JANE KINNINMONT
Even as western governments have bonded themselves closely to Saudi Arabia, thinkers and writers have long said the monarchy could not last. Here was a bloated and sclerotic ruling family, they said, presiding over a system of what has been called gender apartheid, only marginally less repressive of everyone else than it was of women. Fearing democracy, the Al Saud promoted an intolerant version of religion as a distraction. Sages acknowledged that petrodollars and American weapons could prop up this brutal anachronism of a regime for only so long; in the end—surely—it couldn’t survive.
For their own part, the Saudi royals presented themselves as merely respecting the needs of a conservative population, which they sought to educate and to modernise, gently. They were a moderating force, they explained; if they held elections, the world might end up with Islamic State in charge of Mecca and Medina. While some of the thousands of princes might whisper concerns in private, in the public eye they kept a united front. This was the path that Saudi Arabia had chosen—and change, if it came at all, would be gradual.