اقرأ باللغة العربية Undoubtedly there will come a day when historians will examine the details, but what we cannot ignore today is the essential change taking place in Saudi Arabia, because this is what puts the details in context. This change is based on two factors. Firstly, the state of the kingdom is not commensurate with the vast potential of the resources and capacities it possesses. Secondly, the conventional mode of decision-making, which perpetually sought to reconcile diverse parties and realised only minimal levels of consensus, has rendered action too slow and conservative to essentially budge the country from its current state. Therefore, authority had to be concentrated to the degree that it could formulate a vision, act to implement it and then be judged on the basis of what it accomplished. The Saudi Arabian “Vision 2030” takes as a premise that the kingdom is currently much less than it could be, given its land mass, population size and the fact that it overlooks the Red Sea and the Gulf and that it is only a stone's throw from the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. In short, it is no longer reasonable or desirable for Saudi Arabia to remain a purely oil-exporting rentier state. Anyway, the recent plunge in oil prices to less than half the price two years ago makes this impossible. Saudi Arabia has the potential to take a place among the industrialised nations that receive the highest rankings in international reports, but this can only be achieved through a major reform revolution. Although the terms “reform” and “revolution” generally go together like oil and water, history is full of surprises. In Saudi Arabia, the demographics are telling. Youth make up 70 per cent of the population. More importantly, in recent years, 200,000 Saudis travelled abroad for educational purposes and 35,000 return every year. This social stratum experiences a profound conflict between what they learned and how they lived abroad, and the conservative and insular life back home. This sector of society, which falls in the 15-35 age bracket, is what made Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, whom the Saudi king has charged with the mission of engineering the radical reform that will put the kingdom on the path to a new future. That future will take Saudi Arabia from the era of a petroleum-based economy to the era of a multi-sectored productive economy, with agriculture to some extent, industry for which there is vast scope for expansion, services commensurate with a modern and expanding economy, and mining, which had long been snubbed due to the primacy of oil. As with any modern country, power multipliers yield more than their face value. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the futuristic city “Neom” where “robots will outnumber people” will extend the country's physical reach into Jordan and Egypt, and from there to the Levant, Mediterranean and Europe. To the east, the link with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries offers both economic advantages and a superior strategic advantage. The difference between “the vision” and “the reality” is no less than a “revolution”. It will surpass anything undertaken by predecessors who, whether in power or not, were afraid and leery of change, whether for fear of their own interests or for fear of unpredictable devils unleashed by change. But in Saudi Arabia, change is so much a question of a risk or an adventure as it is a matter of targeting certain phenomena that have stood in the way of progress, especially the extreme conservatism that has always clutched the kingdom and prevented all forms of modernism. Even introducing radio and television encountered huge resistance. Yet, those same ultra-conservative forces were willing to travel to Cairo or Beirut and more recently to Dubai and Manama to enjoy the very delights they reject in their own country. Such hypocrisy is no longer acceptable, not only because it is offensive to the true essence of the faith, but also because it furnishes a moral soil for terrorism. Fighting extremism, as opposed to appeasing and living with it, has become an urgent need for the new Saudi Arabia and for other countries as well. Curiously, whether extremism assumes a political, economic or cultural face, women are always the first to suffer. The new generations of Saudis had long been baffled at how their country stood alone in the world as the only country to prohibit women from driving and to ban them from participating in major national occasions. That was not normal. It ran against all sound instincts. The liberation of women, who had become educated, entered the job market and assumed public responsibilities, had become necessary, not only to elevate the image of the Saudi ruling house, but also to open the doors to progress in all fields of production and to alleviate the country's dependency on foreign labour and expertise. The moves to restore rights to Saudi women had been on the decision-making tables for a long time, but the decisions were only taken today, now that the political authorities there have summoned the resolve and are able to act and now that it is no longer possible to procrastinate. The fact is, the fight against extremism and the liberation of women are two sides of the same coin. It is all part and parcel of bringing the Islamic faith back to its essence of mercy and compassion and reinstating women to the status they merit as fellow citizens and human beings, rather than something forbidden and sinful. There are many other details. But the essence, as discussed above, is what history will be interested in. That essence has been launched with the recent historical decisions to mobilise national resources and set into motion projects based on the assumption that the country's geography consists of much more than oil wells. Saudi Arabia is 2,149,690 square kilometres. It has a population of 33 million and a GDP at purchasing power parity of $1.803 trillion, making it the 14th largest economy in the world. By capitalising on the country's full potential, the new drive will take it to new horizons of wealth and prosperity. But, equally if not more importantly, the Saudi person will finally enter the natural habitat of mankind, which they have long experienced only vicariously through the social networking sites, increasing their sense of deprivation. The realisation of all this will not be easy. Nothing similar has occurred in history without pain. But then, ultimately, it takes pain and hardship to produce great change. The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
