David P. Goldman — Saudi Arabia gets its first real government

A couple of years ago I attended seminars with Chinese and Israeli counterterrorism experts in Beijing, in my capacity as a board member of a foundation that promotes Sino-Israel relations. A senior Chinese official complained that the Saudi royal family funds every radical madrassa in Xinjiang province, where Muslim Uyghurs of Turkish ethnicity form the majority. With a long and porous border stretching through sparsely-populated lands, Chinese security couldn’t prevent the funds from pouring in.

I asked our Chinese hosts why they didn’t remonstrate with the Saudi government. The Chinese official said, “We talk to the Saudis all the time, and they say they will have nothing to do with it. But this is not a government. It is a family! Some crazy cousin is always sending money to terrorists through informal finance channels.”

Now it appears that Saudi Arabia has a government, thanks to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s weekend purge of the royal family. It is probably the only political event in recent memory that has the support of Washington, Moscow and Beijing, not to mention Berlin, London, Paris and Tokyo — as well as Jerusalem....

Best analysis yet of what is actually going down in SA. I recommend reading the whole thing. Goldman ties a lot of the apparently loose strings together in a coherent explanation that sounds entirely plausible.

This is a high stakes gamble.

Asia

Saudi Arabia gets its first real government

David P. Goldman, "Spengler"

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