Newtland asked:

“When the House of Saud falls, is what comes next better or worse?”

The fall of the Saudi dynasty means three things:

1) The big oil fields like the Gwahir will have run out of petroleum.
2) Wahabiism will be in terminal decline.
3) Saudi Arabia will be in civil war.

Since our modern economy is based upon cheap petroleum, the disappearance of the Gwahir oil field will be a complete disaster. However militant Sunni Islam comes mainly from the Wahabii and Egyptian Islamic intellectuals but Saudi dollars mostly funds Sunni Islamic extremism. Take away the Wahabiis then militant Sunni Islam would remain in Egypt but lose most of its funding (militant Sunni Islam would lose its international character). However militant Shia Islam will continue to be a problem until the Iranian mullahs disappear (that could happen very suddenly with lots of unwanted side effects, particularly if there’s a civil war in Saudi Arabia).

So to answer Newtland’s question: Will things get better or worse? I suspect things will continue to be bad, just a different kind of bad.

As an aside: The eventual collapse of Saudi Arabia is almost a given after they exhaust their petroleum deposits. However Iraq will continue to have petroleum for many years afterwards. This is where our investment in Iraq would really payoff assuming our next President doesn’t throw that investment in the trash.