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Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
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Today I'm chatting with David Commons.
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David is one of the leading scholars on Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Wahhabism.
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He has a new book out which I enjoyed very much and learned a lot from.
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It's called Saudi Arabia, a modern history. David, welcome. >> Thank you. It's nice to be here.
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>> I have so many questions about Saudi.
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I mean, let's take Wahhabiism, which gets a very bad reputation in in the Western press.
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If you were to steal man it for me, make the best case for it, that it's not just something crazy and extreme, what does that case look like?
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>> Well, the case looks like it is a very strong conviction uh for a specific theology and a specific definition of true belief in the Islamic tradition.
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And uh that's the best case I can make.
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Could the Saudi nation have been built without it? >> I would argue no.
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And I would also qualify that by saying that our sources for the early history of uh Saudi uh political expansion are so few in partisan uh we can't reach a firm historical conclusion about that.
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But it seems to me that this uh this religious purification movement, which is what Wahhabism purported to be, was essential for state building in that part of Arabia in the 1700s.
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>> And if you were to define Wahhabism, you know, pull it out of the Saudi context, but just theologically. Sure.
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>> What is distinct about it compared to other forms of Sunni Islam? >> Right.
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So it is a a theological position uh on how do you define belief and the uh the teachings of the founder of this uh school of thought Muhammad bin Abdul Mahab so it's named after him argued that it is not enough to affirm that you believe in one God you must also uh actively negate any deviation from correct belief in God and therefore it has an activist impulse towards what it regards as heresy or unbelief.
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Whereas in the Sunni tradition, uh theology had evolved different schools of thought that were um I would say mutually um tolerant.
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They they didn't persecute each other for what they regarded as incorrect religious practice based on incorrect theology.
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So, so it really is a theological conviction that uh was new in the history of Muslim societies and would probably have uh not made much of an impact had it not gained the support of the Saud family in the 1740s.
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>> Now, Mecca is open to all Muslims, right? >> Right.
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>> And how is that then compatible with a hobbyism or is it just a contradiction that everyone lives with?
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Well, it is a contradiction and one of the political achievements of the uh the early 20th century uh Saudi leader Abdul Aziz was to annex Mecca to his kingdom which was based in Riad and do so in a way that uh imposed what you might call a qualified Wahhabi regime.
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Wahhabi regime. Because in its original homeland in central Arabia, uh the the Wahhabi clerics purged uh the entire region as thoroughly as they could of any religious descent uh that is of other Sunni Muslims and um that was you know in the 1700s 1800s when Abdul Aiz
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annexed Mecca at the end of 1924 uh he realized that it was a um globally significant annexation and that if he tried to impose a strict Wahhabi regime that purged other Muslim traditions from the holy city, he would alienate Muslims in the rest of the world. So he he did
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So he he did put Wahhabi clerics in charge of uh religious institutions in Mecca.
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Uh but he chose clerics who would who were willing to work with Muslims in other Sunni traditions.
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So he he he actually had a compromise, you would say, on strict Wahhabi doctrine.
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>> And the Shiite Muslims in the eastern provinces, they're just tolerated or there's discrimination or what's their legal status?
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>> Well, their legal status today in Saudi Arabia is uh as Saudi citizens uh none of whom have very many legal rights, be they Sunni or Shiite.
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Uh over time they have endured periods of persecution.
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uh number of Shiites uh moved out of their their home provinces in the 1790s.
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The very first time Saudi forces annexed it.
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Uh the Saudis lost control of that region.
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They regained control again uh most recently in 1913.
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There was another exodus of 100 or so uh Shiites to other parts of the Gulf region.
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So you know there there is a history of uh persecution uh and discrimination.
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It's I think it's >> but just today you know >> well today Tyler that is for me very difficult to know because what we hear from the Saudi government is that there is no more discrimination against Shiite Muslims.
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Personally I don't know if that is true or not.
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It might be true, but I do not know that it's true because we really don't hear uh what I regard as reliable information about conditions in Saudi Arabia regarding uh uh you know recent currents of disscent.
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They've all been silenced.
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>> But you could have an LLM read anonymous posts on social media, right? >> You could. You could. I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that.
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So, it's it's possible that there is a a completely new climate.
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They claim there is a completely new climate and I've been told by colleagues there is a completely new climate uh for Shiite Muslims but I I just don't know that.
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I don't know that as a fact.
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>> Let's say you're a Sunni cleric from Egypt or Iraq uh traditional Sunni establishment.
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What would be your critique of Wahhabiism?
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that it is um an an eccentric uh erroneous interpretation of uh Muslim religious sources and that yeah and that it was that the product of um a poorly educated ambitious preacher from the 1700s.
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That's what they would say.
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>> So it's making up claims that are not in the Quran.
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It's not that it's ignoring what is in the Quran. Is that correct?
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>> I would they would say it's misreading the Quran.
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to to get into the details.
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And just as you have very strong disagreements in in Christianity uh between different uh denominations, there have always been strong disagreements uh between Muslims over theology.
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Uh the Wahhabi movement made them matter more than they did before because of this activist impulse in its position on theology that belief requires action, not just verbal affirmation and individual conduct.
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And why do the Saudis seem to dislike the Palestinians so much?
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Is that theological or some other set of reasons?
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Because the Palestinians are not a direct threat to the Saudi establishment.
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>> Well, I don't know that the Saudi establishment does dislike Palestinians.
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Well, when people talk to me, this is completely anecdotal, but they seem highly skeptical about the Palestinians would be my sense >> that relative to say many other Arab groups.
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Well, this might be true of uh the current government maybe. I I I really don't know.
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I'm not part of this conversation. I So, >> okay.
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I mean, I I I guess what my uh my hunch is that any um critical attitude towards Palestinians on the part of the Saudi government would be that uh they're inconvenient because I think what the Saudi government wants is a very neat seamless integration with Western economic, political and technological and military uh spheres.
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And the Palestinians get in the way of that. They might say that.
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>> I'm not sure that's true, but that might be how they see it.
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>> Now, as you know, the senior religious establishment, it's largely neg right. Why does that matter?
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What's the historical significance of that? >> Right.
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So, Nez is the region of central Arabia.
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Uh Riad is currently the capital.
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The first Saudi Empire had a capital nearby called Dyia.
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And Nez is really the territory that gave birth to the Wahhabi movement.
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It's the homeland of the Saud uh dynasty and it is the region of Arabia that was that was most thoroughly purged of the older Sunni tradition that had persisted in edge for centuries and consequently by the time that the uh Saudi government uh developed bureaucratic agencies in the 1950s and60s um the religious institution was going to recruit from that region of Arabia uh primarily.
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Now it certainly uh attracted uh loyalists from other parts of Arabia.
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But uh the Wahhabi uh mission as I call it, their calling to what they considered true belief uh began in Neged and was very strongly identified with with the towns of Needged ever since this the late 1700s.
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Would I be correct in inferring that some of the least cosmopolitan parts of Saudi Arabia built the Saudi state? >> Yes, that is correct. That is correct.
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In terms of if you think of the 17 and 1800s, uh the Red Sea and Persian Gulf Coast of Arabia were most the most cosmopolitan parts of of Arabia.
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Uh >> and they're richer too, right?
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Like Jedha is a much more advanced city than Riad at the time.
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Well, much more, you know, somewhat more advanced if if Yeah, it is more advanced.
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It is more cosmopolitan than than nged.
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And um you know, there is the kind of um regional uh identity in Hey Jazz uh that is the Red Sea Coast where the holy cities and Genta are located.
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holy cities and Genta are located. uh and the town's people there uh tended to look upon neged as um you know a less advanced part of of Arabia but again that's a very recent historical development >> and how is it that the coastal regions just drop the ball you could imagine some alternate history where they become
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the center of Saudi power and religious thought but they're not >> right well if if you take um you know Jedamecca Medina that region of of Arabia known and its hijaz had always been under the rule of of other Muslim empires and uh they were under the rule of other Muslim powers because of the uh religious value of uh possessing if you will the holy cities Mecca and Medina. Uh from the time of uh the first uh
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Uh from the time of uh the first uh Muslim dynasty that was based in Damascus in the seventh and early 8th centuries all the way until the Ottoman Empire.
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Muslim dynasties outside Arabia coveted control of that region and they were just more powerful than local resources could generate.
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So hijaz was always if you would a dependency on outside Muslim powers.
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If you look at the uh east coast of Arabia was now the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf.
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It was uh richer than central Arabia.
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It's the largest oasis in Arabia.
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It is uh in proximity to uh pearling banks which were important source for uh income for uh residents there and it was uh part of the uh Indian Ocean trade between Iraq and and India but the uh the population there was always it seems well always for the last thousand years has been dominated by uh Bedawin tribesmen.
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there there was a brief uh ismiley Shiite republic if you might say in that part of Arabia in medieval times but um it just didn't have it seems the cohesion to conquer other parts of Arabia and and that's what makes the Saudi story really remarkable is that they were able to muster the and sustain the cohesion to carry out a conquest like that over the course of of 50 years >> and physically how do they manage that So water is a problem.
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A lot of transport is by camel.
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There's no real rail system. Right. >> Right.
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>> This is how is it they do it?
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What gets sent where to do what? >> Right.
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It was I would say it was um accomplished almost inch by inch.
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It took 30 years for the first Saudi uh principality I would call it in their very their original home da which is now an outskirts of Riyad.
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It took them 30 years to conquer Riyad. 30 years.
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uh so uh it was I would say more a matter of persistence and willpower than than resources or strategy.
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Now there is one there is one thesis out there which really doesn't have tremendous amount of evidence to support it that the the spread of gun um firearms has something to do with the success of Saudi expansion.
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And I think that's um an interesting hypothesis, but the evidence for that is is pretty thin.
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Uh so I I really think it was a matter of persistence and then the ability of the Wahhabi mission to gain a following to form, if you would, a Wahhabi party uh in different towns in Neg and to support uh the Saudis when they were able to get the upper hand over a local ruling family.
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So yeah, I I attribute the success of Saudi power to persistence and leadership and having that religious um uh commonality that some people just did buy into this teaching.
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>> How much is there ever de facto Ottoman rule over parts of Saudi? >> Well, almost never.
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Uh there was a Saudi there was an Ottoman invasion that destroyed the very first Saudi uh empire.
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uh from 1811 to 1818 they were able to destroy the first uh uh Saudi Empire.
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Uh they captured and de uh deported the Saudi ruler to Istanul and he was executed in public in Istanbul.
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But uh communications from uh from from the from Western Arabia to central Arabia is so difficult and harsh that it uh was too difficult to maintain an occupation there.
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And so after a few years the Ottomans pulled out.
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Uh >> so there's not even tribute after those years.
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>> No, you don't get you do get tribute.
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Um it seems starting in the 1840s after a second Ottoman invasion and there are reports of tribute.
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Uh I have not really seen a very uh yearbyyear account of when the Saudis rendered tribute and when they withheld tribute.
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But there is um some moments when they pay tribute.
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And then in 1913, right before World War I, when the Saudis conquered the eastern province, the heavily Shiite region, uh they promised some tribute, but uh World War I broke out and the Ottomans were too preoccupied to uh to enforce that.
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So there have been a few moments, but it was never really part of the Ottoman sphere.
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>> And no real Ottoman cultural traces? >> No.
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No, not in central Arabia.
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You have that in Eastern Arabia.
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Uh and you have that in hijaz uh for sure very strong Ottoman traces but not in central Arabia.
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>> To fast forward to more recent times 1979 a grand mosque in Mecca is seized. Who does it and why? >> Right.
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So uh this is carried out by a band that broke off from a puritanical band that had broken off from mainstream Saudi society.
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So uh this group is they're called the Salafi group but they call themselves the Salifi group.
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They formed in the mid1 1960s.
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Uh they were alarmed at the uh arrival of certain uh uh customs they considered immoral like television uh like um retail stores that uh would have uh mannequins with ladies dress.
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uh they didn't like paper currency because it had the face of the king on it that supposedly they would only carry bags of coins weighing 20 pounds instead of carrying paper currency with them.
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And so you you had this uh puritanical uh group uh form in Medina in the mid1 1960s.
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they were able to establish themselves in other parts of Arabia among people who disapproved of any sign of uh western cultural influence and then >> and they're not Wahhabis or they are Wahhabis.
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>> Theologically they are definitely Wahhabis and they considered the Saudi family to have betrayed uh fidelity to true Wahhabi principles.
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Now they were under the supervision of the official Saudi religious establishment which is Wahhabi and some of them broke away from that supervision and the leader of that breakaway faction was a man named Juiman or Lutei and uh Juan uh was uh apparently very strong charismatic personality.
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um he alienated some people in the group.
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Other people thought that he was uh speaking the truth to power if you will.
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And in late 1978 uh there was an attempt to arrest him.
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Uh he was tipped off it seems by a relative in the police and he escaped and he fled into the desert as they say and he was a fugitive for a year.
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During that year, members of his group started having dreams of the Muslim Messiah.
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And they came to believe that one member of their breakaway faction was indeed the Mai or the Muslim Messiah.
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And they believed that November 4th, 1979, November 20th, 1979, uh, was the day that the Muslim Messiah would appear.
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And that was really the thinking behind the takeover of the mosque in Mecca.
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It was a millinarian movement.
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And um in a way and and it was uh a phenomenon that Wahhabism had never generated before.
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This kind of millinarianism.
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It was you know very much um you know more like a David Kesh movement than a mainstream evangelical movement.
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>> And is that still a traumatic event for Saudi rulers or it's mostly forgotten?
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Well, I think Saudi rulers like to uh say that their country had what they call a moderate form of Islam until 1979.
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And then in response to that uh traumatic uh moment in Mecca, uh the Saudi government adopted the agenda of extremist, what they call extremist Muslims.
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And so they claim that they want to go back to how things were before 1979.
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Uh I I think that is um a convenient uh concocted narrative.
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Uh but that's what they say.
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So they like to point to 1979 as as a turning point uh and that in response to that event, the government adopted a policy that fostered extremism.
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And again, I don't think that's true at all, but that's what they say.
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Now, I know it's hard to tell in autocratic societies, but how complete has Saudi nation building been?
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So, you still have the Shiites, you have some radical groups, you had Alqaaida.
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We're not sure what's going on now, but is it a truly solid here forever nation state in terms of the borders and, you know, who rules?
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>> Well, I would say yes.
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Uh I I think that um there are definitely uh groups that would like to dismantle uh the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but my impression is that uh the generations of Saudi kings and princes and technocrats have succeeded at integrating the population into um into a nation.
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that looks to certain institutions uh looks to uh looks at outsiders and sees them as different from themselves which is an essential part of being a nation and thinks of themselves as sharing common values.
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So yeah, I I do think that they are a nation.
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I think that if uh by some totally unexpected event, which of course unexpected events happen, uh that the kingdom were to fall, I don't think the country would disintegrate.
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I think that the different parts have too much at stake in each other to to stick together to disintegrate.
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But I I don't see it uh at all similar to Syria or Iraq, I'll put it that way, or Lebanon, which which do have much stronger tendencies pulling those countries apart.
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>> Now, the greater stability of many of the Gulf states, not just Saudi, to me is quite striking as an outsider.
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>> If you would to boil that down to an abstract an explanation as possible to what do you attribute that?
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Again, this is not only Saudi, but a number of other places.
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I would say is fear of annexation by larger neighbors.
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Uh Iran uh has a claim to Bahrain.
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Iraq has a claim to Kuwait.
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Saudi Arabia at times has tried to take over uh Qatar and the Emirates in in their history.
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And what allowed uh the smaller Gulf states to be to remain independent was uh western uh strategic intervention.
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the British uh established u a truce, if you will, in in the Persian Gulf in the early 1800s, and that evolved into a series of treaties whereby uh London guaranteed the independence of the different emirates that eventually formed the United Arab Emirates and of Qatar and of Bahrain and of Kuwait and of Aman for that matter.
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Uh of course, the British left in 1971.
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There was a great deal of concern who would fill uh that position.
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uh London wanted the United States to do it, but the United States was uh you know quite involved in Vietnam and the Nixon administration didn't think the American public would go for a new strategic commitment at that time.
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So um you of course the United States did become strategically committed to the Gulf after the Iranian revolution and after the Iran Iraq war.
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But I you know I would say what what accounts for the stability of these uh you know small principalities is fear of annexation by larger neighbors.
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>> Why is Riad so ugly as a city?
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>> I'm from Los Angeles Tyler.
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I take exception to that. >> Los Angeles. I think it's beautiful. >> Right.
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Actually Riad has really fantastic modern architecture.
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Now, it's hard to appreciate because like Los Angeles, it's a it's an automobile city.
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You can't really walk there.
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And in that regard, um I I really didn't like living there very much where whereas I lived in Damascus in early 1980s and I I really love Damascus because it was really a walkable city.
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Um but Riad does have a great modern architecture.
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So, um yeah, I wouldn't say it's ugly.
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Okay, >> that's not my view.
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But >> why why are the Saudis so interested in either funding or owning sports teams, sports leagues, top sports athletes under contract?
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Is that a political thing or it's just how they enjoy spending their money because they love the sport?
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Some mix of of both or how do you model that?
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>> I do see it as a mix of both.
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I I I think that um you know the the the term of critics is sportswashing, right?
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You've probably heard that term like Yes. Yeah.
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So um you know cutter is hosting the World Cup and Saudi Arabia's uh sort of takeover of the PGA.
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People look at that as an attempt to um whitewash their image by uh hosting uh prestigious global sporting events.
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So you know many people uh look at this as as part of a a political agenda.
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Uh to my mind there's no doubt that it's extremely popular with Saudis. Saudis love sports. Tyler.
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Uh when I when I was there, I was there in the fall of of 2001.
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I arrived actually two days before 911.
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And um I was I was living downtown in an apartment building and right after the Americans started bombing Afghanistan to uh chase out the Taliban and try to apprehend Bin Laden.
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Uh one evening I heard a crowd coming down the main boulevard.
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And I was a little nervous about it that it was some anti-American demonstration.
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It turned out they were celebrating uh Saudi Arabia's uh victory in the Gulf Soccer Cup.
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So that's what was on their minds uh that evening, not uh not politics.
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So I it's extremely popular especially with young Saudis and they are the main constituency of the monarchy today.
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>> Now if you drive around North Macedonia, you'll see some number of Saudi funded mosques and they're quite large and elaborate.
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It's not obvious that the demand for them is so strong.
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Uh how do you model why the Saudis do that?
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Is it some kind of kickback scheme or they they just want to procilitize or they want to raise their status in the Islamic world? >> Right.
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Well, I see that in at least three different frames.
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One frame is that Islam or Christianity is a proitizing religion and Muslims are proitized uh from the very beginning of uh the founder of Islam, Prophet Muhammad.
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Uh the Wahhabi mission has been a proitizing movement ever since its founding uh in 1740 and uh it was a total failure at proitizing.
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Uh he the teachings of Wahhabism rejected completely by almost every uh Muslim society that encountered it for um well from the 1740s until probably the late 1800s.
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So um but they never stopped trying.
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And so I I think that there's that.
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And then the third is that for the Saudi monarchy, it is a form of soft power.
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So democracy promotion for the United States, exporting communism for Fidel, uh marketing Wahhabism for Riad, you know.
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Do they get soft power from it? I think they do. I think they do.
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And my my sense is that the scholarship on Wahhabi on Saudi Wahhabis soft power is um beginning to sharpen the focus on particular case studies uh in Nigeria, in Indonesia, in Central Asia.
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And the finding so far is that the Wahhabis are in competition with other Muslim religious tendencies from Iran, uh from Turkey, uh even from Kuwait.
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So uh just as uh Catholic and Protestant missionaries competed around the world for for converts to what they regarded as true Christianity, uh the habies are competing.
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Uh, of course they've had a ton of money uh behind their proatizing from the uh I would say from the early 1980s until about 2015.
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And it seems that King Salman has really put the lid on that.
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And um I'll be curious to see the follow-up studies that were really based on research in the period roughly 2005 to 2015.
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I haven't seen a lot about recent developments, but I I think that by curtailing uh financial support for at least Saudi religious institutions to proitize, that Saudi influence will diminish.
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It'll leave a residue for sure, but it will diminish.
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>> In general, who do you think has been winning that ideological competition of the different branches of Islam?
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which would have greater soft power today than say 20 25 years ago. >> Right.
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Well, I I do think you know what the Saudis have rebranded themselves as Celifies which which has more uh so Wahhabism has a um an association with Saudi Arabia and if they call themselves copies which uh really refers to it says that they are following the ways of the
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founding fathers right so Americans like to say we follow the way of the founding fathers uh Sunni Muslims like to say they follow the ways of the founding fathers which is the Salif Salifism became extremely popular uh around the Muslim world in Muslim diasporas and is still extremely influential. Um is it dominant among
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Um is it dominant among Muslim populations?
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It has a very high profile.
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Uh but I don't know that it's dominant and I don't really know how to measure that.
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I haven't seen public opinion polls for instance uh that that ask Muslims in different countries um do you favor Salifism over other versions of Islam?
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Um I I can I can cite an anecdote for one of the downsides of this uh puritanical form of Islam is that in Iraq when David Petraeus uh engineered the surge in 2006 2007, one of his assets was that Iraqi Sunni Muslims were fed up with the busy body intrusion into their personal lives of the Salafies.
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Uh they told men they couldn't just wear a mustache, they had to grow a beard.
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They punished people for smoking cigarettes.
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Uh I I don't think that most Muslims uh around the world, not that I've met Muslim, but I've lived in several Muslim countries, uh most Muslims I've met regard Salafies as um you know, kind of busy bodies and intrusive.
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And so I I I don't think they're going to win the battle for hearts and minds. in the long run.
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They had they had a very strong run in the 90s and early 2000s.
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I think al-Qaeda did a lot to discredit that.
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To what extent should I think of Saudi as a nation of immigrants?
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So, as you know, bin Laden family has roots in Yemen.
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Uh, Prince Alwali bin Talal, who I think is still number two owner at Twitter, has Armenian and Lebanese descent.
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Overall, how many of the Saudis are actually Saudi in origin? >> I have no idea. I'll just say that. I'll say that. Yeah.
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I I I would so if you take away the one quarter of the population that are foreign workers all right of the 75% that remain uh you know I would say probably a very small number are descended from people outside Arabia because the uh certainly the royals and and wealthy Arabian families in general uh had a long history of marrying are having children with with slaves and and that was legal until the early 1960s.
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Um so uh but it it doesn't seem that the majority of or even close to a majority of Arabs own owned slaves in Arabia uh over the centuries.
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It was it was a small number of of you know better off Arabs.
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So uh but you know in terms of immigrants you know people moving to Arabia uh very few people moved to Arabia from other parts of the Middle East because it was very poor.
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The largest site of immigrant settlement was Mecca and Medina.
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And that would have been from pilgrims who journeyied, you know, months overland from West Africa or weeks through the Indian Ocean from Southeast Asia.
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And once you got there, a lot of them stayed.
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So that you did have permanent colonies from from Java, uh, from Bkhara in Central Asia.
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So, but you know, central Arabia that the Saudi homeland, very little, very little.
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>> But one reads of these families who maybe came over from Yemen, they're then in Saudi, they whitewash the origins a bit, pretend they're long-standing Saudis. Is that common?
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>> Well, certainly, uh, it's pretty common if you're from a poorer country and you want to have the benefits of Saudi citizenship.
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But yeah, out of 30 million people, how many people are like that?
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I I I I couldn't put a number on. I'm sorry. I just couldn't.
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>> What's the best food in Saudi Arabia?
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>> Well, um I had nti food and I didn't care for it.
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It was um camel and um and and wheat grain um you know, ranch food, I guess I would say.
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Uh when when I was in Riad in the early 2000s, uh you had every kind of uh uh foreign cuisine you could imagine.
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Uh Chinese, Persian, Mexican, cheesecake factory, Saudis love American food, but um I I don't know the culinary traditions of hijaz or of uh other parts of Arabia.
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I just know the neshi culinary tradition and it was, you know, pretty basic. Pretty basic.
35:15
>> And in Jedha, is the food more I don't know, Red Sea, more Ethiopian, more Yemen or >> I don't I was only in Yemen Jeda for a weekend.
35:24
I'm not familiar with Jedda to say.
35:27
>> Now take K Abduli University of Science and Technology.
35:30
It has I read a $10 billion endowment.
35:32
Will that be a successful research university? How's that going?
35:38
>> Well, my understanding is that it's it's not going all that well.
35:40
that um the intention was to provide uh sort of a a global uh level post-graduate education in STEM and most of the students are foreign students.
35:56
Um >> and the main problem is just the demand side.
36:00
Saudis don't want to go there >> or they're not qualified for that.
36:03
I I think if if we were, you know, start talking about plans to transform the Saudi economy, I I think that the uh the the huge uh hurdle is improving K through2 education there.
36:16
and um they they just have not been able to succeed at um changing their public education, the mass public education to prepare students for challenging uh college, let alone post-graduate level STEM uh STEM subjects.
36:36
And I I think it's uh still the case that uh families who want their students to excel in STEM typically send their children to private schools and then to um um the uh the engineering petroleum university which is their it's like their Texas&M.
36:58
is a an excellent university and from there they tend to go to American graduate schools and then come back and work in the the petroleum engineering fields.
37:08
But it it just seems that the K through 12 uh level has has not been solved much.
37:15
I here we are in the United States talking about that, right? >> Yeah.
37:20
But what's the main barrier to improving the Saudi system?
37:22
Because they do have money, right? They have money.
37:26
Um I I think that you would have to probably replace most of the teachers.
37:34
Uh they would have to find a way to train up teachers to improve the quality of STEM education in in the public schools.
37:41
They've reduced the religious content quite a bit already.
37:42
Uh my understanding is they've taken out uh a lot of the um I would say um xenophobic religious teachings that were part of their education system for about half a century.
37:58
Um but they they just don't have um a cadre of teachers that they can put into the schools and replace people who are there already.
38:10
What is the chance Qatar survives as an independent nation say 50 years from now?
38:15
Like I would bet against that.
38:15
But do you have an opinion?
38:20
>> I don't have an opinion.
38:20
Why would you bet against it?
38:23
>> Because without US protection, which I do not think will endure forever due to our own energy independence.
38:28
Someone will swallow them, probably Iran, but it could be Saudi as well, or they become a pawn of either side.
38:35
right now they can play different sides off against each other but maybe that just won't last.
38:43
>> That's a reasonable scenario.
38:43
That's a reasonable scenario.
38:45
I mean you know one of the big questions I won't be around for it is what will happen to the entire Gulf political alignment when uh the global appetite for their uh you know their one really valuable resource diminishes.
38:59
diminishes. That's big question but I have no idea but between extreme heat uh and uh autocracy how are they going to manage without uh you know billions in oil revenue every year that's and I I think that's what uh
39:16
they're they're trying to do they're trying to diversify their economies but I I don't think they have the um the technical skills to do that they've rented it now for for many decades uh by paying high salaries to qualified people from other countries. Uh maybe they'll
39:30
Uh maybe they'll get there.
39:33
Maybe they don't need that many people.
39:34
If AI can replace uh a lot of technically qualified people in this country, I hear coders are losing their jobs.
39:42
Uh maybe countries won't need a large pool of technically qualified uh manpower. Is the UAE stable?
39:50
So there's both external threats.
39:52
As you know, they've fought over territory with Saudi, but just internally, if the smaller places start to resent the rule of Abu Dhabi, they might want to split off or disagree about how much autonomy they'll have. >> Right. Right.
40:05
Well, that would be um I don't think it would be like the velvet divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They can both survive.
40:16
I think if Russella broke away, uh, it would be swallowed up probably by Oman or Saudi Arabia.
40:22
I mean, I I I think they they stick together because of fear of annexation and then subjugation to a neighbor, one or another neighbor.
40:35
And um I I I I think the UAE is stable.
40:39
Uh >> yeah, I don't see any threat to the UAE on the horizon, but I could be blind to that.
40:48
>> Do you think of Bahrain and Yemen as historically the most advanced or cosmopolitan parts of that region of the world?
40:59
>> Well, you know, Yemen has a history of kingdoms going back a few thousand years.
41:02
Although, you know, in terms of the modern global economy, uh it's the poorest part of Arabia.
41:11
And um you know Yemen's future is uh as as sort of a a cohesive countries is a big question mark.
41:19
It seems to me the the strong secessionist uh movement in the south.
41:23
Um Bahrain will probably be uh as long as there's American forces there an independent country.
41:34
It's the biggest American naval base in the Persian Gulf.
41:36
Uh though if if there were to be a a withdrawal of Western strategic interest in the Persian Gulf that goes back to about 1820 uh yeah it would change everything.
41:46
It would change everything.
41:48
It did change everything in 1820 when the British uh exercised gunboat diplomacy to suppress uh sort of low-level warfare. They called it piracy.
41:59
Uh so here we are 200 years on still uh sort of an outpost of of of western security interest.
42:06
And why is Yemen so unstable when the rest of the region looks really quite stable?
42:16
Well, I think a Yemen expert could give a better answer than I could, but my understanding is that the um the Yemen Arab Republic that formed the 1990 from the Union of North and South Yemen was uh stable because of a very delicate political compromise between powers in different parts of the country.
42:43
And that political compromise of course has been uh exploded by uh a number of different factors.
42:53
Among which are is you know this uh phenomenon of Zadi revivalism represented by by the Houthis uh which which represents a a very strong regional religious tendency that is different from the rest of the country.
43:07
And then of course outside intervention has made it difficult for Yemenes to see that look we have to live with each other.
43:13
We can't reach out to one power or another to clobber our local rival.
43:18
So it it's a lot like Lebanon was for 15 years from 1975 to 1990.
43:21
Uh >> and they they never had this period of nation building analogous to what the Saudis had from the Nezies.
43:30
>> No, they didn't really they didn't really uh Yemen uh you know has some oil and gas uh but not very much.
43:37
not enough to set up the kind of uh national social welfare system that gets people uh to a certain standard of living and and education.
43:47
So um they haven't had that and because of the weakness of the state uh you know outsiders like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State uh Iran, Saudi Arabia, uh they've been able to intervene and you know make a mess of things much like happened in in Lebanon for 15 years.
44:07
Is there still any residual sense of cultural inferiority in Saudi visa v Yemen which has a much grander civilizational tradition? Right. >> Right.
44:16
>> It's evident when you go there like wow this is amazing and you're in Saudi and it's like here's some new buildings.
44:22
>> Well, they're very proud of their new buildings and it's a little bit like the United States in Europe, right?
44:25
People come to the United States and from Europe and they they think it's a fabulous country.
44:32
uh but we don't really have uh you know medieval cities.
44:40
So um so you would say that Europe has a much deeper and richer cultural history.
44:45
The United States is uh a great commercial and military power uh producer of popular culture but I think Europeans might feel that um you know the United States is still um a parano stage.
44:59
Maybe that's how they look at it.
45:02
How serious are the Saudis about building a wall or really finishing a wall on the border with Yemen?
45:08
>> Well, it's going to take them a long time to achieve that, but if they want to do it, >> well, some of them certainly do.
45:15
Uh, it would uh, you know, enhance their security against smuggling.
45:20
I mean, in the early 2000s, there was a lot of weapons smuggling, a lot of drug smuggling happening through Yemen and also through the northern border.
45:29
Uh there was a serious drug problem in Saudi Arabia.
45:33
Uh I don't know if there still is or not, but um it it was it was a lot of families were worried about >> there is. Mhm. >> Yeah.
45:41
I hear there is I hear there is >> right and it was a topic of conversation in 2001 2002 when I was there and you know conversations about you know teenage or somewhat older children uh having to go to rehab and uh they had a whole cadre of uh therapists trained at American universities in drug rehabilitation.
46:03
Now, um would building a wall uh on the Saudi Yemeni border, I imagine at some point there there will be the technology to um to conduct surveillance on that border.
46:19
I mean, the world does seem to be moving in the direction of greater surveillance uh capabilities by states.
46:23
So, I don't think it's as farfetched as it was 10 years ago.
46:27
But yeah, they the to the extent that the the monarchies seek certainty for uh suppressing any challenge, yeah, they they might build a wall, they might.
46:41
If the Saudis look back on their earlier policies toward Yemen, do you think they have regrets?
46:46
Do they regret having rooted for so long for a weak Yemen and now it's come back to to bite them in the bum, so to speak?
46:53
Did they just screw it all up? >> Did they screw it up?
46:59
Well, I don't know if they screwed it up.
47:00
Um I I I have no idea how they look at it.
47:06
I I know that the current leadership thinks that um they needed to adopt a more activist foreign policy and in the very early years of King Salain's reign, uh a lot of that backfired.
47:18
uh they seem to have adopted uh uh I would say a more uh cautious approach uh in dealing with Yemen and Iraq and Lebanon and Syria and uh that is more in line with traditional Saudi diplomacy.
47:34
Um, and this is the difference between uh deciding to uh invade uh and embomb Yemen and deciding to try to negotiate with Hotis and uh renew relations with Iran, of course, brokered by China a couple of years ago and see if there's a way to manage the what they regard as strategic threat than pursue um the elimination of a strategic threat which seems to have backfired for them.
48:11
Now, as you know, in 1962, Egypt is bombing parts of Yemen.
48:14
They have some involvement in that war, and some of the bombs, it seems, even fall on the Saudi side of the border.
48:20
Is there a historical memory of that? Does it matter?
48:24
Or is it just forgotten that was some mistake in the past and who cares?
48:28
I don't think um I don't think Yemen has forgotten about it and I don't think everybody in Saudi Arabia's forgotten about it.
48:34
I think um you know the men around uh Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince are quite aware of uh the history of relations between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
48:47
And um I I I I think that they may have been responsible for tempering some of the adventurous foreign policies.
49:01
So I mean if if anything what the Saudis did by intervening in Yemen in 2015 uh was similar to what Nasser did when he intervened.
49:09
He sent 40,000 Egyptian troops to Yemen eventually in the 1960s.
49:14
And that was a terrible mistake for Nasser.
49:15
it fatally weakened his his his regime.
49:18
And I think, you know, some Saudis may not have read what they did in terms of what Nasser did, but looking at it from the outside, uh it was uh a comparable mistake.
49:28
And um you know, it just reminds me that uh you know, foreign policy is always a matter of experimentation and seeing what works.
49:36
I hear a lot of talk about grand strategy.
49:40
Um it's hard to think of a case uh where where grand strategy really worked out.
49:46
There's a lot of luck uh involved in achieving foreign policy success no matter what country we're talking about.
49:54
>> Is there still a meaningful historical memory of the 1934 Saudi A border war or is that for just forgotten?
50:01
>> I think that's forgotten.
50:01
I think that's forgotten.
50:03
Again, some people in Yemen might remember it, especially in the border region because um you they're right up against uh the Saudi border and there's um a long tradition of trade across that border.
50:14
When you try to control that trade, it becomes smuggling.
50:17
But um that that line was imposed on uh on territory where people on both sides were accustomed to to dealing with each other.
50:29
It'd be like building a wall between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
50:33
So, you know, people between Baltimore and and York, between Frederick and Gettysburg would find that appalling.
50:39
But, >> and how would you model what you think the Houthies want?
50:43
What what's their strategy, their game, so to speak?
50:48
>> That's a great question.
50:48
And uh the people that I think are informed about this see the hotties as evolving in their aims and becoming more ambitious and uh perhaps overreaching uh as rising movements uh have a habit of doing but right now it seems that they do not well they do not want to have any power sharing in the part of the country that they control.
51:12
And I don't see how they imagine um a a unified Yemen with any other political force.
51:23
I I I have no idea how they see that.
51:26
They can't conquer the rest of Yemen.
51:27
The rest of Yemen doesn't seem capable of conquering them.
51:29
Uh but they don't seem to be interested in sharing power.
51:33
So, um, it could be the case that they're concerned with control daytoday and they'll see what other Yemenes come up with in the way of an offer to to run the country.
51:50
But I I don't to my mind, they don't really have a clear strategic goal other than staying in power where they are.
51:58
How optimistic are you about Saudi Arabia? optimistic.
52:08
Well, I have to say that I think that for many Saudis uh the uh opening of social freedoms is um is wonderful and u I know that many Saudis are are extremely happy to have the religious police uh off their backs uh that they don't have to close stores uh and be harassed if they don't go to the mosque.
52:33
Um, of course, women have much greater freedom than they've ever had under the modern Saudi regime.
52:41
And, uh, you know, there's they're free to, um, take creative initiatives in music, in in theater, in film, uh, in literature in a way that they never have been.
52:57
And in that regard, I I I do think that uh you know, the changes since 2015 for many Saudis uh have made their lives a lot better.
53:09
>> How deeply rooted or sustainable do you think that is?
53:12
>> I think that's very >> yourself.
53:13
It's never been the case before, >> right?
53:14
I I think it's very deep.
53:14
I I I really do believe that the the country is has turned away from that uh puritanical religious uh legacy.
53:21
And I I I do believe that.
53:24
One of the things I try to do in my book is I try to show that the what I call the modernist or cosmopolitan current in Saudi Arabia uh you know it is not recent.
53:34
it goes back a hundred years to the annexation of the holy cities in Jedda and that the the very logic of state building uh nurtured that tendency and yeah I'm I'm sure that you have a lot of Saudis particularly in the older generation who are furious with uh the new social reality but I I don't see them regaining power ever again now when it comes to their economic future and will they be able to transition to a post petroleum economy.
54:06
That's an open question and and I have no idea because uh you know to my mind the future of the global economy is is so up in the air uh because of technological changes and political changes and how uh oil producing states will will manage that.
54:24
Will they become big data centers because they have all this energy? I I I have no idea. >> Yes is my answer. I think they will. >> Right.
54:31
And that might be their their new their new resource. So I I don't know.
54:35
Tyler, you probably have a much better sense of that than I do.
54:39
>> What's your fondest memory from Saudi Arabia?
54:43
>> Well, um I have to say that um you know, I was there during a time of uh high tension between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
54:52
As I said, I arrived there September 9th, 2001, and I was there until the end of February uh the next year.
54:58
Uh even so uh I was really amazed at the hospitality that I found uh and I was invited to to many people's homes and hometowns and uh it was just the hospitality that people showed to me.
55:16
It got to the point that I had to start turning down invitations because they stay up very late uh when they have company 1 2:00 in the morning and I was trying to keep a daily work and research schedule.
55:31
So that's my fondest memory.
55:33
It really is uh you know tremendous uh warmth and hospitality from from the people I met there.
55:41
>> If one of our educated listeners wants to visit a place in Saudi, where would you send them?
55:48
So, say they're going to land in Riad anyway, right? But it doesn't count.
55:51
Where where should they go? >> Where should they go? Where should they go?
55:58
>> Well, if you're not a Muslim, you can't go to Medina or Mecca.
56:02
>> I would I would urge them to go to Jeda and and see what's happening in Jedda with uh the new uh cultural scene there. Yeah.
56:11
Before my last question, let me just plug your recent book again, Saudi Arabia, a modern history by David Cummings. I enjoyed it very much.
56:21
Learned a great deal from it.
56:23
>> Final query, what will you do next?
56:26
>> Well, I'm leaving for Prague in a week and a half and I'm teaching there next semester for Dickinson College.
56:30
But my next uh writing project is actually going to be something completely different.
56:36
And it's going to be about Arab travelers to the United States between between 1876 and 1940.
56:44
And I I chose 1940 as the terminal date because after World War II, the United States has the rise of globalism and its image and reputation in the Arab world becomes something very different.
56:54
So, I'm going to be uh going to Buffalo, New York, Long Beach, California, El Paso, Texas with Arab tourists in those 70 years and seeing what they saw. That's it. >> Sounds great. Should be refreshing.
57:09
Thank you very Thank you very much. >> Thanks, Tyler. It's a pleasure. [Music] [Music]