HISTORY DOESN'T REPEAT ITSELF TWICE

A "friendship visit", as the western media called it, by American President Barack Obama to Saudi Arabia took place at the end of March. Going by the reports, the talks concerned just about everything. The head of the White House, along with his Secretary of State John Kerry and his National Security Advisor Susan Rice, discussed with King Abdullah and other members of the ruling dynasty the war in Syria, the situation in Egypt and around the Muslim Brotherhood movement, Israeli-Palestinian relations, Iran's nuclear programme, "anti-terrorist" operations in Yemen and the work of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. 

The visit ended with official confirmation of the inviolability of the strategic alliance between the USA and Saudi Arabia. And it could hardly be otherwise - al-Riyadh is one of Washington's top ten trade partners and American investments in the kingdom amount to billions of dollars. Military-technical cooperation, and also in the sphere of security and intelligence, between the two countries is on a large scale. And this excludes the fact that almost all the administrative and business elite are trained in America - thousands of students from Saudi Arabia are studying in the US. 

In the meantime, the main intrigue surrounding the visit by Obama and Kerry to the Arabian Peninsula was the Russian question, or rather discussion of the possibility of Saudi Arabia's consenting to side with the Americans in the oil price "reduction war". Strictly speaking, there was no reliable confirmation that the White House visitors and the members of the royal family discussed an increase in supplies of "black gold" to the world markets during their meeting in al-Riyadh. However, the media, including for example The Guardian, are persistently hinting that this is what happened. Journalists and experts are positive that in this way the Americans are seriously hoping to weaken the Russian economy. In retaliation for Crimea, of course.

In point of fact the oil price is fixed in the Russian budget at 100 dollars and prices are now fluctuating at about this level or higher. At the time of writing, for example, prices have gone down against a background of reports that militants in eastern Libya have stated that they are ready to lift the blockade of oil terminals and ports for several days, which has raised investors' hopes for a quick resumption of production in the country. If the oil market is flooded with a glut of "black gold" from Arabia's infinite storage capacities prices are bound to come crashing down. According to experts' calculations, such a blow would cost Moscow something like 40bn dollars, i.e. roughly 2 per cent of GDP.

However, there are also much less pessimistic opinions. The writer and former operative of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Vladimir Rezun, better known under the pseudonym Viktor Sudorov, says that "if Arabian oil starts flooding the world market the Russian Federation is guaranteed to collapse within a year". Especially as there have apparently been precedents for this. In the middle of the 1980s, Saudi Arabia, angered by the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, flooded the market with its oil. Prices plummeted to 20 dollars a barrel (in today's terms), and it is generally agreed that this was the main reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Saudis, who are again angry at Russia, this time because of its support for Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, have apparently given the Americans their consent in principle to a repeat of a once dormant scenario. Journalists guessed they'd hit the nail on the head because immediately after Obama's visit to al-Riyadh, the American president was unexpectedly called on the telephone by Vladimir Putin who "asked if they could go back to the Ukrainian question". There also soon took place an urgent meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Meanwhile, there is an opinion going around that the collusion between the Saudis and the Americans had not played such a decisive role in the collapse of the USSR. For example, Forbes writes that at that time, as a result of a number of factors, there was simply a glut of oil on the market. OPEC tried to maintain high prices by restricting oil production, but it didn't help. Eventually, the patience of Saudi Arabia, which had played the main role of market regulator, gave way and the country announced an end to the curb on oil production. The fact that the decision was directly dictated by a desire to bring down the USSR therefore seems extremely dubious. After all, as the magazine says, there were too many unknown quantities linked with the state of the Soviet economy and the activities of the Soviet government. But if one seriously considers the conspiracy theory, then alongside the "craftiness of the Saudis" it is also worth studying closely all the subsequent actions by Gorbachev, who did everything that was possible and impossible in the circumstances to nudge the Soviet Union to the edge of the precipice. The USSR could hardly have been toppled just by opening the oil valves…

And so, whatever the Americans and the Saudis talked about in al-Riyadh, much will depend on the Russian leadership itself, especially, as experts are asserting, if the price-collapse scenario comes about it will not happen overnight. In any event, Moscow has every chance and opportunity to contemplate retaliatory measures.

And this ignores the fact that low oil prices are disadvantageous not only to Russia but also to the Saudis themselves who are risking, at the very minimum, a decline in economic growth, because their budget for next year includes an oil price of about 80 dollars. A price reduction doesn't suit the US, either. For example, despite the grand predictions linked with the production of shale gas in the US, the boom in this sphere hasn't really begun yet. This may be due to a whole number of factors - from low rates of production growth to a negative public attitude because of threats to the environment. The cost of shale oil production in America is in the region of 70-80 dollars a barrel.

Besides, the general geopolitical background now is quite different to what it was 30 years ago. The fact is that al-Riyadh's foreign political ambitions have now firmed up considerably. And here it is intriguing to think what the Saudis could ask from the Americans in exchange for their services.

In recent years Saudi Arabia has made no secret of its claims to regional leadership and the role of the main country of the "Sunni axis" in its stand-off with the "Shiite Crescent", which mainly comprises Iran, the Shiite part of Iraq, Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah. It is also worth mentioning the nuclear aspirations of al-Riyadh, which is friendly with nuclear Islamabad and doesn't want to lag behind Tehran…And in these aspirations the ruling dynasty of the kingdom and the incumbent administration in the White House are not, as they say, "singing from the same hymn sheet".

Al-Riyadh has learnt to organize its priorities precisely. In relation to Yemen, or for example Bahrain, where the Saudis did everything possible to block the "Arab Spring" under the leadership of the Shiites, the interests of the Americans and the Saudis did not come into collision. They also managed to reach an understanding in principle over Libya. But there was a major failure in Egypt when, at the end of 2012, the henchman of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, came to power. Having received recognition from the US, he made things hum by, for example, actively developing ties (something unheard of, for the first time since that memorable year of 1979!) with Iran. The Saudis also remembered that later, in the summer of 2013, the US was not particularly pleased about Morsi being overthrown by the military. But the ruling dynasty was particularly displeased that at the end of summer and the start of autumn last year, after the news that the Bashar al-Assad regime had used chemical weapons, Washington did not go the whole hog and bomb Damascus. Most of all the Americans alarmed the Saudis by their desire to develop contacts with Tehran. There's no denying that the new President of the IRI, Hasan Rouhani, who replaced Ahmadinejad, even spoke to Barack Obama on the telephone.

The Iranian and Syrian questions are still acute and remain on the agenda. The situation with Egypt is not entirely clear, either. Will the USA want to deny itself in an already not too flexible situation for them in the Middle East? The Americans have already virtually gone along with the Saudis' assurances that the Syrian opposition is in urgent need of supplies of anti-aircraft guns, mainly used for bringing down aircraft and helicopters. Earlier the US objected to these supplies, claiming that the guns will end up in the hands of the radicals.

Meanwhile, Washington has other opportunities of putting pressure on Russia. John Kerry said at the EU-US Energy Council that America will begin exporting gas to Europe next year. "We shall supply more gas than all of Europe consumes today," the American secretary of state promised.

Therefore, the meeting between President Obama and King Abdullah should be seen not within the narrow framework of counteraction against Russia, as some media have been trying to do, but in a rather wider context - from the latest major geopolitical shocks to global repartitions of the spheres of domination in the question of supplies of energy resources.