While a Facebook page calls for a "day of rage" protest on March 11 in Saudi Arabia some profoundly profound questions making headlines in the global press are: "Is Saudi Arabia next?" "What if Saudi Arabia is next?" "Could the next Mideast uprising happen in Saudi Arabia?" "King Abdullah is showering his people with cash and releasing political prisoners to stave off protests. What if it doesn't work?"
There are some other headlines that seek to provide answers to the above questions: "If Saudi Arabia falls, it could cause a global recession", "world economy will fall if Saudi Arabia falls", "if the Saudis revolt, the world is in trouble", "if Saudi Arabia falls by the Arab unrest in the region, the global economy could be devastated," "the oil price will immediately soar to $225 per barrel." These scenarios seem to have been built around two major increases in Western inflation in 1973 and later in 1979.
Although, the growing anti-monarchical activism in the West which has acquired a new dimension following the active participation of Saudi expats in London such as Prof Madawi al-Rasheed, scion of the Rasheed family and Prof Mai al-Yamani, daughter of the former oil minister Zaki al-Yamani, seems to have made the House of Saud realised that a crafty plan by "outsiders" against the throne is under execution, there appears to be a kind of near consensus in the West that King Abdullah has to be effectively "encouraged to mitigate the kingdom's vulnerabilities, but the West must be prepared to respond if the monarchy falls".
Noted Middle East expert Prof Fawaz Gerges appears to be fairly convinced that "if the Arab Revolution is going to stop anywhere, it is likely to be in the desert at the gates of the House of Saud; crucially the home of the world's greatest supply of oil. Unlike the striking poverty in Tunisia, Egypt and other places, Saudis are relatively well off. Although there is poverty in Saudi Arabia, the government has invested billions of dollars in welfare."
Writing for The Independent, Prof Gerges also argues: "The structure of society in the Kingdom also makes it less vulnerable. The state's main organs, the government and the ultra-conservative Sunni religious leaders, are largely at one. A social contract between these two competing powers exists to the benefit of both. The elites in each camp have enforced this social contract at times of instability, with King Abdullah - who is viewed as a reformer - winning the trust of the conservatives by refusing to make radical changes to Saudi society in return for the religious leadership eschewing the extremists of the al-Qa'ida type. That does not mean there are no risks for the establishment."
Rachel Bronson, the author of Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia, says in an article carried by Washington Post: "It is dangerous business to predict events in the Middle East, especially in times of regional crisis. It's hard to block out flashbacks of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 New Year's Eve statement that Iran under the Shah was an island of stability in a troubled region - only months before that stability was shattered. Still, the key components of rapid, massive, revolutionary change are not present in Saudi Arabia. At least, not yet."
However, Fadel Gheit, a managing director at Oppenheimer & Co and an analyst is quite categorical in his forecast for the richest Arab state. According to him, "it is hard to predict whether the violence that consumed Libya will spread to Saudi Arabia and other countries", but he strongly believes that the protests will lead to the fall of the kingdom.
Another noted analyst, Colin Morris from EC Harris (an international asset building consultancy), says that "the current unrest in Middle East and North Africa makes profiling any country in the region with complete accuracy very difficult, however, as other regimes topple, it seems unlikely Saudi Arabia will follow quite so dramatically".
There are numerous other arguments and counter arguments in relation to this theme. The less-discussed theme in such debates, however, is the question whether the fall of monarchy, if that happens anytime soon, will lead to the eclipse of the Sunnis' political clout.
How the on-going Arab world unrest plays out in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's border province adjacent to this island state in the coming days and weeks will determine whether the events will ultimately lead to total or partial eclipse of the Sunnis in that part of the Arab Peninsula, although those who rule out the removal of the Saudi government while dismissing the recent protests in eastern province as "no serious challenge" to Riyadh insist that the allegiance that the Shia Saudis owe to King Abdullah in a tribal society faces no grim prospects of renunciation.
(To be continued)