Not long ago, the New York Times published a brief excerpt from the book «MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman,» written by its Beirut bureau chief, Ben Hubbard. As the Saudi-Russian oil war has once again put the spotlight on the person who crashed the Russian ruble and world oil prices, we decided to provide our readers with a brief overview of this publication in Russian.
It should be noted that Hubbard’s book does not contain any sensational facts — after the Khashoggi case, it is probably difficult to find any regarding MBS. Rather, the book attempts to systematize long-known information, supplement it with clarifying facts, and create a comprehensive picture of the path to power and psychological portrait of the main character.
However, the author begins this description with the history of the rise of the Saudi dynasty — first in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it became a significant player in regional politics thanks to its alliance with Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, and later in modern times with the history of King Abdulaziz, who formed another alliance — with the Americans. However, the discovery of oil reserves in Arabia also became an important factor in the rise of Saudi Arabia, and its development simply made the Saud family rich.
The author describes in detail how the Saud family grew from generation to generation thanks to polygamy and large families, lavishly providing all their offspring with various luxuries. At the same time, he shows that although no one among the many Saudis, including distant relatives, was deprived, a hierarchy emerged within this mushrooming family based on seniority, inheritance rights, and access to certain positions and resources.
The current king, Salman bin Abdulaziz, was far from being the favorite and main contender for the throne among his father’s many sons — on the contrary, it seemed unlikely that he would ever inherit the throne. After all, he was 25th in line among King Abdulaziz’s 36 sons. … But while other princes bathed in luxury and waited for their turn at power, Prince Salman, appointed governor of Riyadh by his father, held real power in his hands for nearly half a century. Under his leadership, Riyadh was transformed into one of the largest centers of first financial and then political power in the country, thanks to his position as governor, using his skills to consolidate the most important economic and clan groups around him.
It is under the patronage of such a father that the story of him and his son begins, which today attracts the attention of many global analysts — Mohammed bin Salman, or as he is more often called, MBS. Judging by his position in the Saudi family hierarchy, he had about as much chance of succeeding his father as his father had of succeeding him — very little. After all, his father already had five sons by his first wife, Sultan bin Turki. MBS, on the other hand, was the first son of his second wife, Fahda, which shaped his upbringing and worldview — he grew up as a person accustomed to being the first in his family, but understanding that he had many competitors on his path to primacy.
Next, the author describes the life of MBS himself, portraying him as a complex figure. He writes that his father and mother prepared him for leadership from an early age, raising him and his five full-blood brothers in a rather strict manner when it came to their education and responsibility to the family. At the same time, the ambitious MBS had many more privileged and spoiled siblings — not only his older half-brothers, but also numerous cousins, against whom he could feel like the «poor relative».
An important characteristic of MBS compared to them was his «Saudi-ness» — although he was educated at home by the best foreign teachers, unlike many of his relatives, he did not study, live or work in the West, which, according to the author, shaped both his strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, unlike some deeply Westernized cousins, he is a carrier of the mindset of the people who will be under his rule; on the other hand, because he does not know Western society and the Western establishment from the inside, he has developed a distorted perception of them that could influence his choice of allies and priorities.
The interplay between Saudization and Westernization receives considerable attention in the article. MBS grew up in Saudi Arabia, but belongs to its first Westernized generation, raised at home among mosques and women in niqabs, but on Western computer games and social networks. Although he was not living in the West at the time, unlike his cousins, the September 11 attacks had a powerful impact on him, as he feared that Saudis would be universally hated and seen as a global evil.
According to the author, this deeply personal fanaticism led him to fight against anything that cast a shadow on Saudi Arabia in the eyes of the so-called civilized world, which he saw as the source of development and well-being for his family and country. By the way, we should add here that this enmity indeed had a personal dimension, considering the person associated with 9/11 — Osama bin Laden, also a Saudi establishment figure who sacrificed his position within it to fight what the Saudis considered a source of good and he considered a source of evil — the Western-centric world system…
But during this period, Salman’s family also suffered deeply personal blows — in 2001, his eldest son, 46-year-old Fahd, died, and a year later, his 44-year-old son, Ahmed. In the midst of all this, young MBS found himself at his father’s side, who, unlike many of his cousins and brothers, had not only not studied in the West, but also had not served in the military or worked for a large corporation.
The author writes that even then, according to people close to him, MBS showed not only a clear desire for power, despite the lack of dynastic prerequisites for him and his father at the time, but also an intolerance for anything that stood in his way. This is illustrated by a story from MBS’s business biography in which he wanted to buy a piece of land owned by a Riyadh businessman for his real estate project, but the businessman refused to sell.
As the author writes, MBS sent him an offer in an envelope with two bullets, earning him the nickname «Bullet Boy,» and only the direct intervention of his father, who received a complaint from the businessman, prevented bloodshed.
And then events unfolded that paved the way to power for both the father and the favored son — in 2011, Prince Sultan died, and in 2012, Prince Nayef, paving the way for Salman to ascend to the throne.
And he, an old man by then, began to transfer power to his son almost simultaneously with his ascension to the throne, and then came the familiar events, such as the crackdown on family members who could be seen as rivals to MBS on the road to absolute power. The brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi is already known to the whole world, but our regular readers are also familiar with the mass arrests of Saudi scholars and preachers whom MBS saw as a threat to his foreign and domestic policies.
The presentation of this book makes an interesting impression, but its intention is not fully understood. At first glance, it looks like an attempt to expose MBS once again, but against the backdrop of the Khashoggi case, there is, on the contrary, a conspiratorial suspicion that its goal is to somewhat humanize his image and turn it from unambiguous to ambiguous.
For on the one hand, the author writes unambiguously about the tyrannical tendencies of his main character, and on the other, he presents them in a context in which his methods seem justified in the midst of the profligacy of the ever-growing ruling family, which squanders the wealth inherited by Saudi Arabia. In any case, even if we leave aside the purely religious aspects, MBS’s stated goals and methods are designed for internal conflict.
Yes, in the short term, the modernization of the country’s economy and social structure can be achieved through dictatorial methods. But by its very nature, a modern society, or a society aspiring to modernity, cannot exist without attributes such as the rule of law, independent media, civil society, and opposition — things that even Arab monarchies like Jordan or Qatar and Kuwait have. This is what Jamal Khashoggi, who initially supported MBS’s reform initiatives and later criticized him for certain actions, was calling for. And we all know how Khashoggi ended up; will the same fate befall all of MBS’s reform initiatives?