Good News, Bad News for Bush

The good news is that Saudi Arabia has agreed to increase its oil production by 200,000 barrels a day from July, which will ease the price pressure off gas in the United States as it tops $4 a gallon at pumps.

The surge in production from the number one world producer of crude oil will address growing world demand to some extent, although analysts say it is unlikely to bring the price down anytime soon.

Nevertheless, it is good news for the George W. Bush administration, which has been lobbying the Saudis to pump up more oil for some time. President Bush himself paid two visits to Saudi Arabia and Vice President Dick Cheney made one visit. Both the president and vice president tried to convince Saudi King Abdullah to increase production, but all three times returned empty-handed.

But the announcement that the desert kingdom will increase production is also bad news for the Bush administration, because it comes about as a result of a request by the United Nations and not by the United States. The Saudi decision followed a meeting in Jeddah by U.N. head Ban Ki-Moon and Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi.

The price of oil on the New York market responded by dropping by $2 at Friday close, putting a barrel of benchmark crude at $134.86.

For Bush this must have felt like a slap in the face from a country considered to be a major U.S. ally in the region.

Oil markets aside, is this a sign of things to come? Is the world’s sole remaining superpower starting to lose its clout and prestige to the United Nations and others? Are the political poles starting to shift, giving previously unheard voices a greater say in world affairs?

The successful U.N.-Saudi meeting in Jeddah is but the latest in a string of events in which the U.S. is nowhere in sight.

Just last month the tiny Gulf state of Qatar succeeding in striking a peace agreement between warring Lebanese factions in its capital, Doha, after both the United States and the European Union had failed.

Despite numerous U.S. and French diplomatic efforts there was no sign of consensus among the parties in the Lebanese crisis. Yet, in Doha they listened to the emir and agreed to re-launch deadlocked talks to revive internal Lebanese political life, assemble the parliament and elect a new president.

And again, only a few weeks earlier Turkey announced it was involved in bringing together the Syrians and Israelis in negotiations over the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the June 1967 war. Again, the United States was nowhere to be found.

As Bush winds down his presidency – 217 days left as of Monday – such events are just more landmarks in a presidency that has been filled with much rhetoric and little substance.

The Saudi oil increase comes too late to affect prices at the pump in any major way during the present U.S. administration. Instead, Bush will be remembered as the president who took the country to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the commander in chief under whose watch the price of oil went from 99¢ a gallon to $4 and counting.