‘The Man Who Would Be King’ Review: A Very Modern Monarch
Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, is attempting to modernize—not to democratize—the desert kingdom.
Karen Elliott House is one lucky lady. The publication of her biography of Mohammed bin Salman, “The Man Who Would Be King,” comes just as the Saudi crown prince and the kingdom he leads move to the center stage of world history. Israel’s stunning victory against Iran and its regional network of proxies and allies has shaken the old Middle East balance of power. MBS, as bin Salman is universally known, will play a critical and perhaps decisive role in shaping the new regional order. As they ponder their next moves, diplomats and policymakers will be turning to Ms. House’s lively and deeply sourced account to better understand Saudi Arabia’s leader. The rest of us, from seasoned Middle East experts to casual readers, will be entertained and instructed by this comprehensive overview of the kingdom and its leader.
Ms. House knows her subject well. As a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she first began covering Saudi Arabia in the 1970s. Her reporting on the Middle East and the kingdom won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and her 2012 book, “On Saudi Arabia,” remains indispensable.
She now turns her attention to the man responsible for upending the Saudi Arabia she once knew. Her astonishment at the sweeping changes he has brought to the country echoes throughout the book, which is as much an account of what MBS has achieved as it is a biography. Ms. House speaks with Saudi women who can’t believe the freedoms their king has brought about, and to business leaders struggling to grasp the scale and audacity of his ambitions. The changes are vast and remain underreported in the West.
The crown prince has also broken with centuries of tradition and royal protocol. No Saudi ruler before him would be seen riding a dune buggy at a tourist attraction, or posing for selfies at a restaurant, or appearing at a Formula E electric-car race wearing—Ms. House tells us—“a navy-colored Barbour jacket over his traditional Saudi thobe, Tom Ford aviator sunglasses, and a pair of Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 trainers.”
Ms. House compares MBS to the 17th-century Russian czar Peter the Great, and the comparison is apt. Both men are best understood as modernizing autocrats, driven to shake up traditional societies and so enable them to withstand the competition and stress of a rapidly changing geopolitical scene. Like Peter, who built St. Petersburg to serve as Russia’s bridge to the West, MBS hopes that his new city—known as Neom—will make Saudi Arabia a dominant force in technological innovation. And like Peter, who asserted political control over the Russian Orthodox church and personally shaved the beards of aristocrats resisting modernization, MBS has ruthlessly imposed his vision on both religious and tribal leaders skeptical of change.
And of course there is another similarity. Americans—who tend to think modernization and democratization go together—may find this hard to grasp, but MBS has no more interest in democracy than Peter the Great did more than three centuries ago, or than Vladimir Putin does today. Ms. House does not neglect to note the continuing limits on freedom of speech under MBS’s rule, and she does not minimize the human cost of the repression that still exists in the kingdom. But she also captures the joy of a younger generation now free to live something much closer to what their Western peers would recognize as a normal life.
“The Man Who Would Be King” was, of course, written before Saudi Arabia’s foremost adversary, Iran, underwent a series of humiliating losses at the hands of the Israeli and U.S. militaries, thus perhaps opening a new chapter in Middle Eastern history. But Ms. House’s reporting on MBS’s views about his kingdom’s strategic challenges remains highly relevant.
In a world with nearly 200 states, Saudi Arabia is unique. As the site of the two holiest pilgrimage shrines for the world’s approximately two billion Muslims and the home of some of the largest oil reserves on the planet, the desert kingdom, with its population of nearly 37 million, has long played a leading part in world affairs. Its alliance with the United States, forged by Franklin Roosevelt and MBS’s grandfather, King Abdulaziz, has been an anchor of what security and peace the Middle East has known. Its long support for Wahhabi Islam has had major consequences across the Islamic world, its influence on oil prices affects economies everywhere, and the decisions it makes about investing its massive resources will help shape the global future.
Yet for all its global influence, there is very little modern about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is the only country named after its ruling family, the House of Saud, a dynasty that has, with occasional interruptions, held power over much of the kingdom since the 18th century. It only abolished slavery in 1962, and until MBS came to power, only Afghan women under the Taliban faced a more restrictive climate than Saudi women. Civil liberties in a Western sense largely do not exist, and neither the radical Islam that long shaped the kingdom’s political outlook nor the dynastic nature of the Saudi state conform to Western values or liberal ideas. Yet America’s global reach, and the health of what advocates call the “liberal international order,” very much require a close relationship between Washington and Riyadh.
Ms. House skillfully and insightfully depicts the paradox that drives MBS. Saudi society is both supremely self-confident and profoundly insecure. The Saudi population continues to grow. When the population was smaller, the Saudi government could ensure political stability by distributing oil revenue among tribal rulers and city dwellers. But as the population grows, those handouts get more expensive, even as the expanding population and growing prosperity lead to rising domestic consumption of oil, reducing the surplus available for export. As the Saudi population increases and oil revenues stagnate or even shrink, how will the kingdom retain its political stability?
While earlier rulers took small steps to wean the economy from oil, MBS believes the time for half-measures has passed. Saudi Arabia, as MBS grasped years ago, cannot live by oil alone. But to lessen its dependence on oil, the social contract between Saudi citizens and their government has to change. New sources of revenue, like tourism, will have to supplement oil wealth. New industries, like data centers, will need to be welcomed into the kingdom, and new cities to house them will either have to grow from existing ones or, like Neom, be invented.
Will it work? Ms. House is cautious. Comparing his strategy to “playing roulette on a long-spinning wheel,” she says MBS is placing many multibillion-dollar chips on different alternatives to oil. Some will lose, some will win partially, and some, he hopes, will “hit big.” But, she notes, “the ball in this particular roulette wheel is circling so slowly the winning bets won’t be truly paid for decades.” But the MBS she describes is a formidable character bent on imposing his will. Peter the Great faced enormous obstacles building St. Petersburg in the northern marshes, but he persevered. MBS, Ms. House tells us, is equally determined.
We shall see.