
© UnknownUS President Donald Trump
While most people are absorbed by the time-distribution measures of the epidemic, the Saudis are questioning the power of their American protector. A showdown between Riyadh and Washington, which was already disrupting the world economy before the spread of Covid-19.
President Trump considered taking control of Saudi and Venezuelan oil, which apparently led him to forge new alliances.For the past three years, President Trump and his CIA director and then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
have been trying to abandon their country's imperialism and replace it with an economic strategy. This supposes that Washington can still be the world leader provided it has a powerful army and energy autonomy.
Donald Trump has authorized the exploitation of protected areas, has relaunched the construction of pipelines and has continued the shale adventure even though it is by nature ephemeral. The political evolution of Saudi Arabia with the megalomania of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman
was first managed by extorting as much money as possible from him at each of his follies, then turned to clash. Finally, MBS opened an oil war, not against Russia, but against the US shale industry. It deliberately caused the price to plummet from $70 a barrel to under $30. However,
this showdown unexpectedly coincided with the Covid-19 epidemic and the dizzying drop in global energy consumption. The epidemic is also affecting the United States, where some of the senior officers intend to proclaim improved martial law and put an end to the Trump experiment.
These three realities (President Trump's economic strategy, the Saudi rebellion and the coronavirus epidemic) are colliding. To analyse them, we will arbitrarily dissociate them
while keeping in mind that each logic can suddenly be disrupted by the other two.
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