Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, takes credit for diplomatic exploits Photo: Anadolu Agency
There is a cruel logic to this international summits . No amount of loyal ministers or assistant whisperers can protect world leaders from the condemnation of their colleagues. Like a pack of dogs, they know exactly how strong or weak each other is – and what they are capable of.
Calculations about who is in plus and who is in the red are currently being carried out ahead of the G20 summit to be held next month in New Delhi. The losers are obvious. Vladimir Putin, who used to taunt his opponents during such meetings, now can't even attend.
But perhaps the biggest winner is the one who was the most unexpected just a few times. years ago: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — or MBS for short.
The picture was very different at the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires in 2018. Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, was brutally murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul a few months earlier. A few weeks before the summit, the CIA reported with a «high degree of certainty» that MBS ordered the assassination that resulted in Khashoggi being dismembered with a bone saw.
Even Donald Trump ridiculed him as «the worst cover ever.» the crown prince stood awkwardly on the edge of the G20's «family photo». The 20 most powerful politicians in the world all but ignored the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia as soon as the shooting was over. It had little of MBS' trademark swagger.
When the pandemic hit, it seemed like it wasn't just the crown prince who was in trouble. The whole of Saudi Arabia was in suspense. Nothing seemed to reflect this better than the unfinished Jeddah Tower, half-finished and skeletal, looming over the Kingdom's second city.
The highly publicized project was to be the tallest structure in the world — 180 meters more than the rival Burj Al Khalifa from the United Arab Emirates in Dubai. However, as construction on the Jeddah Tower has stalled, it has become a symbol of hardware dysfunction at the heart of Saudi society.
Every economic trend line has been bad. The fall in oil prices from over $130 a barrel in 2014 to a pandemic low of just over $20 has hit the oil state's finances deeply. As a result, public debt rose from virtually zero in the early 2010s to more than a third of GDP by mid-2020.
The price of Brent crude
There have been rumors that MBS's position in the Saudi hierarchy could worsen. risks if he does not deploy the ship.
His political capital was running out. It was clear to everyone that the war that MBS unleashed in Yemen had ended in disaster. Many princes were horrified that in 2017 he placed over 200 of the richest people in the kingdom under house arrest at the Ritz Carlton, and his men beat many of them.
Moreover, the killing of Khashoggi, it can be argued that it had more serious consequences for the Kingdom, since one impulsive murder in Istanbul had more serious consequences than the consequences of the September 11 terrorist attacks
U.S. Senators accused the crown prince of that he is a «destroyer» and «a real gangster». On the campaign trail, President Biden called him an «outcast.»
In Europe, Germany, Norway and Denmark have frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia. And outside the West, a disastrous phone call with Vladimir Putin sparked an oil price war that shattered the national budget.
Things looked bleak for MBS.
Making friends 
Biden and MBS punching out the Saudi Arabia from the shadows. Photo: Anadolu Agency
Everything has turned upside down. Instead of being isolated, MBS is at the center of the world.
After being labeled a pariah by Biden, he had to deliver a derided fist to the crown prince in 2022 as the US president tried to persuade him to lower oil prices and join US sanctions on Russia. In a show of strength, MBS refused.
At the international level, he writes off diplomatic exploits.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have taken responsibility for helping negotiate the release of American basketball player Britney Griner after she was detained in Russia.
MBS hosted Xi Jinping in Riyadh last December to strengthen ties between Saudi Arabia and China.
Earlier this year, he invited Chinese diplomats to the Middle East to successfully mediate the restoration of relations between Riyadh and Tehran.
He hosted Volodymyr Zelensky at the Arab League summit in May, and earlier this month hosted a summit in Jeddah that brought together senior security officials from 42 states—including the West, China, India, and Ukraine, but not Russia—to discuss the Ukrainian conflict. .
Bin Salman's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cements deeper ties with Western Credit : AFP/BANDAR AL-JALOOOD < p>And last week, to alarm Western leaders, MBS oversaw Saudi Arabia's entry into the BRICS group, an increasingly powerful bloc.
Forget calling MBS a pariah. He became the center of the diplomatic world.
He is not finished yet. A pact on the Middle East is being discussed, which has been called the «mega-deal». This will lead to the fact that Saudi Arabia, the country to which a quarter of the world's population turns their prayers in Mecca and the strongest leader of the Sunni world, normalizes relations with the State of Israel.
This is the same Kingdom that imposed an oil embargo on the West in 1973 for supporting Jerusalem in the Yom Kippur War.
The deal, in one fell swoop, will strengthen Israel's legitimacy in the region. The remaining Sunni Arab boycott is unlikely to be viable and likely to fall away: the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco have already decided to normalize relations through the so-called Trump Abraham Accords.
President Biden is certainly interested in this. conclude their own agreement in the Middle East. The question is, at what price?
What can the crown prince, who grew up playing the strategy game Age Of Empires, get out of Washington to pay for this?
Behind closed doors, MBS states its claim: a complete security guarantee, as close as possible according to Article 5 NATO, from the United States; a US-controlled nuclear power program; and perhaps even the role of Saudi Arabia in securing Islamic shrines on the Temple Mount.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser on whom the fragile president increasingly relies to formulate and implement foreign policy, traveled to Saudi Arabia for detailed talks.
What does Washington want? Extending the distance between Riyadh and Beijing and ensuring that Saudi Arabia continues to price its oil in dollars.
Sullivan said last week that «there are still ways to travel» before a deal can be struck, dampening expectations of a deal soon. However, with the 2024 U.S. election approaching, Biden's time to take his due is running out.
The power seems to be in the hands of MBS.
Irreplaceable influence
Three megatrends have forced world leaders to woo a man who yesterday was despised and ignored on the international stage.
The first is the war in Ukraine. No one has had more success with sanctions and counter-sanctions between Russia and the West than the Gulf states. Rising oil and gas prices have replenished the treasury of Saudi Arabia.
The second megatrend is the growing competition between the US and China. As the world is increasingly divided into American and Chinese spheres of influence, both sides are aggressively courting middle powers such as Saudi Arabia, India and Indonesia. MBS deftly courted both sides without making any commitments, giving him the opportunity to negotiate with Biden and Xi Jinping on his own terms, as well as with Vladimir Putin.
The third megatrend is the energy transition, which is now finally takes off.
The often misunderstood pursuit of zero is counterintuitive and beneficial to Saudi Arabia – at least for now. As renewables become cheaper, an increasing number of economically inefficient oil wells will either be sealed, depleted, or no longer explored.
As a result, a small number of national oil companies in countries where they are still cost-effective drilling will control an increasing share of the market.
World oil supplies
The International Energy Agency predicts that the global share of oil coming from OPEC producers will rise from today's third to about half by 2050 while BP estimates , in the future, the group could account for up to two-thirds of the world's oil supply.
All this combined to increase the power of one man: Mohammed bin Salman.
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However, it wasn't just the tailwind in that back that brought MBS to the forefront of the international arena. The young crown prince, who is only 37 years old, is also working furiously to advance the interests of Saudi Arabia and his own.
Known for working 18-hour days and desperately trying to make his mark, MBS has launched a three-pronged strategy, to make your kingdom unbeatable: brand, buy and build.
The branding strategy is most commonly associated with «sports laundering»: trying to link the Saudi name to favorite teams or activities in the hope that goodwill will be wiped out.
Although other Gulf states have pioneered the idea, The Saudi branding offensive is unparalleled in scope. The acquisition of Newcastle United in 2021 was just the beginning. Riyadh has since quadrupled the amount it spends on sports to £4.9bn.
Cristiano Ronaldo has signed a $75 million contract for every one-year contract with Al Nasr FC Photo: Anadolu agency
Football is at the center of this waste of money. Over the past 18 months, Saudi Arabia has begun luring world stars into its Pro League, from Cristiano Ronaldo, who now earns over $75 million a year at Al Nasr, to Neymar, who was sold by the Qatari club. PSG for 90 million euros.
But ambitions are not limited to football. The opening of the breakaway LIV Golf tour rocked the sport. The merger deal with the already existing PGA Golf Tour organization caused even more anxiety among many players. Boxing and tennis are now Saudi targets.
Expenses
In addition, there is a consumer boom in the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund has spent huge amounts of money investing in Western businesses, not only to establish deep and powerful ties with major economies, but also to profit from these companies.
From Games to Golf: Growth Saudi Arabia's spending < p>The corporate world, like the diplomatic world, has taken a dramatic turn when it comes to business ties with the Gulf states.
In the aftermath of Khashoggi's murder, JP Morgan, Ford, Uber, Blackrock and Blackstone executives snubbed the country's flagship Davos in the Desert conference. However, many of the same leaders attended the same event last year. The scale of the wealth on offer is simply too great to ignore.
The third phase of the MBS strategy is construction. His ambitions in this regard are so colossal that they can be called science fiction.
The crown prince doesn't just want to build the Line, a car-free city of nine million people in a single building stretching 170 kilometers across the desert. He also wants to build an adjoining OXAGON semi-floating industrial complex that will be 33 times the size of New York City. Together they are part of NEOM, a utopian Martian colony-style kingdom within a kingdom that MBS is trying to build in the desert using the best architects money can buy.
Saudi Arabia's futuristic metropolis is part of MBS's plans to ease the kingdom's dependence on petrodollars Photo: NEOM/AFP via Getty Images < p>But that is not all. MBS also wants to rebuild Riyadh around Muqaab: a lattice giant cubic skyscraper that holds skyscrapers inside a skyscraper made from giant disks.
From huge marinas to giant sky resorts, countless «smaller» mega projects have been laid off across the country.
For MBS, they are all part of the plan that he and his team of allies — mostly ambitious young princes — hatched when he rose to the top: Vision 2030.
Their goal is to diversify the country away from oil and prepare it for a future without fossil fuels. Work has begun on electric vehicle factories in Jeddah and agreements have been signed to supply clean, solar-powered hydrogen electrolyzers in the desert.
The world is wondering if this sounds like science fiction, is it because it is?
MBS has another production target in mind: jet fighters.
>< p>Very soon, Downing Street will have to decide whether to allow Saudi Arabia to the crown jewel of British defense, the Tempest fighter project. The UK is developing the aircraft jointly with Italy, Sweden and Japan. Now the Saudis want to join. Acceptance would have meant handing over part of the development of the aircraft to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is desperately behind in terms of technology.
However, senior officials say that — despite Japanese objections — Britain will have to find some way to get the Saudis into the tent. The growing influence of the Kingdom — financial and diplomatic — means that it is they who have power over us.
From London's point of view, MBS is a suboptimal leader for Saudi Arabia. Of countless Anglophile princes, he is the son of the least westernized of recent Saudi kings. MBS spoke poor English for a long time and was known to speak with displeasure about Western power over Saudi Arabia.
MBS will visit London soon, his first trip to the UK since Khashoggi's murder. Rishi Sunak will be happy to talk about potential trade deals and investments in Britain. But no doubt MBS will get his requests too.
The Foreign Office knows that the crown prince has come to see history as a cross between a video game and a Saudi court — confrontation, money and manipulation. And he knows what he wants.
Transform or die
The respected 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun had a saying: no dynasty can last more than three generations.
The role of king has now been transferred, more or less by mutual consent, between the six sons of the founder of the kingdom, Ibn Saud, who ruled until his death in 1953.
Mohammed bin Salman's path to becoming the de facto ruler was by no means guaranteed. He is the seventh son of King Salman, who is himself the 25th son of Ibn Saud.
According to «Blood And Oil,» a biography of MBS written by journalists Bradley Hope and Justin Shack, what brought the then 15-year-old MBS out of his lethargy and fired up his ambition was a terrifying revelation. : his father, despite being the governor of Riyadh, did not accumulate a serious fortune and had dangerous debts.
Instead of accumulating billions in their name, the family lived a luxurious life, content with handouts from the Saudi treasury.
It was a metaphor for the country as a whole. Decades of embezzlement, corruption and the inability to reform, build or even imagine a new economy have left Saudi Arabia in a stupor.
This is a country where two-thirds of the Saudi population is under 35 years old. and even now — in the best of good times — more than a fifth of them are unemployed.
MBS realized that the country was in a race against time. He must transform or die.
Net zero weight is not the goal of carbon weight reduction. This is the industrial revolution. China, Europe and America are now competing to completely phase out fossil fuels.
MBS knows that the current surge of power in Saudi Arabia is temporary. The energy war between Russia and the West will end, bringing down oil prices. And while Saudi Arabia will hold a larger and larger share of the oil markets in the meantime, profits will dry up.
Moreover, there is a loophole at the heart of the oil state: the country's budget only works when the price of oil exceeds $80 per barrel. When it dips below that level (it was hovering around $80 on Friday), debt starts creeping up.
National Debt as a Share of GDP
Frightened by the vulnerability his father's apathy placed him in, the young MBS became obsessed with money.
At 16, he amassed a fortune of $100,000 by selling gold coins given to him by his uncle King Fahd and his father's gold watch. He invested money in trading stocks and shares before he ended up losing everything.
Deciding to become a billionaire, he began calling influential acquaintances and asking them for money. Money-making businesses included a garbage collection business and a real estate company.
This desperate pursuit of new profits is what he is trying to do to the entire country. However, instead of using his own accounts, he uses the country's sovereign wealth fund: the innocuously named Public Investment Fund.
MBS wants to buy up as much of the rest of the world's profits as possible. Combined with the billions of dollars thrown out each year by national oil company Saudi Aramco, it has the potential to create the biggest pot of money in the world.
MBS has an almost childish side to it. His obsession with mega-projects, or the fact that he is said to be an avid Call of Duty fan, or that he has a casino in his palace, staffed by British waiters and croupiers.
It means missing the point. There is another side of MBS — hunger and ruthlessness. In his single-minded pursuit of success, it is clear that he learned to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata flawlessly or boasted to Islamic clerics that he was inspired by Machiavelli — all in a Saudi snake pit. It is this logic that he brings to the world stage.
Time trial
How long will the rise in Saudi Arabia last? Are we talking about a superdecade or more? Nobody knows for sure. Like a wheel of hell, the logic of decarbonization is set up for the rise and fall of Saudi wealth, and only for one brief moment can its accounts stabilize.
Society is in a fever. The kingdom is both more dictatorial than ever and more liberal. It allows women to drive and allows cinemas to open despite the rise in the number of executions.
In its atmosphere, according to some experienced observers, there is a hint of the madness that the last Shah wanted for Iran. . There are voices everywhere, telling you to slow down and wait.
But MBS is in a hurry. He is obsessed with Alexander the Great, who by the age of 30 had amassed one of the largest empires in history. Friends, not without a hint of admiration, call him «Iskander». There is no mega-deal or mega-project that he would not be tempted to.
But how long can he pay for them? Or how many of them will become giant ruins of a collapsed civilization? There is a saying in the Middle East: seize opportunities because they pass like clouds.
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