The West must take Saudi Arabia’s new era seriously
When he was running for the presidency Joe Biden was very clear what he thought of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). There was, he said, “very little redeeming social value in the present government in Saudi Arabia”. Speaking in the wake of the murder and dismemberment of the Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Biden committed to make the Saudis “pay the price and make them in fact the pariah they are.”
It did not work out that way. President Biden went to KSA and was pictured fist-bumping with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to as MBS. Boris Johnson visited too. The world’s biggest producer of crude oil turned down their appeals to up supply and keep the price down. Nevertheless, this week without fanfare the US Secretary General Anthony Blinken had to concede “Saudi Arabia is a critical partner to us dealing with extremism in the region, in dealing with the challenges posed by Iran, and also I hope in the process of building relationships between Israel and its neighbours.”
The vacillations of the Americans are typical of Western countries, including the UK. They are eager to do business with Saudi Arabia but only reluctantly acknowledge it as a geopolitical ally because of concern about what we see as the repressive nature of its society. Having paid a couple of working visits there recently I am not convinced that is the right approach, as Saudi Arabia changes, grows and opens up to the world.
Saudi Arabia is a big country, with four times the land area of France. Its population of over 30 million people is as large as the other Gulf states put together. It is also a young country – 39% of its population are under the age of 25. The House of Saud knows it must educate, entertain, house and employ the rising generations as the oily golden goose lays less generously and carbon net zero is the global goal.
For decades Saudi Arabia was a closed society both externally and internally. Hilary Mantel’s 1988 novel Eight Months on Ghazza Street draws vividly on her own compulsorily confined experience as an ex-patriot woman. Women were not allowed to move freely from home. Religious police were on hand to keep them in line and to make sure unmarried men and women did not mix.
Anyone who remembers what it was like then is quick to say “What about changes?” today. At last week’s LEAP tech convention in Riyadh more than 200,000 people were accredited. Men, women, schoolchildren, locals and foreigners mixed freely in an enormous and crowded exhibition centre. Only a small number of women wore full face coverings.
There is no secret about the government’s plans. They are spelt out in Vision 2030, the framework announced by MBS to diversify his nation from its dependence on oil. There are three main aims.
First, to create a vibrant society. This means opening cinemas and music venues, once viewed as contrary to Islam. Greater freedom for women including the right to drive and take Ubers. Tourism is being encouraged, with enormous investment in building projects at cultural heritage sites, including Mecca, and along the Red Sea Coasts.
Secondly, they are aiming to create a thriving economy with significant non-oil exports. For now KSA has the oil money to pay for much of this development and has established a public investment fund. It also wants to attract direct investment from the private sector abroad. Much of the ambition is centred on the digital economy. Saudi Arabia already has a more extensive roll out of 5G than the US or Europe, and it has a greater percentage of women, at least 30%, employed in the tech sector.
The third aim is to be “an ambitious nation”. Domestically this means investment in e-government connectivity and expansion of education and healthcare. Externally it means a more assertive foreign policy. KSA is still allied to the West, but as has been shown over Ukraine, channels are still open to Russia and China. The Peoples’ Republic is now the biggest importer of Saudi oil. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs and businesses in the Kingdom originate in India.
Most of the perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudis. John Hannah, a veteran US Middle East watcher and former national security advisor to George W Bush’s Vice President Cheney, points out that the MBS reforms are marginalising radical Wahhabism – the “austere, misogynistic, intolerant and anti-Western religious doctrine” which inspired the attacks on America. So while MBS is associated with “shocking, high profile acts of political repression, human rights abuses and downright brutality” he argues “that misses the bigger picture. What’s happening in Saudi Arabia is “infinitely better” than what it is replacing.
Europeans should not forget that two major allies, the US and Japan, also still practice capital punishment while Lee Anderson, the new Conservative Deputy Chairman, supports executions.
When it comes to civil rights Joseph Bradley has a different perspective on the changes in Saudi Arabia. He is an African American and the CEO of Tonomus – the spin-off company responsible for tech at Neom, the “Smart City” under construction in Tabuk Province. “Young people here see MBS the way my parents saw MLK” [Dr Martin Luther King Jnr], he told me at his stand at LEAP. The US is hardly in a position to lecture on social issues given the frequent killing of black men by police. “They’ve got their problems here – the colour of the skin isn’t one of them”, he said, in marked contrast to his experience in California. Unlike in the US, corporate bonuses in Saudi are tied to delivering targets for diversity and the percentage of women employed. “The next Silicon Valley is going to be Sand Valley”, he predicted.
“Yes it’s changed: I’ve got a visa”, Ali Parsa, the British-Iranian founder of the digital healthcare business Babylon, remarked to me last November at the FII, or Future Finance Initiative, nicknamed “Davos in the Desert”. There and at the LEAP Convention I interviewed CEOs and entrepreneurs from Sweden, Nigeria, the US, Canada, the UK, Austria, Dubai, India, China, Lebanon and that’s just me and the ones I can remember.
Saudi has noticed how its small neighbour Dubai has benefited from an “anyone welcome” policy towards foreigners. Saudi borders are opening up and outsiders are coming. So are inquisitive young Saudis. The organisers of the LEAP tech fair tell me that in total “the world’s largest show gathered 1,720,000 visitors” over its four days.
The UK government’s “British Pavilion” was the only national stand among scores of tech businesses including Eriksson, Huawei, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, and Google. There was also a private reception at the British Embassy, where according to one non-British guest, the Brits “had their begging bowls out in a rather patronising way”. According to the latest figures from UK Trade & Investment, Saudi Arabia is the UK’s 24th largest trading partner and dropping, UK exports to Saudi totalled £11.1 billion last year.
The rise of an autocratic state like Saudi Arabia may be another nail in the coffin of the notion that Social Democracy for all would be the end of history. The future still matters. The transformations underway in this rich and powerful country mean Western politicians would be well advised to treat it as more than a source of slightly tainted cash and a target for easy criticism.