The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert D. Kaplan

Author:Robert D. Kaplan [Kaplan, Robert D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

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“We have been lucky. We have almost always had good leaders: Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, Abdullah,” said Hassan Youssef Yassin, rattling off the names of successive Saudi kings. For decades Yassin had worked at the height of the Saudi establishment and knew Abdulaziz Ibn Saud personally. “Almost all our kings were astute and conservative. And now a new leader, Mohammed bin Salman, [who is much less conservative] has brought us into a new age of tolerance. Oil wealth is often a curse. Look at Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Libya, and Kazakhstan. Not here. It is traditional monarchy, an ancient system, mind you, that has provided stability,” which those other countries, which featured either weak democracy or modernizing dictatorship, could never really achieve.

Indeed, in Saudi eyes, their rulers have been more in the spirit of traditional sheikhs rather than outright dictators. Sheikhs have many qualities: wisdom, charisma, force of personality, understanding, and in particular the willingness to consult with tribal elders and many other influential men before taking a decision.[27] It is not democracy, but it is a corollary of it. And it has worked for millennia in its own way.

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