Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

It is not, and it can never be an auspicious occasion to realize that one has been slighted to the point of complete abandonment. The surety involved in a long-held mutual dependence suddenly shattered. Perhaps not so suddenly, but perhaps to the unwary mind a situation that has inevitably crept forward of a volition based on a need no longer requiring fulfilment, coming full circle. Although it's not quite the covenant witnessed by God above, relating to the sacraments of a marriage, the mutually beneficial agreement launched between Saudi Arabia and the United States seemed soothingly rock-solid to the Saudis.

And for decades upon decades this is precisely how the United States was pleased to view the agreement between the two. Mutual reliance; the natural endowment of petroleum resources within the Saudi geography and the happy willingness of the United States of America to help withdraw that energy source from its resting place within the Earth's crust, to refine it, and to pay the regime the handsome prices it required to maintain it in princely state befitting a Kingdom was the glue holding the two together.

Like the high-profile academic on top of his intellectual form, stooping to make carnal use of the voluptuous female whose body is for sale to the highest bidder, the two have little in common as regards heritage, values, religion, social custom and status in life, but much in common relating to enterprise, sale and satiety of desires. That is, until such time as the phallocentric male took unto his bed a female reflecting his own elevated place in society, willing to trade marriage for sex-on-call.

For Saudi Arabia, whose strictly rigid view of Islam through the pure Islamist prism of Wahhabism, the wealth it deigned to accept from a powerful country of Christian-Crusader origins enabled it to export its spiritual sustenance world-wide through the establishment of madrasses, mosques and Islamist social centres, neatly infiltrating the world of the Infidel. That same Infidel who had scrupulously kept the Seraglio that Saudi oil concubines posed within, from harm.

Matters have gone dreadfully awry in the world of the Middle East. An American president unlike any other has taken office, assuring the world of Islam that America is its friend. Giving ample proof of that declaration by abandoning an Egyptian president who had long been supported by U.S. funding and attestations of reliability. Giving the first hint to the Saudi ruler that he might question the faithfulness of an old reliable ally. For the ally now recognizes its own feeble state of self-reliance.

The simple fact being that forces of Islamist terrorism had given ample proof of their dire contempt and eagerness to sacrifice themselves to bring the anguish of surprise brutal attack to American soil. Not only with the mind-numbing awakening of 9/11, but with the understanding that among them now live hordes of peaceful Muslims enjoying the American Way of Life, yet harbouring between the interstices, home-bred jihadists.

Why, the reasoning would have it, continue to fund the capability of a hostile, foreign intention through an opportune-for-the-enemy transfer of munificent funding in exchange for oil and gas deposits that America contains itself in abundance, newly freed for refining and use through the advent of cutting-edge extraction technologies? And so, an affronted Saudi Arabia gathers its dignity about itself, condemning a former ally and protector which now has sundered that relationship.

Realpolitik has demanded of the world's sole superpower (upon whose waning paramount state others are gradually gaining) that it accede to the machinations of Russia and China both of whom will not countenance interference in the affairs of a sovereign state (as long as those affairs don't impinge upon their own), making a threat of intervention swiftly disappear, abetting Syria's Alawite Shia regime in its battle against Sunni Islamism, which sect Saudi Arabia supports.

The alarm within the Middle East, raised by the quite evident prospect of the Islamic Republic of Iran attaining its goal of nuclear warheads, the better by which it may attain its more far-reaching, larger goal of presenting itself as the final and most imperiously authentic source of Islamic power, daring to challenge Saudi Arabia in its role of supreme arbiter, and caretaker of the two most sacred sites in Islam, simply cannot be overstated. That America has surrendered the potency of its authority over the issue of forcing Shi'ite Iran to surrender its nuclear program, has staggered Sunni Saudi Arabia with incredulity.

Their power has ebbed as the need for their oil has been strategically reduced, and their treasury is threatened. However ... Saudi Arabia can take comfort in selling its natural energy resources to other upcoming giants of industry and power; China, India, Brazil, perchance.