, Columnist
The UAE Is Preparing for a Post-Oil World
New world order.
Photographer: Haruna Furuhashi/Pool/Getty Images
For more than five decades, OPEC has been one of the pillars of the global system. It decides how much the rest of us pay for energy — and that price-setting power has made many of its members, especially the United Arab Emirates, extraordinarily rich. Why, then, would the UAE choose to exit, and possibly destroy, the world’s most profitable cartel?
Perhaps because the Emirates’ leaders saw the ground shift under their feet, and brought the house down about their ears before it fell of its own accord. The world OPEC was built for — and the world it then helped build — is no longer the one we live in.