When it comes to the Middle East, the first thing that comes to mind is Saudi Arabia, which once turned over and sang overnight because of the extraction of oil. This country does have a destiny of being favored by God. Surrounded by two Middle Eastern powers, Iran and Iraq, he relied on oil to successfully get out of the circle and have a place in the Middle East.
But the countries with the world's scarce resources do not, as we think, have the most advanced ideas and the most advanced lifestyles in the world. Instead, Saudi Arabia chose to embark on the path of absolute monarchy.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has been controlled by a hereditary monarch, a theocratic country in which not only the political ecology is firmly in the hands of the monarch, but the people also have to accept religious constraints, especially women have not been able to obtain equal status. Such a country permeated with feudal ideology firmly relied on the United States to stabilize its position in the international community.
The rule of the feudal monarch
Before the establishment of Saudi Arabia, there were more than a hundred small countries on the Arabian Peninsula, no one unified leadership, each country could not become a climate, and was always bullied by other surrounding powers. One of the kings of these small countries, Mohammed bin Saud, could not bear such bullying, which inspired his powerful ambition to rule the scattered land.
Later, he met an Islamic reformer named Muhammad Abd al-Wahab, and during the conversation, the two not only found that they shared the same views on national governance and the situation in the Arab region, but after careful study, they invented a method of governing the country that is rare or almost impossible in the world - theocracy.
Although they developed a method of rule applicable to the Arab people, they did not realize their desire to unify the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. For 150 years after they met, the Saud family had been at odds with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire over control of the Arabian Peninsula.
While Mohammed bin Saud was struggling with the two powers, a young man named Ibn Saud came to the fore and conquered not only Riyadh, which was in the hands of the two powers, but also Najd and Hejaz, two rebel regions.
Finally, in 1926, Ibn Saud conquered the Arabian Peninsula after fighting to the death, and the British, exhausted by the conflict in the Arabian Peninsula at that time, signed the Treaty of Jeddah with Ibn Saud, officially transferring control of this area of the Arabian Peninsula to him, and on September 22, 1932, Saudi Arabia officially declared its unity.
Although it has entered the 19th century, most countries in the world have modernized and used scientific and advanced means to manage the country, but the newly established Saudi Arabia has become a maverick monarchy.
Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country that practices Islam, and at a time when the mainland has entered a modern lifestyle of monogamy, the king of Saudi Arabia has 22 wives, which sounds a lot like the harem of ancient Chinese feudal emperors. More similar to the purpose of the ancient Chinese emperors, Ibn Saud's 22 wives were daughters of kings of small Saudi Arabia, and their marriages were full of political factors.
Among these wives, the daughter from the Sudri family was deeply favored by Ibn Saud because of the family's power, and gave birth to him 7 sons, these children are known as the seven sons of Sudri. In order to maintain the purity of his family's bloodline, and considering the huge power of the Sudri family and his great love for the wife from Sudri, Ibn Saud designated the 7 sons of the two of them as legal heirs, and the scepter of Saudi Arabia will be passed on between the 7 of them and their descendants in the future.
Ibn Saud stipulated that these heirs follow the ranking of brothers and brothers, which directly led to the throne of the King of Saudi Arabia still wandering between these seven men after 90 years. And this fixed line of "taking turns to be king" was broken by one person, this is the fifth son of Sudri's seventh son - Salman.
The dictatorial king holds power in the state
Salman, as the fifth son of Sudri's seventh son, when it was his turn to inherit the throne, it meant that the four brothers before him had died one after another, and at this time he had a sixth and seventh brothers alive. After Salman came to the throne, according to tradition, he appointed his younger brother Prince Muqlin as the first heir, his nephew Naif as the second successor, and his son Salman the younger as the third heir.
Although the heir has been arranged according to tradition, Salman himself is not as clear as his father, Ibn Saud as the father of everyone naturally wants every child to enjoy supreme power, Salman also wants to be like his father, the power of Saudi Arabia in his own and his children's hands, so Salman moved his mind to the two brothers behind him.
Salman first attacked his younger brother Muqlin. Mukrin does not have strong backing support and interest groups in Saudi Arabia, because he has always wanted to follow the inheritance rules set by his father, even if he does not work hard, sooner or later he can become the king of his family, but what he did not expect is that his brother Salman is not as simple as he thought.
Salman directly canceled Muqlin's right to the throne, because he felt that he was old, and when Salman died, he would be in his twilight years to inherit the throne, unable to contribute to the country, and had no ability to be a king. Muqlin was furious when he learned that he had been revoked from the throne, but he was unable to rebel against his brother, so he silently accepted this result and never had a chance to take the throne.
When various domestic forces heard that Salman had broken the rules of succession left by Ibn Saud and stripped Muqrin of his inheritance, they became opposed to the current king. Such a letter circulated in Saudi Arabia at the time, which severely rebuked Salman's cruelty and believed that he should surrender the throne to allow a real monarch who was more capable of governing the country to rule Saudi Arabia.
Seeing this letter, Salman no longer concealed his attachment to the throne, and he quickly attacked Nayf, the second heir to the throne, who was deprived of the right to inherit the throne because of drug use. Now there are no brothers who can successfully inherit the throne, and their children naturally cannot inherit the throne beyond their father, and the throne has become Salman's own pocket.
But Salman went on the offensive against other Saudi princes to ensure that his sons' succession to the throne was not coveted. First of all, Salman set up an anti-corruption agency, nominally for the people and the country, but his approach was less like anti-corruption and more like a raid.
He ordered the princes to be taken into a hotel and tortured to make them confess their corruption. These princes are more or less corrupt or oppressive to the people for profit, so they must be able to find out. If they confess to the crime, they will pay a fine and sign a guarantee to renounce the right to the throne and be released home, and if they do not confess, they will become enemies of the whole people, so they will have no choice.
All the princes had to obey Salman, obediently confessed their crimes and promised not to have any more thoughts about the throne. Among these princes, Saudi Arabia, who paid a $6 billion down payment, was able to get out.
From then on, the supreme power of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia was entirely in the hands of Salman and his descendants.
Mastering oil prices became America's pawn
After eliminating his political enemies, Salman finally began to think about how to develop Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was not as rich as it is now when it was founded, because it was surrounded by Iran and Iraq, not only to guard against the oppression of powerful countries, but also because his country had no pillar industry.
But this dilemma did not last long, and the discovery of precious oil deposits in Saudi Arabia's underground made Saudi Arabia's world status rise. Oil has almost become one of the hottest energy sources in the world after World War II, and every country needs a lot of oil in the process of getting out of the haze of World War II, and there are only a few countries that hold oil, which makes the price of oil almost affect the development of the world.
Although Saudi Arabia discovered oil, their industrial conditions are backward, their lives have not entered the modernization, and they cannot do such a high-tech job as oil extraction. At this time, the United States threw an olive branch to Saudi Arabia, providing them with advanced oil extraction equipment and technology.
Of course, this move by the United States is not simply to support Saudi Arabia, he also has his own selfishness. The United States is very aware of the importance of oil in the international community, and it is not an exaggeration to control the world pattern if it can control oil. So the United States negotiated with Saudi Arabia and formed the Arab American Oil Company, and together they controlled the price of oil and shared a fifty-fifty share of the oil company's profits.
With the assistance of the United States, Saudi Arabia quickly earned a lot of wealth by exporting oil to various countries, and in order to repay the United States, Saudi Arabia became a loyal ally of the United States, cooperating with every international action of the United States.
When the United States had friction with the Soviet Union, the United States asked Saudi Arabia to reduce oil prices and attract countries around the world to buy oil in Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet Union had to reduce oil prices in order not to lose oil orders, which seriously hit the Soviet Union's oil industry, and because the main economy of the Soviet Union at that time relied on oil sales, so the Soviet Union was hit a lot, and it did not slow down for a long time.
When the Middle East war broke out, the first oil crisis came, and Saudi Arabia took the opportunity to make a lot of money, so Saudi Arabia acquired more equity in Aramco. After the first oil crisis, Iran broke out another Islamic revolution, which forced Iran to stop exporting oil for 60 days, and then the Iran-Iraq War, in which Iran and Iraq attacked each other's oil fields.
This series of wars and conflicts has allowed Aramco to gain endless wealth, which has also made Saudi Arabia completely new, if not for the monarchy's state management methods have not disappeared, everyone would have thought that the country had changed from a feudal imperial state to a modern capitalist country overnight.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia has almost all control of Aramco, and the United States is only responsible for the operation and sale of oil. It seems that the United States has lost control of Saudi Arabia in oil, but Saudi Arabia still needs to rely on the United States.
Because Saudi Arabia's military strength is not as strong as the surrounding Iran and Iraq, Saudi Arabia was not rich in the past, and the two big countries may only play a small trouble with him, and now because Saudi Arabia is rich in oil, it has to beware of Iranian and Iraqi attacks. Without U.S. protection and support, Saudi Arabia will have a hard time surviving between the two countries.
In order to stabilize the status of the dollar in the world, the United States discussed with Saudi Arabia and decided that oil sales will be settled in dollars in the future, thus tying the dollar to oil, and the status of oil in the world has always been at a high level, and the status of the dollar will also remain high. Saudi Arabia was able to cooperate with the United States in doing so, mainly because the United States can also bring Saudi Arabia a lot of revenue by manipulating oil prices to sanction its opponents.
And in order for the dollar's status to remain high forever, the United States needs to constantly hit other oil countries, so that Saudi Arabia's oil has been selling hotly, and the oil sells well in dollars. Such mutually reinforcing strategic alliances still seem indestructible. Therefore, in the Middle East, with the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia does not have to worry about the aggression of other countries, or develop more than Saudi Arabia, because with the United States, the king of the Middle East will always be Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is like a feudal monarch who suddenly crossed into modern society, although the country has countless wealth, but the thinking is extremely backward, and it is not difficult to see from the attitude towards women that they have not yet entered civilized society. Women in Saudi Arabia were only allowed to enter cinemas and get driver's licenses in 2018, which is unthinkable in other countries.
Saudi Arabia has minerals that write a fairy tale of the rapid rise of a country. But fairy tales are fake after all, with the support of the United States, under the blindth of money, the royal family of Saudi Arabia is still living in the dream of drunken gold, if one day oil and the United States leave Saudi Arabia, I don't know if she will return to the backward and poor feudal society overnight.