On Saudi Arabia

On Saudi Arabia
Karen Elliott House

Karen Elliott House has several different ways of imagining Saudi Arabia. It is, for starters, “a family corporation,” one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. It is also likened to “a grand hotel,” with Saudi citizens checking in at birth and being kept in an artificial but luxurious lifetsyle by an army of poorly-paid foreign workers. And finally it is a 747 jet, “richly appointed but mechanically flawed . . . losing altitude and gradually running out of fuel.”

Each of these reflects a different characteristic of the truly bizarre Saudi political regime. The real question then becomes how such a dysfunctional state has managed to keep going for so long. There are obvious answers: oil wealth, for starters, and the fact that nobody wants to see the state fail. But House also indicts the character of the people: a “somnolent and passive” population without any tradition of individual initiative or enterprise. In both politics and religion submission to authority is paramount, and freedom is undervalued, when it is given any value at all. House thinks many Saudis find freedom frightening. There is something in this that is more ancient or antique than medieval, but in either case it’s anti-modern and suggests a terrible reckoning when the plane inevitably runs out of gas.