1.- The costs of being a global cop become too much for us. We therefore leave Iraq to its devices, though we provide as much aid and support as we can. A civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias eventually breaks out which the Shias win. As a result, Iran and Iraq no longer are enemies, but become instead an oil powerhouse to rival if not surpass Saudi Arabia.
US defense costs are about 3% of GDP. The security for connectedness arrangement leads to even greater US,, Chinese and Indian prosperity. The pressure in Iraq by the al Qaida/Baathists does not increase. The Iraqi Shiites and Iranian Khomeniists are already more enemies than friends and Iraqis obstinately go their own route despite the Iranian blandishments and sabotage. The US remains as guarantor of Iraq independence. The Iraqi extremists are either killed or drawn into a new arrangement by tribal leaders
2.- After a brutal succession struggle, the elder Saudi princes are replaced either because of age or forcibly. The new King inherits a mess which he cannot control. A successful rebellion begins. Ultimately, the Royals are given a choice: leave Saudi Arabia or remain but renounce any claim to its wealth. A Muslim religious state is declared which uses Saudi oil wealth to promote Muslim values. Because of Islam's dynamics, these values regress. Islam becomes extremely fundamentalist and aggressive. Terror and military actions prevail. However, there is still great tension between the Sunnis and the Shias.
The noisy part of Islam already financed by Saudi and Iranian oil money is already fundamentalist and extremist. The US increases its support of Israel, and modern Palestinians who are finally fed up with Hamas and Hezbollah, and so go right up the trail to Lebanon and Damascus, cutting the terrorist trail to pieces, destroying the Syrian military and Syrian Kurds cut a deal with Turkey and Iraq. Syria follows the Romanian model....
China and Russia become trading partners with the Caliphate. Russia agrees to permit the various -stans and Chechnya to enjoy full political autonomy while China guarantees the rights of the Urguyrs [sp?] in exchange for peace. China become the supplier of arms and other goods to the Caliphate.
All the Caliphate would have is oil. The Chinese and Indians have to have prosperity. They won't get it from the Caliphate because their citizens are dead poor because they have no modern institutions. C & I will buy oil from the Caliphate as they do now from the M East and do real trade with the modern part of the world.
The Indian and Chinese markets are N and S America and to a declining extent Europe. They want to do business with winners. Iran, Saudi and possibly Russia are losers even if they have "empires".
They will remain losers until they become modern. The losers who take over Saudi talibanize it within 10 years; surviving Saudi moderns have fled. Seeing this coming, Canadian oil sands producers who have as much oil in the ground as all of Arabia and can profitably produce "forever" at $30 bbl, really crank up and replace Saudi as the swing producer.
Iraq and Iran woo the Saudi Shiites who decide to throw in with the less repressive Iraqis and the rag tag Saudi Miltary are completely destroyed by Iraqi/US forces. The utter nastiness of the Saudi "government" and gangsters destroys the Haj trade and Saudi Arabia falls back into tribal anarchy. Eventually the tribes at the Western side of the country ally themselves with Jordan and those in the North with their Iraqi cousins. The Yeminis, fed up with the depredations of Saudi extremists.....
Putin's new kleptocracy throws the country backwards and the Ukranians and Georgians strengthen their ties with the West. The Stans, impressed by Afghanistan's increasing prosperity and modernization try to take up that model or the Mongolian one, the Silk Road is rebuilt with a detour around Iran and central Asia finds new prosperity.
The Iranian mullahs find having their bomb makes it no easier to control the incredibly young population. The secular ones keep slipping away to Baghdad for hot weekends and the religious ones to Najaf to study the more modern teachings. Before he dies Sistani produces a fatwa against Hizbollah and the Iraqi shiite reform continues under his successor. The only thing propping up the mullahs' Iranian kleptocracy are the revolutionary guards.
5.- At the same time, Muslims make serious political inroads into German and French governments. Terror is prevalent in both countries, as well as in the UK. All make concessions to the Caliphate.
As Saudi Arabia falls into shambles the money for aggressive Wahabbist proslytization dries up, and the Europeans, fed up with the continued seditious messages and incitements to violence from the mosques clamp down and also do away with their multicultural policies.
Britain, the Scandanavian and Eastern members of the EU, fed up with German and French corruption demand and get democratic reform in the EU's constitutional arrangements.
The UN, toothless, corrupt and discredited, is replaced by a new organization of democratic states for which the first order of business is Africa.
The US continues to be the exemplar of modernity with its quirky deist population who manage to simultaneously believe in creationism and evolution.
I think this scenario stuff is a gas.
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