(Eine deutsche Übersetzung folgt in den nächsten Tagen.)

“Depart from me this moment”
I told her with my voice
Said she, “But I don’t wish to”
Said I, “But you have no choice”
“I beg you, sir”, she pleaded
From the corners of her mouth
“I will secretly accept you
And together we’ll fly south”.
Bob Dylan, As I Went Out One Morning

Of all the prevailing models of political and economic governance that have been challenged by the popular movements of the Arab Spring, perhaps the most intriguing regime is the tribal dynasty, and modern nation state, declared by the Saud family in the Arabian Peninsula in 1932. The economic “viability” of this state founded by warriors and nomadic herders, has always been rooted in its spectacular fossil-fuel wealth, which for the past century has rendered it and the other Arab tribal oil-states it surrounds in the Persian Gulf the focus of geo-political struggle and the generation of immense wealth for its rulers and elites: the so-called “prize”. Along with the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Oman), these monarchies have survived wave after wave of Arab nationalism, republicanism, social unrest and more recently Islamisation.

To most outsiders (i.e., everybody outsid…
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