Kevin: Michael, quick question. When you think of Saudi Arabia, what’s the first image that pops into your head? Michael: Easy. Gleaming skyscrapers in Riyadh, luxury cars, and oil. Lots and lots of oil wealth. The whole country just seems to float on a sea of petroleum. Kevin: Exactly. That’s the global brand. Now, what if I told you that in this kingdom of unimaginable riches, nearly 40 percent of the youth are unemployed? Michael: That single statistic cuts right to the heart of the paradox we’re exploring today. This idea of a 'fragile empire' has been tackled by some of the most respected journalists out there. Karen Elliott House, a Pulitzer-winner, wrote a whole book on it called On Saudi Arabia that was widely acclaimed for its deep dive. Today, we're focusing on the incredible stories and analysis from another key work that lays it all bare: Fragile Empire by Sandra Mackey. Kevin: And Mackey had this incredible advantage, right? As a Western woman, she could access worlds that were closed off to most male reporters. Michael: Precisely. She could be in a room with princes and officials, and then move to the women's quarters and hear a completely different reality. She called it being treated as a 'third sex,' and it gave her a 360-degree view of the kingdom's deepest fault lines. It allowed her to see past the facade of stability. Kevin: Okay, so if the kingdom is so fragile, how on earth have the Al Saud family held onto power for over a century? It seems like they must have a pretty effective playbook.

Michael: Oh, they do. And Mackey breaks it down into what is essentially a three-part survival toolkit, honed over a hundred years. The pillars are: divide and conquer, money, and religion. And the story of how they perfected this starts with the founder, Abdul Aziz. His rise to power in the early 1900s feels less like statecraft and more like a gangster movie. Kevin: A gangster movie? How so? Michael: Well, in 1902, Arabia was a fragmented mess of warring tribes. The Al Saud family was in exile. So Abdul Aziz, a young and ambitious leader, takes a small band of men, scales the walls of Riyadh in the dead of night, and personally murders the rival governor in a surprise dawn raid on his own fortress. It was brutal, swift, and incredibly effective. He established his rule through sheer force and fear. Kevin: Wow. So the foundation of the modern state is literally a bloody coup. But you can't rule by force alone forever. How did he consolidate that power? Michael: This is where the genius, and the cynicism, comes in. He looked at the nomadic Bedouin tribes, who were essentially raiders, and gave their violence a higher purpose. He allied with the founder of a puritanical, rigid form of Islam called Wahhabism. He convinced the tribes to settle in agricultural communities and become the Ikhwan, or 'the brotherhood'—a fanatical army of God. Their new mission wasn't just raiding for loot; it was waging jihad to purify Arabia. Kevin: That makes sense. He took their existing skills and just rebranded them with a divine mission that he, conveniently, was in charge of. It's a classic case of 'unite them under a cause you control.' Michael: You’ve nailed it. But the story gets even more telling. After the Ikhwan helped him conquer most of Arabia, including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, they became too extreme. They wanted to continue their holy war into British-controlled territories like Iraq. This was a political disaster for Abdul Aziz, who needed British cooperation. Kevin: Uh oh. So his own creation was getting out of hand. What did he do? Michael: He did what the Al Saud have always done. He chose power over piety. He turned on his own fanatical army. Before one battle, he famously warned the Ikhwan leaders, "Are there not a number of you upon whose fathers’ and grandfathers’ necks my sword and that of my fathers and grandfathers made play?" He then met them on the battlefield and absolutely crushed them. He created them, used them, and then destroyed them the moment they became inconvenient. Kevin: That's chilling. It proves that for the Al Saud, power has always trumped piety. The religion is a tool, not necessarily the ultimate master. Michael: Exactly. Mackey shares a perfect little anecdote about this. A religious cleric once publicly criticized King Abdul Aziz for wearing a thobe, a traditional robe, that was too long, seeing it as a sign of vanity. The king humbly agreed, had the cleric cut it to the "proper" length right there, and appeared pious. But as soon as the cleric left, the king ordered his guards to never let that man into his presence again. It was all a performance. Kevin: A performance of piety, backed by the threat of force, and funded by oil money to keep everyone comfortable enough not to ask too many questions. That’s the toolkit. Michael: That’s the toolkit. For decades, it worked flawlessly.

Michael: But that old toolkit of force and feigned piety is breaking down, because the audience has changed. The kingdom is no longer a disconnected desert. And that brings us to the internal fault lines, the ticking time bombs within the society. Kevin: And this is where the "fragile" part of Fragile Empire really comes into play, I'm guessing. Michael: It is. And there's no better example than the story of the Jeddah floods. Jeddah is Saudi Arabia's second-largest city, a major port. But for decades, billions of dollars allocated for a proper sewage and drainage system were embezzled by corrupt officials and businessmen. The city was a disaster waiting to happen. Kevin: Let me guess, it happened? Michael: Twice. In 2009 and again in 2011, heavy rains caused catastrophic floods. People died, thousands were left homeless. The government's response was slow and inept. But here’s the crucial part: young Saudis didn't just wait to be rescued. They got on Facebook and Twitter. They organized their own rescue missions, coordinated aid, and shared information about stranded families, completely bypassing the state. Kevin: Wow, so the internet isn't just a distraction there; it's a genuine tool for civic action and dissent. Michael: It's a rupture. At the same time they were saving lives, they were savaging the government online. A popular royal slogan was "Hold your head high. You are a Saudi." After the floods, a new version went viral: "Hang your head, you are a Saudi." Someone posted a picture of the king with a giant red X over it, asking, "Why do you give them all this power when they all are thieves?" This was unprecedented public criticism of the monarch. Kevin: That feels like a major turning point. The deference is gone. Michael: It's eroding fast. And you have to remember the demographics. Over 60 percent of the population is under the age of 20. They've grown up with the internet. They see how the rest of the world lives. And they look around and see an education system that, as one imam in the book laments, "teaches people to memorize, not question." They see massive youth unemployment in a country with infinite money. They see the hypocrisy. Kevin: What about the other half of the population? The book talks about women as a major fault line. How does that play out? Michael: Mackey describes the issue of women's rights as a proxy war for the soul of the country. It’s the main battleground between the modernizers and the ultra-conservative religious establishment. And the story of the 1990 drive-in protest is so revealing. Kevin: A drive-in protest? What happened? Michael: In 1990, 47 educated, professional women from prominent families decided to protest the ban on women driving. They coordinated, dismissed their male drivers in the middle of Riyadh, and drove their own cars in a convoy. It was a peaceful, calculated act of defiance. Kevin: I love that. How did the authorities react? Michael: Initially, the police were confused. There was no actual law against women driving, just a religious custom. The women had valid international licenses. So they were detained and then released. But the backlash from the religious establishment was volcanic. The Grand Mufti issued a fatwa, a religious edict, declaring that allowing women to drive would lead to the "downfall of society." The women were publicly denounced in mosques as "promoters of vice." They lost their jobs, had their passports confiscated. Kevin: Just for driving a car. That shows you where the real power lies, or at least where the regime's fear lies. They're terrified of upsetting the religious conservatives who prop up their legitimacy. Michael: Precisely. The women's issue isn't just about women. It's about whether the kingdom will be governed by 7th-century interpretations or adapt to the 21st century. And every small step forward is met with this immense, organized resistance.

Kevin: It’s fascinating. When you put it all together, you have this ruling family using 100-year-old tricks—force, money, and religious manipulation—to control a 21st-century population that's young, connected, and increasingly seeing through the facade. It feels completely unsustainable. Michael: It does. And Mackey brings in this brilliant historical parallel from Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of the French Revolution. De Tocqueville argued that a dangerous moment for an authoritarian regime is not when it is at its most oppressive, but when it begins to reform. Kevin: How so? That seems counterintuitive. Michael: Because, as he wrote, "The evils, patiently endured as inevitable, seem unbearable as soon as the idea of escaping them is conceived." When the government starts making small changes—like King Abdullah did with some modest reforms—it doesn't satisfy people. It just shows them that change is possible, which makes the remaining restrictions feel even more suffocating. Kevin: So the very act of trying to let a little steam out of the pressure cooker can be the thing that makes it explode. Michael: That is the trap the Al Saud are in. They know the status quo is untenable, but they fear that genuine reform will unleash forces they can't control. They are caught between stagnation and catastrophe. As one Saudi businessman in the book says, "No one knows how the spark will come, but things will change because they have to." Kevin: That’s a powerful and pretty ominous place to end. It’s not a question of if, but how and when. Michael: The book leaves us with this haunting question: Can this fragile empire reform its way to stability, or will the very attempt to change be the thing that brings the whole house down? Kevin: A question that, decades after this book was written, feels more relevant than ever. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.