Saudi Arabia’s Perilous Pivot
Saudi Arabia needs comprehensive political and economic reforms if it is to have prosperity and security in the twenty-first century. But it remains to be seen if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman can deliver the necessary change without also turning his country into a personal dictatorship, or leading it into a devastating war.
JERUSALEM – “The most dangerous moment for a bad government,” the nineteenth-century French statesman and historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “is usually when it begins to reform itself.” Reform, after all, implies that traditional norms and institutions may have already been discredited, but that alternative structures have yet to be firmly established.