President Obama is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia soon. While the objective of this trip is supposedly to clear up some of the confusion and chaos that has afflicted the relationship between the two countries recently, past American presidential trips to “friendly nations” have tended to go in a different direction.
A few years before the people of Egypt broke out into protests, Obama was an “irksome” guest in Cairo. He gave a speech at Cairo University portending things that would soon take place …
If it’s true that American news agencies with Arab ties are now discussing the possibility of what they call “constitutional monarchies,” then Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia may be laden with such overtones …
Significantly as well, the American media has taken a greater interest in potential reforms in Bahrain that are far more akin to a “constitutional monarchy.” Those reforms have been inspired by similar reforms in Jordan …
Now Bahrain and Jordan are some of the Saudis’ more sensitive neighbors … Lest anyone’s pride carries them into sin, the objective of America’s calls for countries to reform as constitutional monarchies is always different depending on the audience. They always have in mind, however, the reproduction of global capitalism and extending their reach throughout the world. The Arab world, for its part, is generally more concerned with creating a favorable regional environment around Saudi Arabia.
On the level of individual states, the constitutional monarchy in Jordan, for example, is helping — or at least wants to help — to integrate more Palestinians into Jordan according to what is stated in the constitution that the kingdom ratified after the unification of the West Bank and Jordan in the beginning of the 1950s.
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