Review: Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power
The crown prince appears to have settled down since his impulsive start but Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck provide a remarkable portrait of what formed his character.
Opportunities are as elusive as whispers in the wind, and according to ancient wisdom, they shouldn’t be allowed to slip through our grasp. In fact, the epitaph of Blood and Oil is a quote from the cousin of Prophet Muhammad, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who is reported to have once likened opportunities to passing clouds; they’ll be gone soon enough anyway he mused, so make use of the grace period. To some, these openings are not just a way to escape an unsatisfactory status quo, but are the difference between flourishing or withering away. Mohammed bin Salman is presented by Hope and Scheck as one such figure, for whom failing to overturn the circumstances he inherited posed risks greater than a life of irrelevance and obscurity in the Saudi royal court.
Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) — son of the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz— “first big surprise” in his life came when he learnt that his father hadn’t spent his time as a royal amassing a large fortune to bequeath to his children. For MBS the task of rectifying that went beyond a question of how many decimal points on his bank balance though, he saw it as a threat to his clan.
For most people, being tight on funds might mean a bit of frugality, possibly opening an account on a crypto-exchange or enrolling on a course that might lead to a lucrative career. But that would be too pedestrian for a man who would later dedicate himself to the grand vision of constructing a city akin to a spectacle from the movie Tron along the Red Sea.
MBS set out instead to make himself the heir to Saudi Arabia’s throne and when his father’s two older brothers died in quick succession and Salman became king in 2005, he sensed the tides of fate aligning with his aspiration. He had to seize the moment and in improving his own fortunes, he would transform Saudi Arabia too. The Middle East, he once passionately vowed, would be the “new Europe”.
MBS’s assessment of his own circumstances in many ways mirrors that of the country he expects to inherit from his octogenarian father. He was a peripheral actor in the royal family, as was Saudi Arabia in the world. The royal family was stubbornly change-resistant like the country. The Saudi royals had bathed themselves with luxury and largesse all obtained through an unhealthy reliance on oil (sound familiar?); and crucially both the royal family and country didn’t have an accurate perception of their threats or opportunities. It’s hard not see the parallels in that Hope and Scheck inadvertently draw between MBS and the kingdom, but it does allow them to skilfully set the scene for how MBS fits in.
One of the most enjoyable things about this book is its richness in tantalising anecdotes which give a good feel for the world in which MBS was formed, how he related to it, why he concluded it needed to change but also why he was so brusque in how he went about that—from the Aramco IPO to the decision to assassinate Jamal Khashoggi. “When a decision was made, he went in all guns blazing,” the authors write in the book’s epilogue. There are more examples of this erratic streak he has.
In early 2015, aged 29, MBS called a meeting of his generals. At the time he had little more than two months of experience at the helm of the military and had was considering how to respond to Houthi advances in Yemen. His response was as concise as it was badly thought out. “Send in the F16s,” he said. On separate occasion, he dismissed criticism of his strategy insisting it would be over in a few months, as it now becomes an almost decade long quagmire. When Korean-Japanese banker Masayoshi Son attempted to pool cash with other investors to create the world’s largest tech fund, MBS committed to giving almost half the $100bn Masayoshi sought. Masayoshi would go on call MBS a “Bedouin Steve Jobs.” During a visit to the US, MBS was sat with John Kerry at his Georgetown house. After MBS serenaded the audience with a piano rendition of Beethoven’s moonlight, he launched a less-than-diplomatic tirade against Obama’s Middle East foreign policy, pointing out several of its shortcomings.
Another story which Hope and Scheck share is more revealing about MBS. When his father’s two eldest sons — MBS’s half-brothers — died, he remained with his father offering emotional support, rather than pursuing an education and a jet-setting career in the west or a life of wealthy dandy. Those decisions endeared him to his father who he closely trailed as he carried out the business of government giving MBS an insightful apprenticeship into the mechanics of how power is brokered in the Saudi royal family. He spent “much of his spare time scribbling in his notebook as an observer in his father’s majlis, or gathering room for advisors and petitioners,” Hope and Scheck write.
He was always keen to appear studious, intelligent, thoughtful and innovative, all traits he also wishes Saudi Arabia could also one day imbibe; a dynamic, self-made, startup up country on the cutting edge of everything. That was how MBS sought to distinguish himself and his leadership from other Saudis. He would move fast and break things. The projects, initiatives and policies got bolder and larger as a result as he took the helm and tightened his grip, but I think this is where Hope and Scheck could have made the point more explicitly. While MBS diligently laboured to craft the persona of a forward-thinking and transformative prince, his energies were predominantly channeled into the realm of public relations rather than the substantive realm of policy implementation that would substantiate such a designation. This propensity stems, in part, from the underlying objectives of these strategic choices, which were less concerned with genuine reform and more aligned with the promotion of his bid to lead the Saudi royal family (especially in the west). The driver of his policies became spectacle. That deprived his policies of objective benchmarks which could help him evaluate the success (or failures) of a particular policy.
Everything from his decision to more robustly confront Iran in the region, to the Aramco IPO, the peace initiatives with Israel and the lifting of the ban on women driving were judged by MBS according to whether they enhanced or undermined his leadership bid. That is probably why reform and innovation haven’t even broached the question of expanding the rights of Saudis to hold their government to account. The counter-terror centre he built to impress Trump is another brilliant illustration of him acting as if PR stunts are good enough rather than effective policy. Khashoggi spoke for a lot of activists who wanted reform in the kingdom and saw MBS co-pt the policies they wanted to see whilst he punished them (some paying the ultimate price) when he said “he [MBS] is doing the right things the wrong way, very wrong way”. On one evening, MBS (who was uninvited) visited popular Islamic scholar Salman al-Ouda, where he pontificated for hours on politics, history and Islam. Machiavelli, he claimed, was his political north star, who once said “It is necessary to know well how to… be a great pretender and dissembler”. The question is whether he intends to be more than that.
The jury is out on the extent to which he resembles the image he aims portray of himself. But one thing is clear from Hope and Scheck’s account. MBS’s own pathologies, insecurities and pathologies, have a mirror image in the broader challenges Saudi Arabia faces which is why the way he’s tied his fate to his country’s is so important for anyone who wants to understand Saudi Arabia today. For better or for worst, MBS appears here to stay and world leaders have (warmly in some cases) embraced him despite prior objections. That makes this account doubly important as his unique cocktail of characteristics will be refracted through the kingdom’s policies. The fate of his country is now firmly lies in his hands.
The book however, leaves me wondering whether MBS will come to understand the difference between perception and reality. He wants to be seen as an enlightened leader of a reformed Saudi Arabia but doesn’t often go beyond shiny vanity projects. Does he have the attention to detail and methodical approach required to devise policy and follow through that Saudi Arabia needs to thrive in a post-oil world? Hope and Scheck leave that question to the audience.
