Saudi Arabia is toast and she knows it. Her only ally is Pakistan, and she is hated by all of her Muslim neighbors for her open hypocrisy among her ruling classes and her attitude towards the rest of the Muslim world. She is most adamantly hated by Turkey, who is a historical world power and for centuries has fancied herself as the guardian of Islam.
Saudi Arabia’s main allies are the US and Israel, but neither of them can be relied upon, especially the Americans, who not only if given the choice between Israel or Saudi Arabia would choose Israel, but who depends on the Americans for survival, mostly in the form of purchasing her oil but also through importing food to her. Without the US, Saudi would easily fall to the Turks.
In a curious recent statement, the Saudis have defended the Chinese rounding up and putting fellow Muslims in concentration camps:
Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, on Friday defended China’s use of concentration camps for Muslims, saying it was Beijing’s “right”.
“China has the right to carry out anti-terrorism and de-extremisation work for its national security,” Prince Mohammed, who has been in China signing multi-million trade deals much to the annoyance of his Western allies, was quoted as saying on Chinese state television.
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, told the crown prince the two countries must strengthen international cooperation on de-radicalisation to “prevent the infiltration and spread of extremist thinking”.
China has detained an estimated one million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, where they are undergoing re-education programmes allegedly intended to combat extremism.
The Uighur are an ethnic Turkic group that practices Islam and lives in Western China and parts of Central Asia.
Beijing has accused the minority in its Western Xinjiang region of supporting terrorism and implemented a surveillance regime.
Uighur groups had appealed to Saudi’s powerful young prince to take up their cause, as the ultraconservative kingdom has traditionally been a defender of the rights of Muslims worldwide.
But Muslim leaders have so far not broached the issue with China, which has in recent years become an important trading partner with the Middle East.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, became the first to condemn Beijing, however, describing China’s treatment of its Uighur population as “a great cause of shame for humanity” last month and asking it to close the “concentration camps”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had once accused China of “genocide” but has since established closer diplomatic and economic relations with Beijing.
Imran Khan, prime minister of Pakistan, where Prince Salman has just visited, said he “did not know” much about the conditions of the Uighurs. (source, source)
Why would Saudi do this if she is the supposed most “Muslim” nation in the world?
The reason she is doing this is because of the above. Saudi knows that she cannot rely on anybody, and she also knows that the Americans and the Chinese are enemies and will most likely be going to war against each other. She is attempting to “cozy up” to the Chinese in the event that she needs another buyer for her oil and source of food, as well as defense against Turkey. The Muslim peoples that China is rounding up are Turkic peoples, who are also historical enemies of China as the Turks historically have conquered and destroyed China.
Will this gamble work? Is this the emergence of a “new Saudi-Chinese” alliance?
It is highly doubtful.
The Saudis are weak and they know it. They also have a history of making dubious or just plain foolish decisions, or they have large ideas and then are unable to follow through on them, or just refuse to follow through with them. One such example of this in recent times has been Saudi Arabia’s insistence on making herself an “entertainment destination” for the world.
When people think of Saudi Arabia, they tend to think of oil, camels, and bearded sheikhs with strange inclinations, not entertainment. Because Saudi is still a highly “Islamic” nation and given the lewd and often times vulgar nature of such performances, it is difficult to imagine any popular music performer going there because the performers themselves do not want to become accidental victims of the mutaween (Saudi religious police). Indeed, a year into the supposed “transformation” has yielded little to no results, and will likely be scrapped in the next decade.
The Saudis may think they can somehow balance a deal between the Americans and the Chinese, or rather, somebody in the Saudi government thinks this can be done. However, one must also not forget that America is close allies with Turkey as she is with Saudi. Public relations “spats” are just for the vulgar masses, as the fact is that Turkey is deeply indebted to the US because it was the US with Germany who built Turkey into the eighth most powerful army in the world and the second largest army in Europe. Turkey looks at Saudi Arabia like a large goose, and she the chef who is going to carve her up and serve her for dinner to her neighbors.
The US and the Chinese will have conflict, and Japan will be there as well. If this were to happen, China is only going to care about herself for survival, even if it means she sacrifices tens of millions of her own people as cannon fodder. She is not going to give a single thought to the Saudis, a people who she clearly views as inferior to her along with many other peoples. For those who do not know, Chinese nationalist racism is pervasive and extreme as it is also self-consuming. The only people that China has any modicum of respect for are the European and Americans, who she still shows considerable disrespect for with common insults against them such as “big nose” (大鼻子- da bi zi) or “white devil” (白鬼 -bai gui), and will say these things in public and without shame unless she is caught unsuspectingly.
The Saudis will find themselves in the same situation they always do, which is proverbially “up the creek and without a paddle,” or perhaps in their case “in the desert and without a camel.” The Americans can easily turn on the Saudis, and if they did, they would turn her over to the Turks, albeit in a very American and “accidental” way so not to place blame on themselves. The Chinese would not defend them, and Israel would immediately side with Turkey, as she is already also a Turkish ally and true to her historical form of operation, Israel would also side with the side she believes would win. Saudi Arabia would be left to fend for herself, and she would be consumed by her neighbors. It certainly will not help the Turks show mercy to her knowing that the Saudis publicly defended the atheistic Chinese government’s mass imprisonment, torture, and annihilation of Turkic peoples in China.
All that the Saud family is doing by siding with atheists who are actively murdering Muslims is to further isolate herself from her fellow Muslims and given that it is with the Chinese, to further reinforce the American and Israeli view that Saudi Arabia is just another disposable tool. She is also reinforcing Turkey’s claims that Turkey is the true and best guardian of Islam, and the reason why Muslims should rally under the Turks. In other words, the Saudi’s have succeeded in proving and reinforcing their critics’ statements to be correct, and are only hastening the inevitable day of the fall of the house of Saud.
The Fall of the House of Usher. Originally a story by Edgar Allen Poe, in my opinion the best film version is the 1960 Vincent Price version. However, instead of Usher, it should be the House of Saud, for their decline is impending.