On the first episode of KGOU’sWorld Views this year, Suzette Grillot, Rebecca Cruise, and Joshua Landis look ahead to 2015 and some of the biggest international stories they expect to follow in the coming months.
Low Oil Prices Here To Stay, With Severe Economic Consequences
2014 ends with extremely low oil prices, with a fine line between consumers paying less at the pump, and oil exporting countries struggling from this unprecedented drop.
Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, says even though the United States has dramatically increased domestic production as it leads the world in new drilling and extraction technology, it hasn’t thought about how other countries would respond.
“Saudi Arabia clearly is going to maintain its high production levels in order to punish America, and to try to keep its market share. This happened in the 80s, and it led to the savings and loan crisis,” Landis says. “We face something similar today as Saudi Arabia and America arm wrestle over who's going to be the big producer and where prices are going to be.”
Even though consumers will have more money in their pockets due to lower pump prices, Landis says budgets in states that rely heavily on oil’s economic drivers will likely get hammered.
Ebola Will Pay A Role In Health Care And Global Security
At the September 2000 Millennium Summit, the United Nations unveiled eight Millennium Development Goals it hoped to achieve by 2015.
World Views contributor Rebecca Cruise says none of the goals has been absolutely met, but the UN says it’s made progress on all of them.
“As 2015 comes up, and this is the year when we will assess those goals, but we'll also, as an international community, get together and create new sustainable development goals,” Cruise says. “I think the Ebola situation that we've experienced in 2014 will very much play a role in the discussion of health care internationally, and international security as well, just as HIV/AIDS was really ‘the disease’ that was looked at in the original Millennium Development Goals.”
Continued Instability In Iraq And Syria, Terrorism Not Going Away
Few people predicted just how powerful a force self-proclaimed Islamic State militants would be in 2014, and Landis says the United States now has de facto alliance with Iran and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad against ISIS.
“We’re trying to build up Syrian Sunni rebels against Assad at the same time as we’re counting on him,” Landis says. “These countries are fragile. They’ve fallen apart. Libya is a black hole, and there are already training camps for al-Qaeda in Libya. We’re going to see a more ensconced ISIS, and this war is not going away anytime soon.”
Keep An Eye On Mexico
There’s no end in sight as Mexico nears a decade of its violent war against drug cartels, but Cruise says there are actually positive developments in the United States’ southern neighbor.
“Last year there were protests in Mexico related to the disappearance of a number of students, but we saw people taking to the streets. We saw them calling for action, and we saw government response,” Cruise says. “So I think that's significant. We also, just this past fall, there was a monopoly that was eradicated. So the government lifted a 75-year monopoly that did not allow for foreign investment on oil. So I think we're going to see Mexico as a rising economy.”
--------------------------------------------------
KGOU and World Views rely on voluntary contributions from readers and listeners to further its mission of public service with internationally focused reporting for Oklahoma and beyond. To contribute to our efforts, make your donation online, or contact our Membership department.
