Saudi Arabia Is Putting Itself First

More than a week after Saudi Arabia failed to persuade all of its fellow OPEC members to increase oil output, analysts and investors are still trying to sort out the meaning of the fracas. One of the consequences may be the death of OPEC—or at least its irrelevance for the foreseeable future. As Saudi Arabia seeks to manage the fallout from the Arab Spring, the kingdom is engineering a new economic and foreign policy that clearly puts its interests first and those of OPEC second.

The Saudis have been under pressure from Western patrons and Asian customers for weeks to increase oil supplies. Worried that global growth is in danger of seizing up—and that demand for oil will slide as a result—the Saudis decided that to preserve their own growth they had to guard the economic health of their customers by making oil more affordable.