As turmoil has engulfed the Middle East and North Africa, much attention has focused on Saudi Arabia -- if trouble spread there, traders have worried, the global economy could dive into a far more serious recession than the 2008 financial collapse. Nawaf Obaid, a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and a doctoral candidate at King's College London's Department of War Studies on the subject of the rise of Saudi nationalism, thinks the fears are overblown. He kindly agreed to write a guest column, which follows.
Reports in recent weeks have suggested that the mass protests occurring in Arab nations will soon spread to Saudi Arabia. There has been coverage of Facebook pages established by activists calling for a "day of rage," and a "day of revolution." Large, front page articles, illustrated with pictures and charts, have asserted that it is only a matter of time before massive upheavals will bring down the Saudi monarchy. The BBC has reported that the Saudi downfall is inevitable, and weighing heavily on global energy markets, where a fear premium had added 15 percent to the price of oil.
These assertions have been grossly exaggerated: 17,000 Facebook fans or "protesters" do not necessarily translate into 17,000 Saudi rioters, because at the very least it is impossible to verify how many of them actually lived in theKingdom. One cannot forecast events based on a count of virtual fans at a social network.
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