Titre : Saudi Prince Has Throne in His Sights. Now for the Hard Par (JMD quoted on Bloomberg)
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Saudi Prince Has Throne in His Sights. Now for the Hard Par (JMD quoted on Bloomberg)
Saudi Prince Has Throne in His Sights.
Now for the Hard Part
By Marc Champion
June 22, 2017, 7:01 AM GMT+8 June 22, 2017, 10:39 PM GMT+8
• Mohammed bin Salman facing tough challenges at home and abroad
• Whatever setbacks are in store, the buck now stops with ‘MBS’
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman just
consolidated his position and power. Now he’ll need all
the help he can get.
Shortly after dawn on Wednesday, King Salman
announced that his 31-year-old son, widely known as
MBS, was now heir to the throne. His older cousin,
former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, had been
pushed aside to make way.
The move, if not the timing, was expected. Yet bin Nayef
also lost his post as interior minister, a powerful role in
which he oversaw the nation’s domestic security forces
and counter-terrorism efforts. Those areas will now be
in the hands of a close MBS ally. The prince already has
substantial control over defense, economic and foreign
policy.
Power on that scale comes with a catch. The challenges
MBS has set for himself are vast. Now that rivals have
been sidelined, the blame for any failures or unpopular
measures will fall entirely on him, according to Ayham
Kamel, director for the Middle East and North Africa at
Eurasia Group.
Until this week, “responsibility for decisions had been
shared among different members of the ruling family,”
said Kamel. “As Mohammed bin Salman rises, it becomes
more difficult, if possible at all, to assign responsibilities
to other parties.”
MBS accumulated so many portfolios after his father
became king in January 2015 that Western diplomats in
the kingdom took to calling him “Mr Everything.” So
Wednesday’s palace maneuvering is unlikely to produce
any sudden change to Saudi domestic or foreign policies.
The initiatives the new crown prince has taken over those
two years have, however, been unusually ambitious on
almost every front.
His Vision 2030 plan to wean Saudi Arabia off its near-total
dependence on oil was well received by economists, at least
in terms of its goals; some questioned the government’s
ability to implement it. Investors celebrated Wednesday’s
political moves as a sign that MBS will now be free to push
ahead with the reforms, with the benchmark stock index in
Riyadh surging 5.5 percent. It extended the rally on Thursday
to post the biggest weekly gain since March 2011, the height
of the Arab Spring.
Still, driving those plans through to a conclusion that meets
the aspirations of the kingdom’s young and fast-growing
population will be a Herculean task. Many citizens will have
to accept painful changes, such as reduced subsidies and
fewer public-sector jobs, if the plan is to succeed. It also
requires selling up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco, a national
treasure -- which means opening up the oil giant’s carefully
guarded books to public scrutiny.
‘Several Generations’
With oil prices dipping below $45 this week, the government’s
ability to please everybody without burning through its ample
but finite currency reserves will be limited. In a sign of how
sensitive Vision 2030’s austerity measures can be, King Salman
on Wednesday reversed cuts to state salaries and bonuses,
even as he announced his son’s elevation. The government
also gave public employees an additional week’s holiday to
mark the end of Ramadan.
The challenges for Saudi foreign policy are equally daunting,
and could drain the political capital MBS will need at home.
“His ability to deliver on both fronts is still highly uncertain,
as the country’s authorities are attempting to implement
several generations’ worth of reforms in less than 15 years,”
said Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal analyst for the Middle East
and North Africa at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, in a
note.
In 2015, MBS launched Saudi Arabia’s expensively equipped
military into a war in Yemen. The conflict has so far proved
messy and inconclusive, and its civilian death toll has drawn
criticism. He also raised the stakes in Saudi Arabia’s fierce
regional rivalry with Iran, describing dialog as “impossible”
and calling for the fight to be taken onto Iranian soil.
Most recently, the prince led a group of countries into a
diplomatic standoff with fellow Gulf Cooperation Council
member Qatar. That, too, looks unlikely to deliver quick
results and risks blowback, as Turkey and Iran rallied to
help Qatar ride out the closure of its only land border.
‘Backfiring’
None of these steps represent a fundamental change of
policy for Saudi Arabia, according to James Dorsey, senior
fellow for the Middle East and North Africa at Singapore’s
Nanyang Technological University. But, he said, they’re all
far more aggressive than the kingdom’s elderly and
generally cautious leaders were willing to risk in the past.
The tougher approach to intractable problems in the Middle
East appears to mesh with that of U.S. President Donald
Trump, who met MBS in Washington in March, and again in
Saudi Arabia in May. On Wednesday, Trump called to
congratulate the younger leader. According to the president’s
office, the two men discussed the “priority of cutting off all
support for terrorists and extremists, as well as how to
resolve the ongoing dispute with Qatar.” The prince has
cultivated ties elsewhere in the White House, twice dining
with his near-contemporaries Ivanka Trump and Jared
Kushner.
Support from other parts of Washington, where the
deposed bin Nayef was well regarded for his counter-
terrorism efforts, is less certain. On Tuesday, State
Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issued an
unusually blunt criticism of Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates for failing to produce detailed evidence in
support of the accusations they leveled at Qatar.
MBS embarked on his campaigns against Yemen and
Qatar “without an exit strategy,” said Dorsey. “At this point,
those are backfiring.”
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