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This article speaks to issues no one will publicly raise in DC. That doesn't mean this scenario hasn't been extensively discussed at very high levels.

The current administration is trying to assist the Saudi monarchy to remain in place at least until some sort of reasonably stable (and pro-US) succesor regime is in place in Iraq. I believe the administration's concern over the viability of SA and the need for finding a more potentially more stable and petroleum rich Persian Gulf state to be the locus of US poer in the Gulf and the Arab world was at least as significant a reason for the war to unseat Saddam as any other. This strategic rationale cannot be acknowledged for obvious reasons but it is powerfully compelling if one accepts the initial premises that the US must play a commanding role in trying to minimally stabilize the Arab world and assure access to abundant hydrocarbon energy supplies from the Persian Gulf region.
Any crisis in SA presents major challenges for the US a sudden implosion could present the US with a kind of global crisis overload that would have literally incalculably bad consequences.

The very rapid and for the size of the operation very smooth removal of all US military material and personnel (except for the staff of the FMS funded PM for the SA National Guard) after the Saudi's requested we depart after we had dispatched Saddam's regime points to detailed preplanning done well in advance. That would seem to indicate that CENTCOM with SECDEF approval has been given serious thought to specific actions to be taken if the SA govt collapses. In this case that makes US planning light years in advance of the miserable performance of the Carter administration as the Shah's government imploded.

One aspect of the US attempt to assist the Saudi's without being pulled in to their problems is the constant public freindly and supportive commentary from high level official from the Pres. down. This includes the constant and nauseating 'religion of peace' comments. The President and those around him have, I believe, no illusions about the nature and prospects of the House of Saud. They do understand the cyclone of multiple crisis that could be unleashed by the collapse of the SA monarchy. For starters another energy crisis that would be more severe than the one triggered by the fall of the Shah. While world energy production has increased so has demand since 1978. Particularly energy demands on the market by China are increasing at a rapid rate. A shutoff of Saudi oil even for a short while could easily set off a major bidding war between Europe, North America and the Far East. Because demand is increasing exponentially this would mean energy prices would stabilize at a much higher level after the initial crisis of supply had passed. The new Saudi regime would be particularly relentless in trying to employ the oil weapon to jack prices and bring a flush of prosperity to SA to validate the virtues of a really Wahhabist regime.
Other oil producers would be happy to cash in on the price hike gravy train and be unwilling to show much 'flexibility' over price or production. (This is also a significant piece of why the US has been so civil and cooperative with a Russia under Putin. Russian policy has been two face d to say the least but their huge energy resources is the key to US appeasement of Moscow.)

Conversely it is likely the new regime, if one stabilized in a reasonable time, would renounce the foreign debt the old regime had accumulated. Proposing at best that there be lenghty debt payment holiday and that the loans be written down to a fraction on the dollar and reshecheduled over a very long period. By using the oil weapon Japanese and Hong Kong-PRC finace sources would step forward to provide what ever short term debt financing needed. (Even though the Europeans would take a major hit on debt renunciation it is likely the French and Germans out of spite and to curry favor with the ruling fanatics would also offer new money in exchange for slighly lower oil prices.

Debt renunciation would strike the largest US investmnet banks a huge blow. With their large portfolios of questionable paper they would be exposed to potential default. This would lead the US government to do a crash drill operation to prop up the giat banks exposed to failure. The impact wihin the US could be dicey with a potential for a rolling financial crisis to get going if the Treasury didn't take really fast action to bail out some of the giats with essentially free loans. (Think how the Rats would demegog bailing out Citibank while a combination of credit crunch and energy fueled infation bump sowed economic chaos for tens of thousands of average American families.)

This leads to the final aspecxt of the potential bad outcomes that a sudden destabilization of SA could lead to:
The return to power of a McGovernite-Carter style Rat administration as Americans vote their wallets and massively reject the Republicans for not stopping the simultaneous economic crisis, energy crisis, and general foreign policy disasters. The rats of course would embrace an 'America the Guilty' foreign policy replete with transforming the US armed forces into a lightly armed force good for only multilateral substative military cosmetic operations under the aegis of the UN or NATO and where no concievable US national interest would be involved. On the home front there would be a massively bureaucratized 'energy poily' approach replete with heavy regulation of all energy use and lots of money spent on DOE controlled 'alternate energy programs' (which would assure thier minimal effectiveness. Along with this would be a relentless onslought of 'green regulation' that would be directly punitive towards the Rocky Mountain West. (Imagine Klamath Basin as a mild and inconsequential sort of action in comparison to what the renascent EPA and other enviro nuts in BLM and Interior could spin up. All in the name of enviromental friendly energy efficient policy.)

Hard to imagine that the fate of a few thousand corrupt Arabs could have such a negative impact on the US but it could if the Bush administration doesn't successfully carry out its very high stakes foreign policy in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

The