How M.B.S. Won Back Washington
Former ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the Biden administration, Michael Ratney, made this argument in the The Wall Street Journal Recently, investments in sports were not really aimed at improving MBS’s image in the West, but rather at making Saudi Arabia a more normal country. This seemed a bit far-fetched to me. But you seem to be saying that, whatever the motivations, paying comedians to come to Riyadh or spending on American sports leagues has failed as an image-enhancement strategy and is somewhat distinct from improving relations between Saudi Arabia and Washington.
Sports expenses can be more than one thing. I think the crown prince is a sports enthusiast and very interested in global sports, both e-sports and normal sports. And he thought they were good investments. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I think LIV Golf may not be a good investment, but it was more than just a PR effort. He saw it as a way to both make money in the long term and make Saudi Arabia a more normal country. Some sports investments have been better than others. Newcastle FC’s investments in the Premier League look pretty good. The Formula 1 activities that they do locally, I assume, generate some amount of tourism, although I haven’t seen any figures on that. So the entire sports campaign can be more than one thing. But if the main goal was to improve Saudi Arabia’s image in American public opinion, then it was money wasted. I don’t think this has dented the generally negative opinion that most Americans have toward the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
It sounds like you’re describing Biden’s relationship with Saudi Arabia as more focused on these big economic factors. Dare I say that the Trump administration’s embrace of MBS might have to do with more personal economic issues, that Trump didn’t care about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the first place and was annoyed by all the talk of punishing Saudi Arabia during his first term? And how do you understand the relationship between Trump and MBS today?
I don’t think it’s any different from President Trump’s policies during his first term. It’s the same reason Willie Sutton robbed the banks. That’s because that’s where the money is. I think President Trump, even more clearly in his second term, sees the difference between his own economic interest and that of the country as actually inseparable. And that bothers me as an American citizen, but it’s certainly something that the Saudis understand, because all of these monarchies in the Persian Gulf region have always been a combination of commercial interests and political interests, whether it’s oil or, in the pre-oil era, money from pearl fishing. All these ruling families are part of their country’s business environment. So in many ways, Saudi Arabia sees the Trump administration as the first U.S. administration that it truly understands, as it is not unlike how it views the intersection of politics and business. When Trump sent Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, as his top intermediary with Saudi Arabia during his first term, I’m sure the Saudis understood.
It is commonly believed that MBS wants to transform the country from a kind of strange religious dictatorship into a more mundane and repressive dictatorship. Do you think that’s how we should understand what he’s trying to do? I still think this is best stated by the fact that he has relaxed some laws that restricted women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, while throwing women’s rights advocates in jail because he is a dictator who wants to have political control.
The word that best describes what he wants is the one he used, which is that he wants Saudi Arabia to be a country normal country. From the point of view of the political system, he wants it to be a normal authoritarian country, that is, a place where people can enjoy some social freedom. And, on this point, he really changed the country radically. I mean, not just women driving and women’s rights, but also the availability of public entertainment, gender diversity in public places, and women’s access to employment opportunities in the public sphere. He sees this as a more normal country, and I think most Americans would probably think of it as a more normal country, but he has absolutely no desire to change the political system. In fact, he wishes to recentralize power not only in the ruling family but also within himself within the family.
It was a big change. For decades, Saudi Arabia was essentially run by a committee system, a committee of high-ranking princes who had to sign off on everything important that happened, and that system had all the faults of committees. It was heavy, he didn’t seize the opportunities. But the committees also had the merit of saying that they hadn’t done anything spectacularly stupid. He changed that committee system to an individual system, so sometimes they do stupid things, and he did a number of stupid things early in the period when he was the main decision maker, including the war in Yemen, the blockade of Qatar, which was supposed to end its support for Islamist groups, and the kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister. This was a misguided attempt to create a crisis in Lebanon, which MBS believed would harm Hezbollah, but which actually harmed Hezbollah’s opponents, such as the Lebanese Prime Minister himself, Saad Hariri. And the murder of Jamal Khashoggi too. We learned from that. He’s been much more cautious on the foreign policy scene, and I think with the consolidation of his power, he’s not about to give it up in favor of some sort of democratic reform.
It’s a nice time for him in that sense, because he won’t have a lot of lectures on democratic reform.
From this administration, no. He will certainly not be entitled to lessons. I think this trip is a kind of personal triumph for him. If he had come five years ago, no one would have spoken to him.
You mentioned his foreign policy, and it seemed in the early years that he was interfering in Lebanon, Yemen and Qatar, and also had a very aggressive attitude towards the Iranians. How do you see the current situation in the region and what did you think of the way he treated Gaza? My sense is that he would probably like to make some sort of deal with Israel, but he knows he can’t go too far in front of the Saudi population, who I imagine are unhappy with Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
