The Prince Has No Clothes
The rapprochement with Saudi Arabia's crown prince is blatantly cynical.
As Joe Biden travelled to the Middle East earlier this month, the cloud of his previous statement when he was running in the Democratic primaries hung over him. Biden had brashly proclaimed the Saudi government possesses “very little social redeeming value” while also vowing to treat them like the pariah state they are. Yet after departing Israel and the Palestinian Territories for the kingdom of the House of Saud, Biden greeted crown prince and de facto regent Mohammed bin Salman with a fist bump before the two held talks in Jeddah.
How effective Biden’s diplomatic outreach was, remains to be seen. For a start, the nature of the meeting is being disputed by both parties. In an effort to assuage his critics at home, Biden and his administration maintain that Biden blamed the crown prince to his face for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, while releasing a statement to the press, parading the meeting as an accomplishment vis-à-vis several issues. The Saudi foreign ministry softly denied such remarks were said while also engaging in whataboutism over America’s handling of the War in Iraq, Abu Ghraib prison, and the American response to the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. This disagreement over the basic facts of the meeting has exacerbated tensions between the two countries, while the press is divided as to if the meeting was successful. Reuters’ coverage was ambivalent-to-negative, saying that Biden failed to secure commitments on regional security and oil, while the Washington Post offered a more cautious analysis, saying that the events of August 3rd’s OPEC meeting will determine how to evaluate Biden’s overtures to the Saudis.
Though Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia came amidst the backdrop of the imminent failure of negotiations for a return to the Iran Deal and Saudi-Emirati refusal to increase oil production in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine, I am presently unconcerned with the results of the meeting. Rather, I’m more concerned with giving an honest account of who Mohammed bin Salman is.
The basics – Mohammed bin Salman is the heir-presumptive to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, presently ruled by his dement father, King Salman. Nominally, Salman wields dictatorial powers in absolutist Saudi Arabia, but after putting American concerns of gerontocracy to shame by ascending to the throne at the age of 79, his reign has largely been that of a figurehead. Instead, power lies with Mohammed bin Salman. Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known in the west as MBS, is poised to become the youngest king in Saudi history – he is presently 36 and Salman’s health is poor. All of Saudi Arabia’s rulers, aside from the state’s founder Ibn Saud, are the sons of Ibn Saud. MBS will be the first to break this tradition.
MBS was largely out of the western limelight until his appointment to the position of crown prince in 2017, before which he served as his father’s minister of defence. Under MBS, women were allowed to drive for the first time in the Saudi state, and women are supposedly allowed to travel without male permission. The religious police have been weakened over the past few years, and Israel and Saudi Arabia are inching ever closer towards open relations.
It was also during MBS’ term as the Saudi defence minister that a Saudi-led coalition intervened against the Houthis in Yemen’s civil war in favour of the rump Hadi government. The war in Yemen, which the Saudis escalated in terms of severity, led to massive humanitarian crises, including a massive, five year-long Cholera outbreak and blockade-induced famine. Overall, the UN estimates the Yemeni war has claimed almost 400,000 lives while the political situation has culminated in a tense, sectarian stalemate.
MBS also presided over a diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar; just a day after becoming the crown prince, Saudi Arabia issued an ultimatum against Qatar, implying their non-compliance with those demands would be met with force. None of these demands were ever met.
MBS also had the prime minister of Lebanon kidnapped in order to coerce him into resigning, all as a petty exercise of power over a weaker state. The Saudis also responded to a frankly milquetoast condemnation of Saudi detention of activists by the Canadian foreign ministry by freezing bilateral relations, cancelling trade, ordering all Saudi students in Canadian universities to return, and posting an image which seemed to threaten a 9/11-like attack on the CN Tower.
And, of course, MBS ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who had criticized the Saudi regime for their war in Yemen, the Qatari crisis, the kidnapping of the Lebanese PM, and the Canadian spat. For the crime of political criticism, Khashoggi first had to flee his home country. When he refused to be silent, he was hacked to death with a bone saw in Istanbul.
From war crimes in Yemen, to diplomatic escalations against Qatar and Canada, to the kidnapping of a foreign official, to the murder of a patriotic journalist for doing his job, Mohammed bin Salman’s years of prominence are defined by recklessness and fecklessness. He has acted brutally in an attempt to quash any opposition to him, both at home and abroad. Even before he was the crown prince, German intelligence openly criticized him for his responsibility and impulsiveness.
Now, hoping that the pandemic will have assuaged the righteous fury over his callous murder of Yemenis and journalists alike, both Mohammed bin Salman and the powers-that-be are hoping for a reset. Despite a murder of a journalist occuring in Turkish borders, a nation that at least calls itself democratic, Turkey is now eagre to improve relations with the Saudis. Perhaps Biden was genuine in 2019 when he declared he would treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah, as the murder of Khashoggi was still fresh in everyone’s minds and Trump’s apologia for the Saudis was so blatant, but with ballooning gas prices at home, any policy of treating Saudi Arabia as a pariah was no longer viable.
For those who reject the premise of pacifist isolationism, the reality of formulating foreign policy in the Middle East is that for virtually any Western policy to be viable, cooperation with autocracies in some capacity is mandatory. Within the greater Middle East and Northern Africa, only Israel and Tunisia are democracies, and both of those countries have their own set of challenges. Likewise, the Saudi war in Yemen is a materialization of their greater proxy war against Iran, whose support for the Houthis has also contributed to the destruction of the country. Between their support for the Houthis, Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shi’a paramilitaries in Iraq, along with their own horrific human rights abuses against women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and sexual minorities, and their doomsday clock counting down the days to Israel’s destruction, Iran is clearly a bad actor. And Qatar has backed the Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas, across the Middle East, along with their support for Turkey’s anti-Kurdish campaigns. And so on, and so on.
This is not an attempt to engage in whataboutism, but rather merely to point out that policy making vis-à-vis the Middle East is difficult because most of the states within it are autocratic, human rights abusers. That is the reality. As someone who believes that Iran’s militant support for fascism throughout the Shi’a Crescent is perhaps the single most pressing issue in the Middle East, a western country like the States countering them without engaging with Saudi Arabia in some capacity is very difficult. It may also be the case that aligning ourselves with the Saudis may lead to liberalization through osmosis, and the expansion of women’s rights in the Kingdom may not be for show, but is perhaps a recognition of the need for an inclusive political regime to guarantee prosperity, though that is a charitable interpretation given the other recent Saudi developments.
If we are going to engage with the Saudis, that engagement should not forget the war the Saudis have waged in Yemen, or MBS impulsively escalating tensions with Canada and Qatar for the sake of bullying, and having his journalist critics murdered overseas. Soon, he will become king of Saudi Arabia and will likely rule for a few decades. Don’t forget these actions, and make them earn forgiveness.