138THE POLITICS OF REFORMattack was deeply symbolic, given the Saudi citizenship of the bomber
and the Saudi ancestry of the Shia Hasawi victims. The emir knew that
if he was not careful Kuwait’s precious stability could unravel. “National
unity is a protective fence for the security of the nation,” Sheikh Sabah
told reporters at the scene. Justice Minister Yaqoub al- Sanea declared
that the chaos of surrounding states would not be allowed to infect
Kuwait. He swore that “Kuwait will remain an oasis of security for all
groups of Kuwaiti society and all sects.”
The mosque bombing in Kuwait did not attract much attention in the
West, with media crews focused on the attacks in Tunisia, Syria, and
France. But it resonated deeply in the Gulf. Was chaos closing in on the
Persian Gulf region, the last remaining bastion of stability in the Mid-
dle East?
Five years after the start of the Arab Spring, the initial euphoria
among democracy advocates had soured. Popular uprisings had dragged
Libya, Syria, and Yemen into civil war and tipped Iraq back into chaos.
Repressive dictatorships reemerged in Bahrain and Egypt, and the
Islamic State took control of much of Iraq and Syria, muscling into
the oil business. ISIS deployed a slick media operation that turned
young men against their rulers and the West. Young Saudis appeared
particularly susceptible. The kingdom suffered dozens of attacks start-
ing in 2002 not just from ISIS terrorists but from cross- border incur-
sions by Shia Houthi forces in Yemen, mostly in retaliation for the
Saudi- led campaign to dislodge them from power. Citizens in the Gulf
were rightly worried.
Contributing to the sense of siege was the 73 percent plunge in oil
prices between late 2014 and the end of 2015— from $112 to $30 a barrel.
By 2016, all six Gulf monarchies were in fiscal trouble. They needed high
oil prices to balance their budgets (see figure 9.1), ranging from a low of
$49/bbl in Kuwait to an untenable $108/bbl in Bahrain. In 2016, all the
Gulf monarchies, even ultra- rich Qatar, faced budget shortfalls of at least
30 percent.^3
To young technocrats angling to cut energy subsidies, the combina-
tion of a crash in the price of oil and civil unrest provided the beginnings
of a pretext. As mentioned, centralized states are at a disadvantage when