My contest entry:
The Carrington-class solar superstorm that hit the Earth in the July of 2012 shook every country on Earth but, while most countries were able to weather the storm and make it through the temporary lack of modern technology almost unscathed (if one is willing to overlook things such as "apocalyptic death toll" and "financial armageddon", of course), some countries were so completely dependent on it, and so unstable even before the shit hit the fan, that they weren't able to make it through.
Like every country on the Arabic side of the Gulf, for example.
In the blink of an eye, the decadent oil monarchies of the Middle East went from the Information Age to the Bronze Age; but that was not the only issue they were facing: in the ensuing chaos, the exploited foreign workers of the Gulf, the majority of the population, revolted against the pampered minority of native inhabitants. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were taken over by provisional governments dominated by the immigrant labour force, and those Shi'a that had chafed under the Sunni yoke.
These provisional governments federated into the Khaleeji State in 2020, with the country's first presidential elections scheduled for the following year. The elections were won by the Progressive Party of the Gulf fronted by Rubylyn Almazan, a former Filipino maid of Moro descent that had become an activist in the years immediately following the Event. Barely literate and educated for most of her previous life, she nonetheless was an excellent orator, and had a talent for picking the right people for whatever jobs needed doing, such as her VP and eventual husband, Kabir Singh.
"The Cleaner" - as she came to be called due to her hardline stance on corruption and white collar crime, as much as due to her past - retired from politics after her first term, having successfully restored most modern amenities to the Gulf, and negotiated the accession of the majority Shi'a Eastern Province of the failed Saudi monarchy to the Khaleeji State, that had by then replaced it as the West's #1 ally in the region. She was succeeded by Musayh Akbar, an Arab Christian, and lived a quiet life before dying in New Dilmun, the new, planned, and eco-friendly capital of the Gulf in the 2050s.