Saudi, Inc.

January 15, 2018
Wald, an energy consultant, takes aim at the image of Saudi Arabia as a hidebound, oil-reliant monarchy, and here presents the kingdom as a canny and agile power player throughout the 20th century. Wald writes too little about royal-family corruption, a subject brought to the fore in 2017 by sweeping internal purges throughout Saudi Arabia, but she is superb on intraroyal machinations, such as the early 1960s power struggle that resulted in King Saud’s ouster by his brother Prince Faisal, and on U.S.-Saudi relations, including how King Fahd overcame clerical objections to the housing of American troops in his country during the first Iraq War. Concerning Aramco, the national oil company, Wald shows how Saudis “hired Westerners, learned from them, and eventually positioned to take over operations and build on its own.” She also reveals it was Aramco’s expansion into Asia and diversification, including into solar energy, that allowed it and the kingdom to survive the 2016 plunge in oil prices. Despite some occasional stylistic awkwardness—e.g., “It is not unreasonable to say that women in Saudi Arabia have not been treated equally to men”—Wald has produced a clear, concise history of both the kingdom and its all-important oil corporation.

February 15, 2018
Tracing the conjoined realms of dynastic politics and international commerce in the history of Saudi Arabia.It was an Arab from the desert, Abdul Aziz, who led the struggle to unify the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula into the kingdom of al Saud, but what gave him the wherewithal to link the settlements of his new country were petrodollars, brought to the kingdom by an American concern called Aramco. Indeed, writes energy consultant and historian Wald, it was the vision of what the company built for its own workers--schools and hospitals and apartment blocks--that set Abdul Aziz on his modernizing path, which was undertaken with some reluctance since the king "felt more than a little uneasy at the pace at which his people's traditional lifestyle was changing." Later, the Saudi government would nationalize Aramco; in recent years, there have been proposals for a public offering, though whether for Saudi investors exclusively or a broader clientele remains to be seen. Wald shows how the al Saud rulers entered into another uneasy alliance--with religious fundamentalists--in order to legitimate and solidify their rule and spread it throughout Arabia. She rejects the thought that, despite the overwhelming Saudi presence among the 9/11 hijackers, the Saudi royals have much involvement with terrorism, which is bent on upsetting their power as much as waging jihad against the West. The author closes by hinting at reforms that she notes at the outset are beyond the scope of her discussion, reforms not just in the structure of Aramco and the company's approach to energy, but also in the larger Saudi society, evidenced by such things as greater investment in education and a diversified economy in which women fully participate.A solid overview of a nation much in world news and of economic trends that will have significant effects in the global marketplace in years to come.

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