Good evening and welcome. This is the fourth webinar for the Middle East, heterodoxy. My name is Eugene Rogan and as director of the centre, it's my great pleasure to welcome you to tonight's seminar presentation on Saudi Arabia.
Our speakers will be Professor Mahdavi Rashid from the London School of Economics, author of the forthcoming book for Some Key Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia, which will be due out in December of twenty twenty and then hotbed of The New York Times, whose most recent book, MVS, The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Sandmen, has been on the lips of everybody talking about what is going on with Saudi Arabia under its influential and impetuous Crown Prince Ben Madary.
What a pleasure to welcome you both to the Middle East Centre's webinar. How would you like to begin? Did we ever agree on the order of proceed? Or are we starting with you without it? Yes, I think, sir, I should know that before we started. Please, the floor is yours. Welcome. Thank you, Eugene. And thanks for this opportunity at difficult times. But at least we can connect through Xu. I'll be talking about my forthcoming book, The Sun King, but with a special reference to populist nationalism.
Before I start, I would like to just set the scene by saying that the rise of IBS wasn't really a twenty seventeen when he was appointed crown prince. It goes back a couple of years before that. And I see the rise of Mohammed bin Salamat as a result of the Arab uprising in 2011, when Saudi Arabia, specifically the ruling family, felt the pressure off.
The rising tide of protests in the region. And it was during the time of King Abdullah when, as happened with the Saudi leadership looked a little bit lagging behind in terms of its reforms, in terms of its outlook. So Mohammed bin Selamat, I think, was a product of that time when the regime was in fear. And also the Western allies of Saudi Arabia feared the outcome of the Arab uprisings reaching Saudi Arabia.
So the search began to look for a young, energetic and social reformer to become the face of Saudi Arabia and all that was meant to come as a substitute or to mitigate against any kind of political change reaching the kingdom.
And based on that, I think the idea often Hamad bin Salamat springs from a kind of discourse that still adheres to a kind of oriental despotism in the sense that in order to reform the so-called conservative Saudi society, the so-called lazy Saudis, the so-called religious fanatics in Saudi Arabia, there is an inevitability of repression and coercion for a new Saudi Arabia to emerge, meaning that a new modern Saudi Arabia.
But without the fundamental pillar of modernity, and that is political change and moving the political system from an absolute monarchy to something more in line with what was demanded across the region, across the Arab world. So Mohammed bin Salman was the choice and a man did a series of reforms. And we all know what these reforms are. They touch the fabric of the religious establishment, the religious sphere.
They also move to the social fabric of Saudi society in the sense that he started a series of reforms when women could begin to drive. And there is an increased visibility of women. There is a fun culture introduced in the form of entertainment and also economic reforms, which were meant to move the state centred, oil based capitalist economy of Saudi Arabia. That is tied to a global world of oil consumers to act as sort of a new liberal economy where the state starts selling some of its assets.
And this was all summed up in Vision 2030 at the National Transformation Programme. However, part of that so-called reform was repression. And hence my book subtitle, Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia. I do challenge the idea that in order to reform Saudi Arabia politically, socially, economically and religiously, you need a fair amount of repression and coercion. And I showed that in addition to repression, which is actually documented.
And I don't want to waste the short time I have discussing the abuse of human rights, the detention campaigns against members of his own family, let alone the feminists and the activists, the Islamists, the professionals, intellectuals, etc. Even economists got about arrested. That is well documented. And anybody who was interested in that, they could consult. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN Council on Human Rights.
What I want to focus on is on the subtle ways of making that kind of package social, economic, religious reform without political change work in Saudi Arabia. And Mohammed bin Satima launched a new kind of nationalism that I would call a hyper nationalist narrative summed up by hashtags on Twitter, such as Saudi Arabia's great or make Saudi Arabia great or even Saudi Arabia for Saudis. These are the signs of this nationalism. But how did we get to here?
As I have a side of me that likes history, I would say that and the idea of Saudi nationalism or nationalism in Saudi Arabia was actually deeply in flux. It wasn't taken for granted. Nationalism itself was contested. But if we look at Saudi Arabia in a diachronic way from the beginning of the 20th century, I identify three phases that bring in some kind of nationalism.
The first. One is religious nationalism that was associated with the Wahabi tradition, the Wahabi tradition was made to Homogenise Society in the name of bringing it to the right Islamic path. And as such, it became the religious nationalism of Saudi Arabia. And we could discuss that in the Q and eight. But this period and it was actually at the beginning of the 20th century, up to the 1960s, where all regions of Saudi Arabia had to be submerged under the banner of becoming true Muslims.
And as in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, nationalism and its sort of secular in inverted commas version helped to homogenise the nation. I think religious nationalism and Wahhabism in particular played that role, but it was actually based on a religious dogma, on religious text, on ways of behaving, ways of conducting your legal affairs that have to be homogenised in Saudi Arabia in order to achieve the unity of Saudis as true Muslims.
So that was the first phase that lasted until the 1950s and late 1960s. But then something else happened and Saudi Arabia thought that the Islamic utopia was created inside Saudi Arabia. And there is no other ways to continue to Islamise society to unify it under the banner of Wahhabism. So from the 1960s, because of a particular historical international context, Saudi Arabia shifted to an Islamic identity. So by Islamism became the pillar of what it means to be a Saudi.
Saudis began to propagate the mission. So once the mission of the Islamic utopia was accomplished inside the country, there was a deliberate attempt to spread it around the world.
And this was encouraged by an international context specifically of the Cold War, when Saudi Wahhabism became an arm of foreign policy, used and encouraged by countries like the United States, Britain, who saw in the propagation of the Islamic utopia a counter trend against the challenges of the 60s and 70s with Arab nationalism, socialism, all the kind of fortresses of the Nazr and others.
So Saudi Arabia began to adopt this banned Islamic identity and created institutions whereby the ethos of this spanned Islamism is embedded, such as Islamic universities, Islamic banking, Islamic youth organisation.
And this was done actually under King Faisal. However, we come to 9/11 and it was the shock that the Saudi sponsored Western approved and encouraged type of pan Islamism led to kind of undesirable consequences, such as 9/11, the emergence of a global jihad movement that became a menace not only to the West, specifically to the US and 9/11 and in other parts of the world, but also inside Saudi Arabia.
Let's remember that Saudi Arabia went through a very, very bad period during the terrorism crisis, which started in 1979, but continued and became very, very acute between 2003 and 2008 when Saudi cities were targeted. So that kind of pan Islamic identity was gradually being abandoned in order to create a Saudi modern Saudi nation. And today, Mohammed bin Salman takes it further by promoting Saudi Arabia and promoting Saudi nationalism.
And the ingredients of this nationalism are different from that of those that were used in the 20s, 30s and then during the Pan Islamic period. So Mecca and Medina are no longer the pillars of this new Saudi nationalism. And that is an attempt to find other sort of secular sites for this nationalism, such as an earlier such as the archaeological digging in terms of tourism and pushing Saudis to appreciate their free Islamic heritage.
They were happy pre the pan Islamic kind of orientation and maintained it and more focussed on other ingredients. And of course, like any national narrative, the Saudi one is in a state of flux all the time. And it is based on forgetting and remembering like all nationalisms around the world. But we are now in this particular period. However, this populist nationalism that is encouraged today by the crown prince. And it has its own supporters. It's like any other nationalism.
It tends to unite people, but also to divide them. It tends to include and exclude. And what is really interesting is this populist nationalism. It goes against the Vision 2030 and and the sort of opening up of Saudi Arabia to global investment and capital and bringing a new entertainment that is really focussed on Western pop culture. So why he wants to open up the economy at the same time? There is this discourse that is directed against immigrants and by immigrants.
It's not only that the post oil or post Second World War to migration to Saudi Arabia. It is targeting also the people who had been living in Saudi Arabia for decades, such as people from the caucuses, people from China, people from Thailand who are Muslims living in Mecca. So this kind of nationalism had its dark side, like we all know, and we have seen that. And it suffers from certain contradictions, like all nationalist narrative.
First, let me just go through a list of certain kind of evidence to document what I'm talking about. So there is the empowerment of women and women become the vanguards of this new Saudi national narrative because they are icons of modernity. At the same time, we see that women are promoted as ambassadors, as members of the Shura Council. That is a deliberate attempt to feminised the nation.
But at the same time, the same nationalism doesn't allow Saudi women to give her nationality to her children if she is married to a foreigner. And there are several cases in the books where women are denied custody of their children whose fathers are not Saudis. At the same time, there is this sectarian discourse that is used in the war in Yemen. So they were in Yemen at the beginning to 2015, was projected as a jihad against those infidels 80s.
There is also an invocation of genealogies and tribal belonging, especially in the dispute with Qatar, while at the same time we're supposed to be all Saudis and there is actually a sinister side and. Stop as Eugene is making signs that I should. That is the sinister side of this nationalism that is leading to a discourse about treason and criminality. And it is that populist nationalism that led to the murder of Jamal.
How should he? It is the nationalism that promotes and encourages citizens to become policemen. So the citizen policeman is an outcome of this nationalism. So to just conclude, I want to say that repression might be obvious and old regimes use, such as the Saudi one, would use it to promote a new era, a new vision. And it is very obvious you could documented. But what I'm talking about is populist nationalism. It's a subtle way of achieving a similar kind of outcome.
Thank you for listening. If I exceeded my limit. On the contrary. And I thank you for a very concise and brilliant analysis of where Saudi Arabia has come to arrive at this moment. I particularly like the way in which you period dies Saudi history, because it's so breaks with the way in which the crown prince has spawned a kind of liberal Saudi Arabia before 1979. A post 1979 clampdown, Saudi Arabia of various others, religion and other new age he wants to usher in.
So it's very good to have a counterpoint to the official periodisation of recent Saudi history. I'm sure at some point we're going to come back to the subsequent Q&A. And I'd like to head dog to bed. The reason why I'm going to try to keep you both to sort of 10 to 15 minutes each is just because we'll have a little discussion that I want to the time the questions were already coming in. So listeners, stick with us.
We are definitely getting your questions. Ben, over to you. I'll try to keep it short so we can do as much discussion as possible. I think that my experience with Saudi Arabia certainly much shorter than doctor, would always. I mean, I basically, as a Middle East correspondent, working the Middle East 2013, my other said, I think, you know, I think you should try to go to Saudi Arabia. I got my first B. said I went and I spent a lot of time in the Arab world before that, spoke Arabic.
And so it wasn't completely new to me. But in terms of on the ground experience, it was a very new place. I lived in Egypt and I travelled elsewhere. But Saudi Arabia, even if you are used to the Arab world, was an incredibly different place. And sort of looking back now, you know, from from 2020 to 2013 or to 2015, when Mohammed bin Salman really comes onto the scene, we sometimes forget how dynamic of a period has been and how much kind of accelerated change we've seen on so many fronts.
When I went to Saudi Arabia before 2015, it was really a boring place. I mean, it was a place that was ruled by an elderly king. There was this idea of sort of this family council that would, you know, of the senior princes who would divide up the files and they would rule by consensus. And, you know, in any sort of Saudi expert that you would talk to would tell you, you know, this is the way it is in Saudi Arabia.
This is the way it's going to be. You obviously had deep social conservative Islam and, you know, music and arts and things like that, which sort of looked down upon and a lot of places socially and also sort of from the official narrative. Saudi Arabia had no influence in the region, but it was always trying to exercise it behind the scenes, you know, sort of working behind the curtain and paying people off in various places, but not sort of very activist foreign policy.
And this is kind of the way it was. And so being a journalist going there, it was a very sort of difficult, you know, you would go and there kind of wasn't all that much to see. It was sometimes hard to figure out what was going on. And then 2015 comes along and then, you know, we very quickly realised that sort of m.b us was the kind of figure that we don't see in the Middle East very often. And one indicator of that is the fact that, you know, here he's been on the scene for five years.
He's not the king of Saudi Arabia. And there are all already already multiple books written about him, including my own. There are kings of Saudi Arabia who never had so many books written about them. So, you know, it's been a time of dramatic change. And, you know, and I won't sort of rehash a lot of the things that we brought up about what we've seen.
You know, socially, we've seen that trying to sort of put large parts of conservative society back in the box, whether it's, you know, taking the power to arrest away from the religious police, extensive arrest campaigns against conservative clerics. There's obviously all the reforms that have had to do with women, you know, things that just may seem very common. But inside of Saudi Arabia, quite a big deal. Obviously, women driving's what got the most attention.
Also, things like allowing physical education classes for girls, students. I mean, this is something that you didn't have in Saudi Arabia before. And they're rolling these things out. You know, arts going from being sort of something that was considered Western and looked down upon and music, you know, now they're biting almost any Western musician that they can to come perform in Saudi Arabia. Politically, it's also been a very dynamic time. You know, you can gauge that by the war in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia had a large military and they spent tens of billions of dollars on weapons from the United States, the U.K. and other countries. But they have never intervened militarily in that kind of a way. And we know within a few months, months of coming on the scene when he was still deputy crown prince, you know, Mohammed bin Salman, the stature, the Saudi military to intervene in Yemen and they're still there.
We've seen all sorts of other you know, we could talk about sort of the standoff with Iran across the region, the various ways the Saudis have done that, the famous sort of detention and forced resignation of Saad Hariri in Lebanon where I am. I mean, these are the kinds of things that nobody ever expected from Saudi Arabia before because they were never that assertive and never that many people would say aggressive.
And I would agree with the subtitle of Mentality's books that I think when you look back over this very quick succession of events, the two themes that really rise up are reform and repression. On one hand, there has been there have been dramatic changes in terms of social life in Saudi Arabia. There have been, I would say at this point at least dramatic initiatives to try to reform the economy.
I don't think those have made as much progress and certainly as Mohammed bin Salman or his advisers would like. But there's certainly been a lot of attention put into that. But it's also been a time of great repression. You know, I write in my book that Saudi Arabia used to be sort of a soft love autocracy. You know, you could get together with your friends and you could complain about this.
And as long as you weren't sort of plotting protests or building a political party, they would kind of, you know, likely to look the other way. That's that's definitely changed. Now, people are people are scared. A lot of the Saudis that I got to know during the time when I was going somewhat freely back and forth to the kingdom, won't talk to me anymore.
When they get together, they put their cell phones in the fridge because they're scared of electronic spying on their conversations you've had. There's all kinds of swordsmen that I mentioned, the number of them. You know, there are people who have been basically disappeared from their families because they ran sarcastic Twitter accounts. I mean, this is something that you didn't have before in Saudi Arabia. So both of those things of reform, reform and repression are.
I think that the two sort of biggest themes that we've seen and then when you start thinking about Saudi Arabia into the future and when we try to figure out sort of where is Saudi Arabia going? Whereas Mohammed bin Salman going, I think it's what is the balance going to be between those two things, which I don't think the. Mutually exclusive. As many people in the West do, I think some people think that if you're a former, then you must also believe in democracy and political participation.
I don't think that's the case. There's plenty of examples to the contrary. And I think in terms of, you know, I'll just I'll just end on this. I think in terms of the future, I think, you know, mother always spoke a lot about the political challenges and what she speaks to see on the political front. I think the largest I think the biggest challenges to my haven't been some men and everything that he wants to do, our economic. I think he faces tremendous economic challenges.
And even though I think he deserves some credit for, I would say, addressing these head on in terms of defining the problem, diagnosing the problem, proposing a number of ways to try to get out this, I think it's very difficult to overestimate the size of the economic challenge to Saudi Arabia. You know, you have a country two thirds of its population, roughly, is under age 30.
You have hundreds of thousands of young Saudis entering the job market every year and the government can't pinpoint them anymore. Historically, the Saudi government has been the largest employer in the kingdom. And there they just don't have the money that they used to do. And so, you know, you have Vision 2030 and you have all these other efforts to find ways to diversify the economy. And I think so far, I don't think that the efforts have lived up to the size of the challenge.
Certainly, Koban 19 is not going to make that any easier. But for me, sort of thinking about the future, I mean, I think we'll keep an eye on the reforms. Where does that go? We keep an eye on the repression. Where does that go? But for me, I mean, if I were Mohammed bin Salman, the thing that would keep me up at night would be the economy. Then I'm going to take silence to incompletion. Yes, we can move on to the discussion.
Well, thank you very much. Again, a very tantalising insight into the kind of issues that you are exploring at much greater length in your book. And I'd like to begin the discussion by bringing it back to the frame of analysis that our first speaker, Anna Alice Vladi, gave us when he presented us with the dictatorship syndrome coming out of his experience in Egypt. But something that he saw as more of a symptom of our times more broadly.
And I'm not trying to paint you into describing Saudi Arabia today as a dictatorship. I think that there is an authoritarianism in Saudi Arabia, which is quite distinct. But I'm just wondering whether one element of a Swinney's analysis could be brought into the discussion at this point, which is the complicity of society as enablers of authoritarian rule. And I'm very struck. You spoke then about the fear that you have encountered.
But I think there's a generation divide between those who are openly enthusiastic about a reform agenda that they see favouring them and their generation amongst the 30 and younger. And the people that I know who have shown concern or fear tend to be 40 and above. And so could we talk a little bit about society's role in enabling what is of five extraordinary year experiment under MBBS and whether there is a generational divide in that? But yes, you're absolutely right, Eugene.
I mean, before I let a swine in, we know that dictatorship or authoritarian rule doesn't work on its own. It doesn't descend on people. You need to have a Napier's and you have to enlist a society. And do we know from history of Europe in the 20th century of fascism and all that, we know that the certain classes, certain categories of citizens participate in the drive to oppress and repress their own fellow citizens.
But in my book and The Sun King, I have done quite a lot of work on the rising diaspora. Saudi Arabia is experiencing an incipient diaspora, which it has not seen during the effluence off of oil in the modern period, a case not in the 20th century. Yes, we had one exile here and there, leaving going to Egypt. Even princes left the three princes left or went to Egypt, then Beirut and Iraq and other places. But what we have seen since 2015 is the rise office, young Saudi diaspora.
And this was actually intriguing if, as the journalist told us, had been Salman appeals to this youth cohort. He's a young man who who changes his Nokia dump's the Nokia telephone and gets a smartphone. And you see the crowds at the entertainment venues. You think everybody is supporting Mohammed bin Salman. But I wasn't trying to find out why are women feminist leaving Saudi Arabia artists? He created Misk Foundation in order to call the artist.
So why are they sleeping? We have young women now as asylum seekers in Canada and the USA and the Arab world and as far as Australia. Also, we have young men who have actually left. But these are people enabling autocracy, if you like. These are people fleeing it. And I wonder whether we could talk about the role of society in encouraging or enabling the great enthusiasm that the under 30s are showing for the personality of IBS and the project. Absolutely.
You know, you have a society that has gone through the three phases, the two phases, I describe that religious rationalism and that is realism. So in those phases, the person that they agency that is rewarded is the one who can recite the Koran at age 15 or the one who spreads. They will have a mission abroad. And he's given prises. But there is a generational shift, and that's not the work of Mohammed bin Salman.
This shift had occurred. If you look at what the Saudis were doing in 2011 during the Arab uprising, that connectedness with with their Arab fellows, the way they were articulating their demands for change. And you think that in coming this a man was just a fait accompli that came after the event, after the fact they are seen in Syria, was prospering before him come out and said, look at this cohort had been denied basic human rights, basic entertainment.
And it's so obvious that when you open up, you absorb that. And what Mohammed bin Salman is doing, a era combining the simplest with red brick had been stumbling. There is no brand ashore. And he is always asking the youth to be self reliant. The welfare state is shrinking. So, yes, there was a circus, Mohammed bin Salman. And he was the only celebrity in that circus. And everybody had to consume his persona, his celebrity status.
And at the same time enjoying the fun. But what they really wanted is jobs. I mean, if you look at the literature that is coming from Saudi Arabia, the unemployment level, people who are going to universities and top universities in the kingdom, then what is not? They're not finding jobs, et cetera. As you were talking about, Mohammed Bin said of the power structure, which is ruled optimistic. But let me bring better here and she'd better. Do you have any reflections to add to this?
One thing I would say for context, I think it's it's almost become sort of a, you know, talking point that you hear all the time, the sort of young Saudis love my husband mean older Saudi, older Saudis are nervous about Mohammed bin Salman. And I think that that's true to a certain extent. But I think it's very difficult and almost impossible to know how true. Know Saudi Arabia. Let's let's remember, is a place that does not have a free press.
It has virtually no civil society that's not controlled by the government, which I guess would mean it's not civil society anyway. No. Sort of realistically independent, you know, public opinion polling when journalists or think tankers or researchers go pretty. You know, people know what they're supposed to say.
And unless you spend a lot of time there and you get to know people, they're unlikely to sort of tell you, you know, to stray from the official line because they know what the consequences of that could be. Certainly now, after all the repression that we've talked about previously. So I think I think it's difficult to generalise kind of about who is really onboard and who is not. I think it's probably also not entirely correct to assume that all young Saudis are liberals.
I'm sure that there are plenty of young conservative Saudis that, yeah, they might think it's cool to go to a movie theatre, but then you ask them all, what do you think about your sister going on a date and then, you know, their blood pressure goes up and they're no longer as liberal as you thought they were. So I think, you know, I think we have to be very careful about sort of making these sweeping judgements about political opinion.
I think we really just talk about public option. I think we just don't know. And that is what makes it difficult to answer your question about sort of how. If you want to say sort of how culpable are citizens in the authoritarianism that's happening in Saudi Arabia? I think the other thing that that it's hard for people in the West to understand is really the tremendous power that the state has over people in Saudi Arabia.
I mean, if you're in the West, if you're in the United States or the U.K., you live somewhere in Europe and you want to be a dissident. I mean, what does that even mean? I mean, you say you disagree with your government and maybe you're on Twitter, you have a blog and your friends think you're kind of weird and your family may not invite you to functions, but like, nobody cares all that much. Saudi Arabia becoming a dissident is a major life commitment. I mean, if you're going to take that step.
The state has all kinds of means that they can bring down on your head and that they have increasingly not hesitated to bring down on your head since the throughout the rise of Mohammed bin Salman Descant. This a lot of this has to do with the power that the state has in the economy.
When you look at the number of people who are employed by the state, whether it's in the National Guard, the security services, the bureaucracy, it's not uncommon for when people sort of get out of line to receive a phone call and say,
you know, how many of your brothers and cousins work for the government? And this happens and people know that, like, well, if I don't get in line, that can fall back on my family and kind of a painful way that's done through tribal structures and more rural or more conservative areas.
That's I mean, there's many different ways that they can do this that falls short of sort of what we usually think of repression, which means they go out and they arrest you and they throw you in prison, which does happen. But there's a whole type of repression that happens below that. And we don't hear much about.
And so that, you know, that that sort of makes it difficult to know who is really on board and who's not, because when the government has that much ability to kind of shape the way that you behave in the way that you behave publicly, then it sort of forces you to question, you know, when people are on social media praising the. Sonata, when people are getting sued by some researcher who's managed to get a visa to go to Saudi Arabia,
it's very difficult to know what they saying, what they know they're supposed to be saying. Are they going to be frank with you? No. In science, I mean, I just think we need to be a little I mean, there are definitely plenty of citizens who are playing a role in the rise of hope and some man. And but I think we also need to recognise the tremendous power that the state has to sort of pull people in and to keep them from going outside of that.
I mean, another great example of this is you just look at the life of Jamal Khashoggi. I mean, this was a guy who for decades was sort of the consummate insider. And we all know what happened to him when he decided to become an outsider. Yeah, no. And I was going to say it's not a country that celebrated for its public opinion polling, although it must be said that public opinion polling is not a celebrated as it used to be.
I'm going to move on to questions. We have about twenty five minutes left before we keep to our six one hour limit to these webinars. And the questions are coming in fast and furious. I already see 22 on the Q and A bar, but I'm going to start with one that comes from Mohamed left with us largely because it's a question that I wanted to put to you, which is another enabler of Mohammed bin Suleiman's rule.
Breaking tendencies is iconoclasm has been this age of rule breakers and no one more influential in that than Donald Trump. It looks like tonight is the night where we will have a final result that will allow Joe Biden to declare his victory in the presidency and at the age of Trump now seem to be coming to an end. Could you give us some sense of what the impact of that will be on Saudi Arabia and on Mohammed bin Salman? Will he now have to consider going more by the rules than he did before?
Will be no longer have the American support for his way of doing things that seem to facilitate. Then we might start with you and then I'd like to go to Madali. Yeah, I mean, I believe as a news reporter, I really have to stay out of fortunetelling business, so I won't. You know, we don't know who's going to win the election. And so I don't want to sort of go too far in saying what a President Joe Biden would or would not do.
What we can safely say is that I do think it's safe to say that the Trump administration and its posture toward Saudi Arabia made things much easier from a human being so that they basically do whatever he wanted to do. And this started fairly, very early in the administration when Trump basically surprised everybody by deciding to take his first foreign trip as president. Not just one of the historic allies, but to go to Saudi Arabia first time a president has ever done that.
And the Saudis took this as a sign of an investment in the relationship, which it was, and they turned it into a massive international summit for the United States and the Islamic world. And so that's kind of where it started off. And, you know, you also have saw the relationship between Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman. There's been a lot written about that.
You know, when we look at the election, I mean, it's hard to imagine that many other American presidents would have been as oppressed, as protective of the Saudis when it comes to things like arms sales and the Yemen war, where you have, I believe, to at least two presidential vetoes of legislation that was that was aimed at stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia based over the war in Yemen. When you look at the statements that came out of the White House after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi,
basically saying, yeah, maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. But we don't really care because they're good friends of ours and we really need them. They're really important for us. It's really hard to imagine previous presidents, both Republican and Democrat, doing those kinds of actions. And there has been a lot. Biden has. He has gone on the record quite frequently being critical of the Saudis, both as a senator and during the campaign saying, you know, we're not going to give them a free pass.
They've had in the past. We're going to we're we're not going to look the other way at human rights violations. And, you know, of course, it's difficult to know how campaign talk sort of survives the election and makes its way into policy. And so I think the big question, if there is a President Joe Biden starting in January, then I think the question is sort of how much will will. Will that talk be translated into policy and how much will just have been election talk?
You know, this was sort of a season when being friends with Saudi Arabia was not probably going to win you a lot of votes. At the same time, it doesn't appear to, of course, Donald Trump many votes. But that's the question that I would be wondering about if we have a change in Washington in January. But then we I'm sure you have plenty to add to that question. But I have a number of questions specifically targeting you.
And if I could, I'd like to move on to those leaking as many of our viewers questions as possible. Manti Askari, I would like you to explain now that the goals of Vision 2030 are unattainable. What can replace it? And what are the implications? Well, I think I mean, two important events in the last year that actually derailed the Vision 2030. First one is the constant and continuous decline of oil prices.
And the second thing was covered that year, closed Saudi Arabia to even pilgrimage that alone, tourism and entertainment and travel. But also before these to hit hard. Well, there was of pressure, just murder. That actually dissuaded many investors to rush to Saudi Arabia, although the three conferences held after the murder of. We did see some, you know, opportunists who want to actually make the most of this narrow opportunity after others had thrown it out off of the investment conferences.
So, yes, a Vision 2030 is still there, but it hasn't materialised in the way Mohammed bin Salman would have liked it, too. And the future thing lies. And really, what what happens to oil prices? And how long this Kofod problem is going to last? In addition to the changing climate around the world and specifically in the US. I mean, Ben talked about a change of leadership, if it happens in the US by January.
Obviously come a are man will feel the pressure, not because Biden is going to correct, you know, 70 years of American foreign policy in the Middle East. But he would make enough noise, for example, that may lead. And some people hope that the noises that Biden might make would lead to freeing some kind of prisoners of conscience and opening up the freedom of limited freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia. But I don't see a major change that Biden is capable of doing.
He's not going to shun Saudi Arabia now. I mean, the whole world economy is is a disaster. And the last thing that the U.S. wants is to sort of put more pressure on Saudi Arabia. So let's be realistic. A Democrat in the White House is not going to transform this sort of historical, so-called historical alliance. Obviously, the U.S. will continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, especially if we have a predatory China and Russia.
What might happen is Saudi Arabia would be put under more pressure to reach a kind of reconciliation with Iran, and that would lower the threshold of violence in the Arab world and the competition between the two countries. So I think that is important. And then there remains the question that if they had normalisation with Israel, I don't know whether Biden will go along the same path dreaded by Trump and put more pressure on Saudi Arabia to follow the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan.
Let me stop you there, only to throw another question out to this one from your fun. She would like you to extend all the elements of embassies promoting nationalism that make it populist. So could you develop that part of your discussion about the populist side of embassies nationalism? It is openness because it fires at people very much like what Trump has been doing. Really? I mean, these hashtags that he uses Saudi Arabia for Saudis make Saudi Arabia great.
These and all these are tagged and hashtags that promote this kind of populism. His appearances during sort of entertainment venues, when people are supposed to actually watch what is very long, whether it's a boxing match or a race car, et cetera, is going to host Formula One for the first time. These are events that are used for this populist nationalism to appeal to the primitive sort of bottom line of people's emotions. And that is not the kind of nationalism that, you know.
It is similar to what Michelle OFLC was doing in Syria and Iraq that tries to sort of rewrite the history of the Arab nation or as sort of unnecessary Iraq. It is a kind of primitive populist nationalism for consumption, instantaneous, constant consumption, and social media helps with that. And so I don't see this rigid nationalism of the 1960s. I see a different kind of nationalism that is in tune with the meanings of its own transmission. That works on social media. That works on television.
That works. And in this kind of live venues. And it lacks it lacks a serious theorise mission and is very, very contested. The people who can talk, they still can't switch. And I interviewed people who were of the older generation, but they're not very old. They're still in their 40s and 50s. And they were saying, like, you know, I remember when I was a child at school, I had to chant Islamic recitations and an al Qaeda to promote the Islamic Ummah and promote Palestine and Jerusalem.
And now I'm expected to promote a lorella order. And it is not easy for people to switch from that kind of pen. Islamic outlook of the Saudis are the vanguards will go and spread Islam. They're not the ones who can sue a pop culture inside the country. And this is the kind of populism that is actually very, very crude and basic. Thank you. But it wasn't the power. It has the power to mobilise. As we've seen, I've got a couple of questions I'd like to, but your way then.
First off from Dr. Sarah as we Shenae. Who are Mohammed bin Salmond's rivals in Saudi Arabia today? And do they still present a credible challenge after the sojourn in the Ritz Carlton? I mean, I I think from what from what we know, I don't think he has any serious rivals to speak of. I mean, you could say, you know, Mohammed bin Nayef was was a rival for a period.
You know, maybe it might have been Abdullah was a rival for a period. I mean, these were just because these were other people who were kind of in senior positions in the royal family and had significant government positions as well. But they were all, you know, these these people were all sufficiently sort of disarmed, isolated, in some cases incarcerated fairly early in his rise. And I just you know, I mean, I don't want to say that I think it's over for Mohammed bin Salman.
But if there is going to be a significant challenge, it's very hard to see where I would come from now. Saudi Arabia is not you know, it certainly has no history and sort of military coups or anything like that. It's very difficult to see. I mean, the fact that he has managed during his rise to really restructure how power is exercised and bring all the levers into his own hands.
I mean, from the National Guard to the intelligence services, the interior ministry, the military, it's just very hard to see that even if there are other prend, there certainly are other princes who are not happy with the way this has happened. It's very hard to see where they're going to get the resources to pose a significant challenge to him. And building on that, I mean, do you foresee there being any flashpoint for opposition in the long run over the Saudi intervention in Yemen?
Does this fit into the narrative populist nationalism? Are there comparisons to be made between what Saudi Arabia is going through and what's gone on in the Vietnam War? By extension, could there be a kind of movement against the war which would weigh down MVS and his popularity? You want me to ask them back? I'd love to hear from you.
Yeah, I read that at the beginning. The water of Yemen was probably as they have flagship off Mohammed bin Salman in inverted commas, because it is that context that sort of promoted this populist nationalism that we are attacked. But you have to realise that in Saudi Arabia, Yemen is a very long way and it's was not felt. The war in Riyadh make a jet that made the eastern province as much as it would have had.
Had there been a close proximity. But it did become real when they hosted missiles, started arriving in Riyadh and inject that. And also the oil fields where bomb did create that momentum, that sort of moment where we are targeted by the foreign enemy. And there was a lot of solidarity, but it's the whole point of the war of Yemen is not discussed. You cannot criticise the war. You do not know even what's going on at the borders. And you have to look at that sort of area as strange as that.
All of that and what has happened in it. There are lots of exiles who had come out of that area and there is a shift in the population composition of these places. Many, many of the local inhabitants had been moved to the north and it actually started during the King Abdullah when there was an incident with a smiley community. And also the residents there, the people who live in these areas are very, very upset that their that their area is flooded by foreign soldiers.
Pakistanis is Jordanians, Egyptians, generals. And they they don't feel secure being there. They they they told me in these interviews that they don't want their daughters to go in the streets because they're foreign soldiers and these cities on the border. So they were in Yemen is it was important for the populist nationalism. And it was used quite a lot to the extent of sending women journalists with the army in addition to religious scholars, to promote Saudi nationalism.
And you see women in military attire on top of tanks reporting, and I'm talking to the soldiers. So this is the popular populist nationalism I'm talking about. And in addition, you get a traditional religious scholar who would go to the front and mobilise the soldiers on the basis that they are fighting a jihad against against that Zaidi who.
So I think all of these contradictions are there, but it's very difficult to see how the war on Yemen would precipitate any kind of agitations inside the country first. People can't actually give their opinion about the war. Thank you the way. Ben, I'm sure you could answer that one, but I've got about another one your way to keep the questions moving. We have from Diana Galai ever a question about Saudi Russian relations.
And what do you see the future of relations between Saudi Arabia and Russia, given the close ties between Putin and MVS? Yeah, I'm afraid I don't. Probably very sophisticated answer for that. I mean, I the only context I can provide is that he has has has made an effort to sort of diversify Saudi Arabia's foreign relations. And this is includes high-Profile trips to China.
The king himself actually went to Russia, which was a huge you know, that was that was something that had not happened for many, many decades. Where it goes in the future, I don't know. I mean, I won't try to predict that. But I think that MVS has sort of seen I think part of it has to do with you sort of diversifying away from just being so dependent on the United States and the UK. And I also think it has to do with him, you know, perhaps plays into the sort of nationalism idea.
But I think he also wants Saudi Arabia to be a great power. He you know, he's very they're they're very excited this year to get the presidency of the G20. And I think that he believes, as you know, for Saudi Arabia to play what he believes is their proper role in the world, they need to have relations with these other large powers where it goes in the future. I don't know. I mean, certainly the oil war didn't particularly help the price war earlier this year, certainly didn't help relations.
But we'll have to wait and see where it goes. Thank you, Ben. Look, I'm going to confess at this point to our viewers that I'm a bit of an interloper tonight as both Ben and my dad we know this event was organised by my colleague Simon Hasani, and he was meant to be the moderator and his technology has failed him until this moment. I can see his face now on the screen. And actually, I've had a number of the questions and the question bar coming from Osama.
So better late than never. Osama, could I invite you to ask one of your questions to bring the evening to a close? Thank you very much, Eugene, and I apologise to everyone, I spent a great deal of time on social media saying that I would be hosting this event. So this is a bit of an embarrassment for me that I'm showing up so late to my own sort of event. But I've really been delighted to be able to listen to both of you learn a great deal.
I'm really looking forward to Meadow's book, and I have had a wonderful experience reading Ben's book probably on four or five months ago now. But in a sense, my question, I think some of my questions have already been answered. My my major sort of question was relating to the possibility that something would actually happen with respect to them.
How shocked you. And I think that that has kind of been addressed that and I think I can recognise Meadow is point that there is not really much in it for a Biden presidency to try and sort of go for that. Another dimension which I'm curious about is what a potential Biden presidency would do with respect to the relationship with Israel, as you well know, fairly recently. The embassy was moved to Jerusalem.
Is there a chance that Biden will try to reset that relationship somewhat with Netanyahu by trying to move the embassy away from it? Was that now pathetic company? This is a question for either one of you, it's not I. But I would be interested to hear Benton's response, perhaps as the American. Yeah. I mean I mean, I certainly can't predict what a potential vice and Biden as president would do.
I don't see any reason to. I mean, I don't know if a future administration would pursue normalisation, new normalisation deals kind of as assertively as the Trump administration has. I certainly have no reason to think that a different administration would, you know, look down on these deals or try to undo them or would not even welcome further deals, you know. I mean, if Saudi Arabia decided to to normalise with Israel, I don't think a by demonstration is going to condemn that view.
That's something that I think they would welcome as well. So I don't know if I can say much more how he would interact in that know. We have to wait and see. And I didn't Madali, you wanted to add anything to that. I think the pressure would probably be less on MVS to rush to normalisation along the lines of the one with the UAE and Bahrain and Sudan.
So I think someone will be relieved if Barton doesn't put pressure because he could maintain secret under the table relations with Israel, which had been going on for a long time now, especially if the target is Iran. They shared intelligence. They there was a transfer of technology and he prefers to keep it that way. But I think that how much of a man is going to rush and have the Israeli flag in Riyadh and just to sort of move fast?
I don't think I think he's lost. He would be counting his loss and he gains more by by keeping the relationship under the table. There's no rush to do anything about that. So he might place some pressure with regard to the repression that is taking place at home. And we we still don't know what the advisers to Trump, to Biden, sorry. Should he become the president in a couple of months and whether they will revive their interest?
Those those are the arms of the U.S. state, such as the CIA or other. That's the Foreign Office. Whether they would revise and an interest their interest in Hamad bin Nayef, although Hamad bin Nayef seems to me as redundant now simply because of his cooperation in the war on terror. He had medals from the CIA, etc. And as Europe now is going through a wave of terrorism. I don't know how that is going to develop and whether the U.S. will be the next or the coming target.
And how would Biden react to that? We have to wait and see. It's very difficult to predict. I mean, in some sense, the Biden presidency could be a boon to someone, despite all the ways in which I mean, with respect to Israel specifically, I think that's what you're suggesting, that you'd actually relieve some of the pressure of having to maintain that cordial relationship with the Trumps and Jared Kushner and all the rest of them.
I think at the same time, the sort of other aspects of that relationship that you outlined can create other kinds of pressures that perhaps weren't present under a Trump presidency. I'm really conscious. We have literally one minute left. I'm very curious about one particular question, which either you can take and if you using gives me the signal, I would go on with this question, which is perfect. Thank you.
And basically, this is about the relationship with Abu Dhabi and specifically with MDA. So there is. Jocie asks. Much has been made of M.B said in Abu Dhabi being a mentor. And yes, indeed, many think the MBA and Visa is the brains behind UBS and B.S. is sort of ryze that this crude populist brand of populism also manifest in the UAE. And if so, how do the two relate to each other, particularly in the context of the war in Yemen?
Yeah, well, conciliators, populist nationalism is also elsewhere in the region. Qatar and especially under the sanctions of the Saudis and that Moroccans. But I think I mean, your question reminds me of a conversation I had with Emirati academic a long time ago. And I asked him, what is it for the UAE to promote Hamad bin Selamat? And eventually he's going to be a competitor. I mean, the Saudis economically in terms of the Saudi market, in terms of their capabilities.
Yes, the UAE is important, but it is a small country in the grand scheme of things and doesn't have the historical sort of symbolic capital that that Saudi Arabia has. And he said to me, it is basically the Arab uprisings. And if the Arab uprisings reach Saudi Arabia, then they become a danger in the UAE. Right. And if we wanted to defeat the Wahhabi tradition that threatens our way of life in Dubai and elsewhere, we have to defeat it in Saudi Arabia, hence the interests of employees at an end.
Yes. And if MBBS continues with his social reforms. Thank you very much. I mean, that really is an interesting perspective because it's looking at the Wahhabi dimension as being a major concern for NBC specifically. And that's not an analysis that you've come across very often. I'm going to very sadly have to bring things to a swift conclusion at this point. I'd like to extend my thanks to Madobe and Ben for really giving us a lot of food for thought.
And I hope encouraging many of us to go out and read their books or in the case of Mahdavi. Her forthcoming book, she added to the volume, of course, on Solomon's legacy recently. And I'd also like to extend a very warm thanks to Eugene for really rescuing this podcast. When my system crashed on me earlier this evening, you've already really been sort of wonderful audience as well, asking many questions.
We're very sorry not to have been able to go through all of them, but I'm sure there will be future opportunities in which we can have more discussions with some of our own guests and on some of the same sorts of themes going forward. So with that, I'd like to again, thank you all for joining us. Thank the panellists and look forward to seeing you in the near future. Take care. But when.