publications include \u201cSingapore in a Post-Kyoto World: Energy, Environment and the Economy\u201d published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (2015). I won the 1984 Robert S. McNamara Research Fellow award of the World Bank and received my Ph.D. in Economics in 1992.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historians will mark the low point of Pax Americana in the Middle East by several rather brutal humiliations that American prestige has undergone under President Joe Biden\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":255380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819207,691819206,691819208,691819209],"class_list":{"0":"post-255372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-middle-east","9":"tag-opec","10":"tag-russian-oil","11":"tag-western-dominated-global-economy","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0126706.jpg?fit=3000%2C1939&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-14qU","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":206685,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=206685","url_meta":{"origin":255372,"position":0},"title":"Oil Markets Could Face A Doomsday Scenario This Week","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/07\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"By\u00a0Cyril Widdershoven Global oil markets are going to be very volatile in the coming months if news emerging from OPEC\u2019s main producers about production capacity constraints turns out to be true. 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(PDVSA) after nationalization in the 1970s, intensified under Hugo Ch\u00e1vez's 2007 expropriations of private assets. 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This makes it a critical vulnerability for global energy security disruptions here can spike prices worldwide and affect economies far beyond the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Domestic Energy Procution\"","block_context":{"text":"Domestic Energy Procution","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=domestic-energy-procution"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Strait-of-Hormuz-Siege.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Strait-of-Hormuz-Siege.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Strait-of-Hormuz-Siege.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Strait-of-Hormuz-Siege.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Strait-of-Hormuz-Siege.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=255372"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255381,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255372\/revisions\/255381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/255380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=255372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=255372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=255372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}