The future of Saudi Arabia and its regional role

up next we have a fascinating conversation of course about Saudi Arabia and its future regional role between Tom Friedman who needs no introduction from the New York Times he has an excellent piece out just this week on the topic called Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring at last and with him is our very own superstar Bruce Riedel who has written a lot about this topic as well and has a brand new book titled kings and presidents on the relationship between Saudi monarchs and American presidents all the way since FDR we have copies of the book available outside but they're running out very fast so you may need to get it on a bookstore or laptop near you so please without further ado join me in welcoming Tom Friedman and Bruce Riedel great great to be here Bruce and I'll do a little duet um I'm gonna start with just some discussion of how I see things evolve the inside Saudi Arabia now and then Bruce is gonna talk about us Saudi policy all these guys take ten minutes and then open open the floor sorry is it in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago two both sort of take the pulse of the country's best days good in a short time into a interview of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spent about four hours with him and came away with what were for me you know some really new and unexpected impressions um let me start with what I think was that for me the the central the most important impression I had and it revolves around a year that I think is very important in the history of the Middle East 1979 it was an important year for me personally because that's when I started as a reporter in Beirut and the first story I covered in 1979 was the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by 500 radical pura tanah chol soon the Wahhabi extremists you may recall they they came with coffins to parade around the Kaaba in Mecca they opened the coffins and there were bodies inside but but submachine guns they take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca for two weeks and they the Saudis cannot get them out they eventually have to bring in French Special Forces which is you can imagine how radical that was and during those two weeks the Saudi rouille family is subjected to daily bombardments from the Grand Mosque of Mecca by these extremists that you are not Islamic you are westernizers your secular eyes errs you have perverted the very soul of Islam and lost your credibility as the protectors of the Two Holy Mosques that was a a fundamental shock to the Saudi system and in response to that shock they basically the Saudi really family took Islam on a right turn that we have been living with to today they essentially banned fun in Saudi Arabia band music and empowered the clerics to impose a strict puritanical religious regime on the country I had at a time was actually on the liberalizing track and as a Egyptian friend of mine a scholar said Islam lost its brakes in 1979 and unfortunately only thing that didn't happen in 1779 was the Mecca mosque affair the Iranian Revolution happened in 1979 the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan happened in 1979 and Three Mile Island melted down in 1979 and the result of all those things is we became more dependent on oil the price of oil went up because of the Iranian Revolution and the Iranian Revolution spawned a Shia Islamic fundamentalist government that was that in competition with a Saudi fundamentalist government and empowered by high oil prices fundamentally changed the face of Islam and it it ended up in 9/11 you can draw a straight line back okay among other things and of course the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan what did we do we then basically enlisted Islamic jihadists to fight against the Soviets this was a this was a terrible wrong turn so anyways what interested me most as I said in my column in my interview with the Crown Prince is that what I've been saying since 1979 is is um you guysyou Saudis would come to you and you will arrest bad guys when we tell you to rest that cleric they'll arrest them um they'll jail this person but we have never had a Saudi leader since 1979 who was ready to fight the war of ideas we don't have a war with Islam there's a war within Islam and basically there was no one fighting on our side there is afraid to take on the clerics ideologically or or just didn't want to for convenience and to me the most interesting moment in the interview was when he said to me um Tom I am NOT reforming Islam I am restoring Islam and that began a long disquisition about how the Prophet Mohammed dealt with Christians and Jews and women and women were empowered etc and then one of his ministers went in the other room and got his cell phone and came back and started showing me on his cell phone pictures of Saudi Arabia circa 1950 1960 1970 women in dresses women and men mixing we forget what a turn that country took in 1979 so to me the most important thing going on in Saudi Arabia today is that we have a leader who potentially and please underline that word three times but potentially he is ready to reverse an incredibly toxic process around Islam and Islam in the world that began in 1979 the second most important thing going on there which I really was blown away by is that he is doing that as much as leading from the top as reflecting what is coming from the bottom because when you talk to Saudis and maybe I just only talked to the you know the people who felt this way but I don't think so you see how fed up they were with this whole clerical regime and again he's not just talking about it women will be allowed to drive in June women last week it was announced can attend any football or soccer game in a stadium now in a women's section they have concerts now Toby Keith was there for National Day famous Lebanese Sopranos coming there next week this is not just talk the the character of the society is changing and it's coming from the bottom up as much as the top down that to me is not only the most important story it's the second most important story it's the third most important story and it's the fourth most important story and why we have a fundamental interest in having a leader there who's ready to go down that path unfortunately he has other things on his plate at the same time he has a domestic reform economic educational infrastructure and he has a foreign policy that are are quite they're not only controversial but they're enormous ly difficult you know things that I said about Mohammed bin Salman this is my third time talking to him is that there's two things you need to know about him he's more McKinsey than Wahhabi number one and if he didn't exist the system would have had to invent him okay if he didn't exist this country was going down okay so don't think he just came out of nowhere and this country was going down the system had to throw someone like this up nevertheless he has he has his weaknesses yeah at one point of the interview I was telling Bruce I said to him um who is your coach in life I believe everybody needs a coach I was blessed with a wonderful father-in-law he was my coach I said who's your coach and he said well my father my mother and my wife we had interesting conversation about that the impact his wife and mother had on him he was basically homeschooled because his mother didn't believe in Saudi school system but unfortunately he doesn't have a coach and right now domestically he's taking on an initiative to broadly reform the Saudi economy and I really worry he does not have enough of a depth of a team of really capable and talented people to handle the amount of deferred reform he's trying to overcome and at the same time in foreign policy he basically is trying to take the Iranians on regionally and um I in our conversation on that I quoted a line from Hamilton to him or a variation on it which is you don't have the troops you do not have the troops I get where you're coming from but you don't have the troops and as a result you're the Iranians over 40 years of being a price state have developed the muscle of building underground networks using proxies and they are the world Olympic champions of this and they have built it up over 40 years they know how to assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister and not get caught they know how to blow up an American Embassy and not get caught they are they know how to blow up at a Jewish Community Center in Israel they are the world champions and they have developed that muscle in those 40 years the only muscle the Saudis have developed is to write a check it's the muscle between your thumb and your forefinger okay they can not play this game and when they try to play it they play it with disastrous humanitarian results as we've seen in Yemen and or with just over playing their hand as we've seen in Qatar and in Lebanon and so I get where they're coming from Iran today indirectly controls for Arab capitals they feel surrounded he doesn't say this but I know what they feel they feel their parents generation completely let the Iranians run roughshod over them and now they're encircled but what I fear is they don't have the ability to project power in this game the way the Iranians can and I fear those two weaknesses the weakness of a weak team at home and the weakness of a week a team abroad basically it can undermine and be used by his opponents both at home and abroad and he's made a lot of enemies at home there are a lot of people under house arrest and that will undermine this central project of turning Islam away from 1979 in the only place that could turn it away the place where that wrong turn started that the home of the two holy mosques so my last line is that this guy needs a coach oh if only Jim Baker were Secretary of State today someone who could say to him what he used to say to Bondar which is sit your royal ass down here and I'm gonna have a talk with you he needs a coach and he does not have a coach I believe in the region III wouldn't trust Rex Tillerson I wouldn't trust Rex Tillerson to coach my peewee football team playing softball or baseball I would certainly not trust him to coach hard ball in the Middle East and unfortunately I don't think the president has any of the sophisticated kind of nuanced view of this part of the world to coach the Saudis through this process so bottom line this guy's for real in my view because he's not only leading he's actually reflecting he's embarked on a on a project that has vast strategic implications think how much money and time and energy we've spent countering Islamic extremism okay and now we have a partner ready to do it from the very core of the Arabian Peninsula and doing it for his own reasons but but he's got he's fighting 18 different battles at once and he needs a coach and his coaches Donald Trump what can I say Bruce it's pretty hard to top that like Tom I also began my career at the CIA back in the late 1970s I was the Saudi desk officer on 1979 during the xyron take over the soundies actually provided us with enormous amount of information they were much more transparent about this incident then one would think normally the Saudis don't want to talk about what goes at home in this case they very much wanted to talk to us it was kind of a compliment that they thought we could actually tell them something about what was going on in the kingdom we couldn't but it was very useful what I focus on the book though is the us-saudi relationship and particularly the relationship between American presidents and Saudi Kings this relationship next year will be 75 years old it goes back to 1943 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited King Abdulaziz al-saud better known as a bin Saud to send a delegation to Washington he sent Princess Faisal and Khalid to future Kings they stayed at Blair House they were I would say wined and dined but they obviously weren't wined they were dying to be in the White House used Joost they then had extensive meetings on the hill they traveled across the country to Texas in California and back and really set the basis for the relationship the more famous meeting that follows two years later of FDR and ibin Saud was actually the ceiling touch the real relationship began between Faisal and FDR if you look at those 75 years one thing that is very striking is the volatility of this relationship it has enormous highs for example the liberation of Kuwait the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan but it also has a lot of really low low moments of course most importantly the 1973 oil embargo no country has ever done as much economic damage to the United States as Saudi Arabia dr. Soviets not the Nazis nobody Saudi Arabia has done more economic damage to us than any other country and there are other been very low moments I called them near-death experiences in the book there was a near-death experience at the end in the Obama administration over the Arab Spring particularly over the Arab Spring in Bahrain where the Saudis came close to the point of saying we're going to use oil as a weapon again if you look at the relationship today I think there's a paradox superficially it's better than ever Donald Trump famously made Riyadh his first visit he was dined he wasn't wine but he was definitely dined he was flattered I would say the Saudis understood their man their coach and they played him like a fiddle they promised a lot including a hundred and ten billion dollar arms deal which is fake news there is no hundred and ten billion dollars arm steel if you ask the Department of Defense what's in it they can't answer the question but they promised him a lot and he gave them a very blank check endorsing their policies particularly their policies visa via Iran and their policies in Iran and he's followed up on that blank check with a series of tweeted blank checks since then supporting everything that the crown prince and his father is doing in that sense the relationship looks really good but if you look a little bit more closely the relationships got some serious problems number one is in the judicial branch the justice against sponsors of Terrorism Act passed last year in a veto override by the Senate 98 to zero allows plaintiffs to sue Saudi Arabia for its involvement alleged or real in the 9/11 conspiracy there are now seven major court cases underway what's interesting in these court cases is as the gutter dispute developed the plaintiffs began to realize that the UAE could also be sued and that the fact the case can be made better against the UAE that it can against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia so now both of them are being sued in these court cases I don't know how these court cases are going to turn out they'll probably take years but I think there's a reasonable chance that a judge will find against the Saudis in which case there will be a massive economic penalty against Saudi Arabia one of the reasons why the Saudis don't want to put a Ramco on the New York Stock Exchange is because they could lose a Ramco if they put it on the New York Stock Exchange the other thing to look at is the legislative side ninety eight to zero two senators didn't vote because they weren't there Tim Kaine and Bernie Sanders both would have voted for it Hillary Clinton and bra and Donald Trump both endorsed the joste bill there has been one arm sales that has come up since the president's trip to Saudi Arabia it was a half a billion dollar arm sales for weapons to Yemen it passed by two votes the next one probably won't even pass by two votes if there is one in fact the administration is holding back on even the most routine kind of arms sales to Saudi Arabia right now because the odds that they can get it through the Senate are not very good and the reason they can't get it through the Senate combination of 9/11 and Yemen the Yemen war the Yemen war has become a quagmire and a fiasco let me just finish by saying a word or two about the the crown prince and how he's doing I completely agree with Tom there's a strikingly new interesting thing about Saudi Arabia is that there is a consensus for the first time that the status quo is unsustainable there is no argument over that everyone agrees the status quo is unsustainable as long as oil prices are in the 50 to 60 dollar barrel for barrel a day for simple reason Saudi Arabia for the last three years has been paying down its reserves Saudi Arabia spent down one third of its reserves since King Salman ascended to the throne and you don't have to go to the Wharton School to figure out that if they've spent one third and three years six years from now there's a moment of reckoning a terrible moment of reckoning they've got to do something about that but there's a contradiction between the crown prince's commitment to reform and change and his foreign policy his foreign policy is very unsound he doesn't write checks he intervenes he tries to use Saudi military force to effect change most notably in Yemen and it's not working again as tom said they don't have the instruments to do it the Royal Saudi Air Force can deliver a lot of ordnance but it can't really change the dynamics of the war in Yemen now those dynamics are very much in flux today literally as we meet there's this now a new civil war within the Civil War we'll see whether that plays out to the Saudis benefit or not we can talk about that in question but what it comes down to is a country that desperately needs to be spending its money on economic reforms at home is spending an enormous amount of money on its defense budget the Yemen war bites one conservative estimate cost Saudi Arabia 200 million dollars a day Saudi Arabia in 2015 the last year we have good numbers for had the third largest defense budget in the world only the United States and China spent more money on defense in 2015 now for Americans when you do that on a per capita basis that's that much of a hit for Saudis it's seven thousand dollars per person per year on military expenditures very very little proof that they're getting anything from it what they urgently need to do is get out of these Quagmire's and concentrate on domestic reform at home that's what Mohammed bin Salman can actually make his mark last thing I would say if you look at the rivalry between the Iranians and the Saudis today across the region there's one clear winner the Iranians are cleaning their clock now we've had a little help from us we open the door for their potential to get into Iraq arguably we open the door for their potential or we facilitated the door in Syria but objectively across the region it is the Saudis who are losing in all of these conflicts with possible exception of Bahrain and that's one of the reasons why the Saudis are increasingly desperate and looking for some kind of outside assistance because they know their clock is being claimed so I want to start with a Dan Shapiro and then Joe Lieberman Dan where are you right here thanks Tom neither of you terrific presentations by both neither of you mentioned Israel neither of you mentioned the Palestinians not that's quite telling in and of itself about what's on their minds but of course there's great I think consensus probably in this room certainly Prime Minister referenced it that the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia is of a different character than it once was certainly alignment of interest that's very clear and so votes in a couple of directions one is what is realistic about what Saudi Arabia can contribute to what we would all like to see which is a improved prospect of israeli-palestinian peace and in light of its rivalries with Iran and right in light of the domestic burdens that MBS is taking on as he does this and on the other side to your last point Bruce what is Saudi Arabia's expectation of Israel to help it confront Iran as some including me understood the Hariri episode it was to try to find a way to provoke tension on the hezbollah israel border not that israel necessarily initiated but that israel eventually would come in and bloody it Hezbollah Snow's bully Iran's nose in that setting so what Atkins had to contribute were Saudis expectations from Israel you know I would just say and I'm anxious to see what Bruce says to um you know when I first started going to Saudi Arabia in the 90s you know the you couldn't go to a private home and the first thing on the table was you know Israelis and Palestinians the first question and today you can't go to private home and the first question is in red wine or white wine okay I I was there for three died I didn't hear that I'd sin hear the israel-palestine thing come up at all and I tried to engage him on that he wouldn't bite there is one question though I would have four for my Israeli friends and that is I saw Steinitz last week talking about how we're talking to Saudi Arabia um and that's just really stupid okay I have to tell you for any Israeli minister to talk publicly about Israel's relations with Saudi Arabia is just bloody stupid because all his bolognese is to take that and Iran to take that and say all that Mohammed bin Salman is doing by the way of domestic reform in regional policy is at the behest of the hoodies and then you just pound that and pound that impound that so if Israelis you know have any interest in seeing his his reforms succeed how about shutting up you know I know that's hard but I think that that would be my my best advice you're not doing him any favor for to get a headline out on that but I think more broadly I think there's an allusion I've been to this allusion before I I did the they are a Peace Initiative it with with King Abdullah and that is that Saudi Arabia is going to do things for Israel for less than the price of real progress on the ground with Palestinians that is a carpet I have seen sold so many times and trust me it's not it's not going to happen in fact at a time when he's exposed domestically and taking on clerics the last thing he's going to do is get out ahead of anything that Palestinians are satisfied with visa via Israel on the ground and I think to think that they're gonna lead that parade when he's juggling all these other balls at home and take risks that go beyond the actual substance of progress identified by Palestinians is another another big illusion I share the skepticism that you just heard but I want to also put this in a little historical perspective collusion between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not the 21st century development it goes back to the 1960s in fact I would say in the 1960s again in a Yemen war all comes back to Yemen there was more cooperation between Israel and the Saudis than anything we're seeing on the ground today concrete cooperation in supporting the royalist faction which has evolved over time who were now the Hootie's I mean in the Middle East everything changes usually for the worst that cooperation included air drops by the israeli air force two Royalists camps along the Saudi border like today there was very little public manifestation of it and light today it was usually done through cutouts not directly but concrete examples of this before and King Faisal with was if anything the most passionate Saudi leader when it came to the question of Palestine and Jerusalem the only other thing I would say on that is that if you if you want to derail the Israeli Sunni especially Saudi rapprochement raised Jerusalem because that immediately is going to cause a problem for the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and that's a problem really good that is it very difficult if he wants to reform the Kingdom he needs the chlorophyll establishment to be on side and this issue will immediately put them off sign so that's a very foolish thing talking about it as foolish as well but Jerusalem is pushing the red button that's most likely to cause problems here you mentioned Lebanon and you know like everyone else I'm a little uncertain what the Saudi objective was with side Hariri if there was an objective but the one thing that the Saudis very much want is for somebody to take on Hezbollah for many reasons not the least of which is the missiles that the Houthis are now firing to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are being worked on by Hezbollah technicians not Iranians Hezbollah technicians and Hezbollah who team relationship is very very close much closer than the hootie of our nyan relationship so they desperately need someone to take on Hezbollah who in the world says that the next time there's a war we're gonna annihilate Hezbollah well if you're a Saudi great good what could be more favorable for Oh a hobby dream come true than a war between the Israelis and Hezbollah they'll be a lot like the iran-iraq war for us hopefully it never ends but these Rowdies know that it would end that would end probably in a Hezbollah defeat Lebanon could be destroyed in the process so I would also caution Israel to be very careful about the Saudis leading you into a trap with the Iranians and Hezbollah I want to go to David Makovsky Tom do you in your talks when you talk about the issue of the coach we in Washington sometimes hear that his coach is mvz Mohammed bin Zayed in the Emirates on the issue of Qatar Yemen and I was just wondering to what extent does his name come up as a coach and on the second point you say well israel-palestinian did not come up and we assume there's been some you know a security exchanges intel on on iran and we assumed that overt links is a couple bridges too far is there a middle tier here of policy coordination on third countries that's not military I'm not about us an Israeli strike on Lebanon but it could be issues on banking sanctions with on Iran on Lebanon and other countries where there's a where there's a convergence and by the way on your point about that the Iranians are gonna use whatever Israelis say publicly rouhani has started I understand in sermons and has already talked about a Saudi Zionist alliance yeah that was as predictable as tomorrow's dawn you know um David I don't know enough about the second I just don't know yeah we don't even have an ambassador in Saudi Arabia not much going on there so and and so we don't have a coat we don't even have an ambassador you know who has a relationship with these with these people um and it's not going to happen at the DCM level and the but to your to your point about this is really I don't wanna say anything negative about NBC I don't know what's coaching there or not but this is really inside baseball but if I were giving him a regional coach it would be MBR Mohammed Ben Rusch ed the ruler of Dubai much more subtle knows how to balance different forces doesn't put the edge on things very quiet and how he moves that would be my advice if he were looking for a coach more MBR than than any other three initials I could think of that's very inside baseball but yeah there's a few people in the room forget to get the point um fine it's your show thank you why didn't you offer to be his coach to do a great job yeah you you I I get my aggravation playing golf game but thank you very much for the idea so did he lie about the hundred billion dollar deal blatantly absolutely it's fake news totally fake news there is no deal there is no deal what there is is a series of wannabes a wish list if you go to the Department of Defense and ask them can you show me the 110 billion deal a deal they'll come up with a list of potential sales some of which the Saudis have expressed interest in many of which American companies have expressed a lot of interest in but there's no contracts aren't the way in arms you know I've spent a lot of an inordinate amount of my life pursuing arms deals with Middle Eastern countries I guess I'm a merchant of death when you come to them when you have an arms a real arms deal apartment of Defense notifies the Department of State which then notifies the Senate and the Senate has 30 days to vote for or to vote against it there's no 110 billion dollar deal that's even been notified to the Department of State let alone to poverty notified to the Senate what is remarkable to me is with a few exceptions the cow came in in the Washington Post being one of them most of the American press just bought it and repeats it over and over again like there really is a deal the last thing I would say about it is be very wary of 110 billion dollar arms deal with the Saudis they can't pay for it there's no money to pay for so they only have 480 million dollars in reserves right now so that would be a fifth of their reserves by the way if that I saw the call from the central bank there you know so I just add too Brucie would you join here to Bruce's point where is warfare going today I mean and who's winning it's all irregular warfare it's the combination of little green men cyber you know a special ops on the less and and that's how the Iranians are winning throughout the Middle East selling 110 billion dollar weapons systems these kits to these countries that is so out of the Cold War at a time when the whole trend of warfare around the world is toward a regular warfare and so it the whole thing is just completely out of sync and out of context I'm Joe Lieberman thanks Simon thanks Bruce Tom first I want to thank you for the column you wrote when you came back from Saudi Arabia about your conversation with the crown prince and what you said today I think it's one of the most important columns you've ever written and you've written a lot of important ones not everyone agreed but thank you very much not only it affected me but I bet it affected a lot of people both in Washington and policy circles and around the country in this sense me I'm watching what's happening there I'm thinking this is a remarkable development that this crown prince has emerged as you said if you didn't exist we'd have to invent him but the history doesn't always invent leaders who are a constructive at a given time and here he is so I think what would you so it's it to me that my fascinated hopeful response really had some merit to it at least you and I both agree I thought that and a lot of others too I thought that the Prime Minister's reference to bin Salman this morning was fascinating and striking not because the Prime Minister quoted the line but because the Crown Prince said it the conference used I compared the Iranian leadership to Hitler which goes right to the part of not only Israeli and Jewish psyche but but the American psyche and hopefully still to some extent to Western psyche about how we should be dealing with Gathering Storm so I think you've affected public opinion here might in a very constructive way my question now is talk about if it didn't exist invented beyond the military deals which real or not are not enough if the president was smart enough to ask you for advice about or are the leaders of Congress what should our affirmative policy be toward this new administration in Saudi Arabia in other words rather than just sitting back right this is really this is a turning point yes and it could fail yeah so what can the u.s. do to help it succeed well thanks John I want to say a couple things on both the the first part of your comment second if I were you know in in in a position of authority right now what I would do is is I would get on the phone to Jim Baker I would ask him to come out of retirement I'd ask them to be my special envoy to Saudi Arabia and my coach I can't think of anybody better more tough-minded more realistic more sense of politics you know really narrow down his agenda you know I was thinking about it the other day in in in 1989 you may recall a baker and bush herbs but I guess it was 1990 I guess it was and it maybe was 90 why they invite September 91 I'm sorry are they invited Sheppard not Edvard Shevardnadze to come to Jackson Hole Baker took him out to Jackson Hole this is a first really big meeting between the Bush administration and and the Gorbachev team and I was the pool reporter on the flight out little plane Washington to Jackson all I was sitting in the back and I really powerful image in my head of a baker and Shevardnadze they're sitting in you know seats across the aisle just deep in conversation you know and I talked to Baker about it afterwards and these weren't his words they were mine but basically he was coaching him and the message was this you've got to make all these huge reforms make them now and then blame they're all in your predecessor all the pain okay it was very Baker s you know make all the tough for us up front and blame your predecessors for all the pain okay that's not an analog to what what MBS needs to do not but it's that kind of sophisticated nuance and so what I worry about is you know they they love the fact that Trump loves them and that's there for eight years of Obama and Obama held him in contempt frankly he didn't think they were serious and he had maybe a certain romantic view of Iran or not I'm not sure where that came from but I think he saw a real civilization there that could be changed and he just thought these are guys who would never be serious partner not MDS but more just that his predecessor is there necessarily and I worry that they kind of fall in love with that they they really like we really have a partner now but I really question whether this team in Washington has the ability to then deliver on what they need on the ground I mean Martin alluded to it you know are we now leaving them actually alone you know once we've told them we love you and thanks for that 100 billion dollar arms deal that I can use you know on in public what is happening on the ground we so we need it actually Israel needs an American coach right now to help it out of its predicament in Syria as much as as MBS you don't need needs a coach at home and so I would I would get someone in there who could really talk to him win his confidence because there's a lot of issues there um in terms of his willingness to take advice inside there's a lot of weaknesses there it's not of strengths I mean the guys really got guts and some of the things that that he's done but um I I really worry about the the you you asked a question where the first part of your question after talking about the article you it really triggered something this is the point I want to make cuz this is a point I want to make so um you know Tammy wrote a really good piece the other day I urge you to see it her testimony to to Congress I think she made a just a really good point which is that ultimately I'm but I'm a tough guy what does that mean I'm a tough guy so I lived in Beirut for years five through ten of the Lebanese civil war it was it was resolved in after year fourteen in Thai of Saudi Arabia in an agreement known as the top agreement and it was based on this principle no Victor no vanquished and the minority gets over-represented so in Lebanon's case it was the Christians were the minority they were 30% of the population they were actually given 50% of the seats in the parliament as a way to reassure them and to sign on to the deal I believe we need a tie if agreement in Syria I believe we need a Taif agreement in Iraq okay anyone who say Iraq cannot be governed without Iran it cannot be governed by Tehran but there's got to be some power sharing arrangement and what I worry is that this line of Mickey here on the implacable foe and I have no illusions about these guys but they are on the ground and they know how to play the game and we can break a lot of pics trying to wipe them out of power from Yemen to Syria to Iraq and at some point they at least have to be tested whether they can be a partner for some kind of power sharing arrangements in these countries because if we think one side if we take sides in the grand sunni-shia Civil War I think that's gonna not end well and so again I have no illusions about the Iranians but I've no illusions about some of these Sunni powers as well at the end of the day the only way these places are gonna be stabilized is no Victor no vanquished and we figure out the proper power sharing arrangement but if we think we're going to defeat them you know I I was the first reporter on the scene when the Marines were blown up in Beirut I've been to that play you know these guys they're they they play this game so much better than we do this is a hockey game and don't come to a hockey game and expect to play by the rules of touch football that's not gonna happen and these guys really know how to play hockey and we don't let me go to the specific of your question what should we what should our coach be say first restore cohesion in the royal family this man has through the instrument of his father and after all all of this his rise to power is not something that he has done his father has done it for him and it's not that hard to rise to power if the king of an absolute monarchy and a police state is supporting you in doing that but in the process of doing it they've broken down consensus within the royal family first by removing two crown princes and when they removed the second Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef who was as close to a real genuine hero in Saudi Arabia's modern history as anyone before they did it in a particular way that well he was put under house arrest he was removed more or less at the barrel of a gun he was then dissed with all these things saying that he has a drug addiction problem if he has a drug addiction problem it's because he got addicted to painkillers after the third al-qaeda attempt to assassinate him that's not exactly the typical path to drug addiction for most people and then the the unprecedented arrests of princes and senior officials on the 4th of November in Saudi Arabia you can do things like that but if you do it it has a ripple effect within the royal family and I can tell you from the emails and stuff that I get from Saudis and which I hope soon to be getting more as soon as my email server is corrected by the Brookings Institution small point there there is tremendous hostility among other royals to this young man who they see as yes he's a reformer but he's brash he's ruthless he's breaking the rules and that he needs to come up and and he that is not a good place for him to be particularly if his father passes away sometime in the near future as one American official said to me the father provides air cover for Mohammed bin Salman right now you take that air cover away and the lot of the royal family is going to move against this man and there's no political way to move against it there's only one precedent for removing a sitting King and that was King Saud it took Prince Faisal 10 years to do it and it came at the end at the barrel of a gun literally the royal palace was surrounded by the National Guard with the tanks barrels pointing at it and he was told you either leave or we're gonna kill you and in the case of this one a lot of Saudis I've talked to say if the King dies tonight the crown prince could be assassinated before morning I'm sure he's aware of that second advice I would give to him is find a way out of Yemen Yemen doesn't feature large on our portfolio it falls back the Syria and Iraq for understandable reasons for Saudis this is the principle war this is the principle area of archive of conflict they need a way out of this and I think the taya formula is exactly the right formula we should be looking for a way out of this the whole world should be looking for a way out of this we've been on stage here for 42 minutes for Yemeni children have died in that time period of diseases that are easily cured 11 million Yemeni children will be stunted by what has already happened in this war this is a moral humanitarian catastrophe of enormous proportions and it means that 28 million Yemenis will spend the rest of their lives trying to find a way to get back at Saudi Arabia so we need to help them find a way out of this I think the coach that they're going to get Jim Baker would be a good choice but I think the coach they're going to get as Mike Pompeo and from my experience with him I think he probably gets it better than most people does the question will be does he have the support of the president as he moves forward on something like that thanks Tom thanks to you Anne and Bruce for a fascinating discussion one of the things that you said that really struck me tom was not about James Baker because we all have nostalgia for James Baker but we in reality ain't coming back but the fact that Mohammed bin Salman was home-schooled and that's something we need to pay attention to he was not educated in the West at all he was home-schooled so his education is actually quite limited and yet he clearly as you testify and I had the opportunity of talking to him at length he has the right instance the right stuff both in terms of his use of power and in terms of the objectives of the use of that power when it comes to domestic reform and I agree with you 100% and it's usually consequential as you also say if he succeeds it will have profound ripple effects across the SUNY well and if he fails it'll also have profoundly negative effects so we have a big stake in his success but there's not much we can do about that side of it the side of it that becomes critically important that both talk about in the mentor is the way in which his headstrong an instinctive approach to dealing with Iran leads Saudi Arabia into a world of Hood in trouble and he himself admitted in our conversation to the fact that that Yemen was playing to Iran's advantage that it was almost cost-free for Iran and hugely costly for Saudi Arabia so you know you look around for a mentor it's not going to be NBC or NPR because they happen to be Highnesses not Royal Highnesses and it makes all the difference in the world this is Saudi Arabia they're not going to take he's not gonna take his advice from the little princelings around him that's that's just the reality it's not gonna be James Baker and it's certainly not gonna come from anybody in the Trump administration maybe pompeya but I doubt what we need and maybe Punk payer can do this is some American diplomacy not meant about American diplomacy which leads to an initiative in Yemen to resolve this war I think he would be ready to follow if we came up with a decent formula and then NBC would support it it's very easy to tee off on the Iranians and feel good about it and when he said that about you know that that the Supreme Leader's into Hitler I I did stop and say I just want to make sure you're saying that on the record you know because my in the back of my mind I was simply saying where do you go from there I mean in the back of my mind I know is the only answer and once you've called the other guy Hitler where do you go from there you know so this is these are the kinds of things that that worry me as I say you know and you know to Bruce's point I know he's got I could only imagine you he's really alienated a lot of members of the family but I will say one thing I would say in his defense who never would have done what he did I I do think that you know I mean and they're they've lost their allowances they've lost their etc but you know one of the points I made in the column was that how he ends the ritz-carlton business it's really important does it end with some rule of law in account and transparency or does it end with opacity and just brutality it that matters inside and outside matters for investors and matters for other Saudis and I put that in the column to say I'm this is really important how you end this thing and the other thing which I said in the previous column I did about if you're on the reformed yet if you're gonna be the reformer your robe has to be really white no gazillion dollar yachts you got to decide you want to be Richard you want to really reform this country that's what a coach would tell him okay I don't care where you tell me the money came from for the OTT the fact is if you are going to be on an anti-corruption kick your robes have to be totally clean and again these are the things I think somebody wise would be would be telling him and I I just really worried that that's not happening I just want to emphasize the point of urgency here though as well the economic changes he needs to do needs to happen now we've already discussed reserves one-third of the reserves are gone they've tried increasing or decreasing subsidies and decreasing the public sector job force spectacular failure in both cases they reverse themselves in less than a week after they went forward we've talked about the defense budget the war in Yemen their economic problems are serious and getting much serious or very fast one of the things that is in the minds of everyone about the Ritz Carlton affair is that it was a shakedown that he desperately needs money and the only way he could get it is by stealing it from other Saudis now the message that that has sent so far to foreign investors is you gotta be out of your mind you're gonna invest in the country where the the head of the National Guard can be arrested one day and shaken down for a billion dollars how do you think they're gonna deal with you an American firm when your moment of truth comes or a Swedish firm or a French firm how he how he and Finn's this is very important right now it's not in a very good place for him it's in a very very bad place for him and it's alienating more and more I agree a lot of them are layabouts I wouldn't put Muhammad bin Nayef in that category however and progressively all of all the other families wings of the family the Abdullah's the knife's the Sultan's are all being thrown away and if you look at the history of the kingdom going back to its founding in 1744 when it gets in trouble is when there's a lack of cohesion in the royal family that's when it gets into real trouble wish you bleed tell me we have one time for a real quick one if Shipley's still here yeah yeah all right so first of all on on the Israeli politicians statements about the normalization taking a place behind the doors obviously the it's not intended for strategic effects indefinitely you'll make the point that they can make peace without making compromise right no Palestine question and it would be worse even if they believed it but my question is about the egyptian saudi relationship they're not neither one of you mentioned and now whether tom whether you talk to MBS about that and bruce what your reflections because when they first started the coalition prior to the emaan war the our press was mostly about this is being the cornerstone the new relationship between Saudi Arabia and Egypt the Egyptians were asked to send troops to Yemen they said no tankers oil tankers were ready in Egyptian ports to deliver free oil that were recalled back to Saudi Arabia that when when Hariri resigned obviously the the Egyptians were taken by surprise and thought that was detrimental clearly while they're part of the coalition the relationship strategically is quite working in foreign policy how does that the Saudis see it from your point of view the Saudis invested a lot in in facts I make the case in the book that they are leaked the co-conspirator in the coup the brought him to office and as a footnote the leader of that conspiracy was Prince Bandar it was probably his last big hurrah in the world of conspiracies conspiracies a man who's an expert of conspiracy this was his that last big hurrah but the Yemen war has damaged that relationship too as you say the Saudi expectation thirty months ago was that the Saudi and UAE air force would be defending an Egyptian and Pakistani ground force moving on sana Egyptians said been there done that no thanks and the Pakistanis who haven't been there said no as well and it was really remarkable Saudi Arabia has given more aid to Pakistan than any other country in the world and yet the Pakistani Parliament voted unanimously against sending troops to Yemen this whole long conspiracy that we've heard about a Saudi Pakistan nuclear arrangement well the Saudis found out the answer forget it whatever promise you think you have when the moment of truth comes we're not going to deliver these are two vital alliances for the Saudis Egypt in Pakistan they both been severely damaged by the Yemen war and that's Mohammed bin Salman judgment we have a couple moments I guess or abdul-allah until and Delpy yeah sorry where's the dollar I'm here we're right here Oh quite honestly my worry is not if Mohammed bin Salman fails my worry is if he succeeds I wonder if he fall back to our irredeemable optimism whenever a movement like Arab Spring or a charismatic Somoza leader like aired on challenges the status quo that we lost we become too optimistic and excited what makes you think wendy is this a young charismatic guy puts his royal butt on his throne completely unchallenged his opposition is crushed that he will prove to all of us that he is worse off than what he's going to be replaced I've no I do not answer that question I have no way to predict the future all I know is the country was definitely going down if it stayed on the on the trajectory that it was on I have no doubt about that whatsoever and you know my own view that when I wrote the second line in the column was some to predict only a fool would predict his success the only fool would root against it because where was the country going before he showed up I mean in a world that's getting faster and faster where machines and robots are taking away average work in the West what's gonna happen to a country like Saudi Arabia somebody had to step up to this and I do recoil at the you know take the greatest sin there are two great sins in journalism one is to say anything sort of possibly positive or optimistic you know in one of these things so when some only becomes law does it hold a hill comes down and you gosh I didn't know Yemen was a disaster I guess I should have spent the whole column talking about that and not the fact that you've got this massive upsurge within Saudi society for a change that he is he is both leading it and reflecting it you know yeah I was having lunch at the hotel and and a guy came up to me at lunch a Saudi and asked if I would join them for lunch now maybe he was planted there by the regime you know so yes but maybe he was just a guy who whatever had a regional bank and his bait director is in from Dubai and we're talking in the core salon she said to me my life was hijacked in 1979 my entire adult life was hijacked that year and one thing I know about NBS my daughter's life has a good chance of not being hijacked so I think what people really miss here is what's coming up from the ground there they are fed up and you have 160,000 Saudi students being educated abroad every year 35,000 coming back to think this is all about him you know and that it's just you know his weaknesses and strengths and not paying attention to the social roots of it I Got News for you the entire Arab world is dysfunctional right now completely dysfunctional and I think it has the potential to be a giant Yemen a giant human disaster area and so when I see someone having the balls to take on the religious component of that to take on the economic component to take on the play with all of his flaws okay and with all due respect to his cousin's not a one of them would have had the balls to do that that I want to invest just a little I just want to stick my head up and say god I hope you succeed and when you do that the holy hell comes down on you okay well okay is my view okay [Applause] thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: Brookings Institution

Views: 186,934

Keywords: Brookings Institution, Thomas Friedman, Bruce Riedel, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Middle East, Saban Forum

Id: Q9B3u_quW10

Length: 60min 44sec (3644 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2017