Charming the prince: Biden seeks a deal with Saudi Arabia

In 1946, CARE delivered the world's first care packages to Europeans devastated and hungry from 6 years of war. 80 years later, this spirit lives on. The fisherman who saved his neighbours during a cyclone. The woman who guided her colleague through a firefight to safety. The girl who challenged the elders who told her she couldn't play soccer. Yet the question lingers: Who cares? You do. And so do we. Join us at care.org/who-cares.

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Ora Ugombi. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Asia's longest The long-serving leader is relinquishing power and growing increasingly paranoid about securing his legacy. But support for his carefully orchestrated succession plans is far from universal. And Sweden is building a brand new city by taking a new school approach to an old school material. Could this be the future of sustainable construction? Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he's often known, is currently at the center of a whirlwind of diplomacy. This week, He's hosting Turkey's newly re-elected president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as he begins a 3-day tour of the Gulf. At the weekend, the de facto Saudi ruler met Japan's Prime Minister, Kishida Fumio, in Jeddah to discuss cooperation on energy supplies. And just days ago, it was reported that MBS has been invited for an official visit to Britain later this year. For a while, it looked like Saudi Arabia was out in the diplomatic cold. The killing of the exiled US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by agents presumed to be working for the crown prince sparked indignation the world over. But now America is trying to work up a deal with the country to cement one of the Middle East's most complex relationships.

Joe Biden knows what he wants, which is for Saudi Arabia and Israel to make their relationship public.

Greg Carlstrom is The Economist's Middle East correspondent.

They've had a discreet relationship for the better part of a decade now, and he would like them to establish formal ties with one another. But the Saudis also know what they want, and they have steep demands from the United States in order to make a deal with Israel, demands that might be too much for the Biden administration to stomach.

And how does Israel and Saudi Arabia's current relationship look different from Israel's relationships with other Arab states?

It's a relationship that would have looked very common until a few years ago. Until 2020, Israel only had formal diplomatic ties with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan. And then it had a range of unofficial intelligence, security, economic ties with other countries in the region. That changed in 2020 with the Abraham Accords, which saw 4 countries, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, recognize Israel and establish overt official ties with the country. And ever since, there's been an expectation that more Arab states were going to join, with Saudi Arabia seen in Washington and other capitals as being the real prize, the most important Arab state to try and add to the Abraham Accords.

Why is this such an important goal for President Biden?

When you speak to American officials or to other supporters of the idea, they'll make several arguments in favor of it. One of them has to do with security. Saudi Arabia and Israel, of course, both see Iran as their main nemesis in the region. It's a big part of why they've established these unofficial ties over the past decade. And so there's an idea in Washington that if they were to normalize relations, that it would formalize a security, perhaps a military alliance against Iran. Another one has to do with Saudi Arabia's relationship with other great powers. It has remained on good terms with Russia despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's working very hard to deepen its relationship with China. And there's a thought in Washington that if America helps to broker a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, as part of that, the Saudis might agree to distance themselves from both China and Russia. And then the final argument they'll make is sort of a spillover effect. There's a hope that Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy, one of the largest Arab states, the birthplace of Islam, that their recognition of Israel could convince other Arab or Muslim-majority states to do the same.

And is Saudi Arabia open to all this?

They are open to it, but they have their demands in return, and they've expressed these to visiting American officials and to other interlocutors in the past few months. The first thing they want is a stronger, more formal defense pact with America. The Saudis have thought for decades that they were safe underneath America's security umbrella in the region, but they've started to worry over the past few years that that umbrella has some holes. You go back to 2019, for example, when Saudi oil facilities were attacked by Iranian-made drones and the United States did almost nothing. In response. So they want to formalize those defense ties. The second thing they want is better access, expanded access to American weapons. They rely very heavily on arms imported from the United States, but they've had some problems in recent years with arms sales that have been held up because of human rights concerns. And then the final and the most controversial thing they're asking for is American help to set up a civilian nuclear program. And specifically a nuclear program that would allow them to enrich uranium inside the kingdom. It's not unprecedented to ask America for incentives to make an Arab-Israeli peace deal. Egypt has taken home more than $50 billion in military aid since it recognized Israel in 1979. America promised the UAE F-35 fighter jets and advanced drones to help seal the Abraham Accords. So what the Saudis are doing is not unprecedented, but what they're asking for, the scope of their demands, that really is.

Okay, so lots of demands here. Do you think the Saudis are going to get what they're asking for?

I wouldn't be too optimistic. If you go point by point through their requests, the idea of a formal defense treaty, that has to be ratified by the Senate. The Senate doesn't ratify much these days, and there would be a lot of opposition to it, not only from Democrats who have been critical of Saudi Arabia for its human rights record and its proximity to Donald Trump, but also from some Republicans who I think would be wary about entangling America in formal security commitments in the Middle East. Arms deals run into the same problem. They often require approval from Congress, and lawmakers from both parties have held them up in recent years. They're reluctant to send many kinds of weapons to Saudi Arabia. And then there's the idea of a nuclear program. Now, there's a very easy way for the Saudis to get access to American nuclear technology, and that is to swear off having a domestic enrichment capability. That's what the UAE did. And they several years ago opened their first nuclear reactor as a result. But the Saudis are insistent on keeping that enrichment capability in the kingdom, which at a time when Iran is enriching uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels would raise fears of a regional arms race. And so I think that would be extremely controversial, to say the least, in Washington.

And is politics in Washington the only thing standing in the way?

No, it's not. There are questions, I think, also about what Saudi Arabia can bring to this agreement. You know, first, the idea that they would distance themselves from China and Russia. The Saudis, like their neighbors in the Gulf, they don't want to pick sides in this emerging great power competition between America and other states. So they're not going to abandon America, but equally, they are not going to turn away lucrative economic ties with China. They are not going to cut off their very important oil partnership with Russia via OPEC+. And so I don't see a Saudi-Israeli deal peeling them away from China or Russia. The idea of a security alliance, you know, we saw back in March the Saudis signing a reconciliation deal with Iran. They're quite worried about the prospect of conflict in the region. And so I don't think they view normalization with Israel as a way to formalize an alliance to have a conflict in the region. That's, that's not how they would approach this. And then the idea that this might spill over as well. You know, if you go country by country through the Arab world, it's hard to see who else might want to join the Abraham Accords. You have countries like Lebanon and Tunisia, which have flawed, imperfect democratic systems, but democratic systems nonetheless. I think public opinion would rule out normalization with Israel. You have other Gulf states like Kuwait or Qatar, where not only would public opinion be against it, but I think the emirs, the rulers of those countries, would be very loath to appear that they're following Saudi Arabia. So it's hard to say who else in the Arab world might be willing to follow along.

And Greg, do you think Biden will get that agreement done by the end of the year?

I don't think he will. I think even his advisors are looking at this as a long shot, something that might give them some good headlines ahead of the elections in 2024, something that does fit into their idea of cementing regional alliances in the Middle East so that America can step back a bit from the Middle East, but I think it's very difficult to do in Washington. I think, again, there are questions about what Saudi Arabia brings to the table. And then the final question is also Israel's behavior in all of this. You know, I think when you speak to senior Saudi officials and people close to the crown prince, they will tell you that at the highest level of the Saudi government, there is not a whole lot of sympathy anymore for the Palestinians. But public opinion is also a factor in Saudi Arabia, around the Arab world, and there is a limit to what sort of an Israeli counterpart the Saudis can make a deal with. You have a far-right government in power in Israel right now that has created a mass protest movement at home by trying to undermine Israel's judiciary, is presiding over a major expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, recently carried out a large-scale military raid in Jenin. And so I think Israel's behavior as well also making this deal very, very difficult helped to achieve this year.

Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you.

In 1946, CARE delivered the world's first care packages to Europeans devastated and hungry from 6 years of war. 80 years later, this spirit lives on. The fisherman who saved his neighbours during a cyclone. The woman who guided her colleague through a firefight to safety. The girl who challenged the elders who told her she couldn't play soccer. Yet the question lingers: Who cares? You do, and so do we. Join us at care.org/whocares.

Little by little, and with virtually no help from Western governments, including our own, the Kampucheans are struggling back to normality.

In the 1980s, people in Cambodia began to rebuild their country.

As if people needed to be reminded, posters depict the days of the Killing Fields, and there are piles of skulls everywhere, countrywide. As macabre monuments to those who died.

The genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is rivaled only by those committed against Europe's Jews, the Ottoman Empire's Armenians, and Rwanda's Tutsis. Between 1975 and 1999, as many as 2 million people may have been killed.

Kampuchea could have prosperity If only it had peace. There's no shortage of food.

The rice paddies provide all that people want.

You need never go hungry here.

The man who has overseen Cambodia's attempt at recovery, Hun Sen, has run the country in one form or another since 1985. That is longer than any leader in Asia. He's no Pol Pot, but he has his own brand of ruthless autocratic rule. The 70-year-old is to step aside after national elections, which will take place this weekend. Like all savvy autocrats though, Hun Sen has meticulously planned his succession.

Hun Sen has been in power since he was 32, but there are now more and more rumors that he's becoming very frail and his health is declining.

Sue Lin Wong is our Southeast Asia correspondent.

That having been said, he's already got a plan, and he's already anointed his successor, his own son, Hun Manet.

Okay, before we hear about Hun Sen's son, let's start with Hun Sen himself. Tell us a bit about his long rule.

Hun Sen is an incredibly ruthless and brutal leader. That makes sense in a way, given how long he's been in power, how much political turmoil Cambodia has been through over the decades that he has ruled the country. And many, many people, when they think of Cambodia, Cambodia, think of the repression. So he's really cracked down on the political opposition and many civil society groups, which has earned Cambodia a pariah status in much of the West. Just recently, he banned the main opposition party, the Candlelight Party, from even registering for the upcoming election, and he shut down Voice of Democracy, one of Cambodia's last independent news outlets. And over the course of his rule, around 6,000 members of the opposition have been forced or induced to join the ruling party through a combination of threats and financial sweeteners. So broadly, there's a lot of fear. There has been a lot of fear for a long time, but it's worse than ever now. And a lot of that has to do with succession. Hun Sen is paranoid that something might go wrong and might affect the smooth transition of power from father to son. Now, that's looking at what has happened under Hun Sen's rule politically. But if you asked Hun Sen himself, he would hope to be remembered for very different things.

Different things like what?

What he hopes his official legacy is going to be is decades of sustained economic growth and peace. And the reality is that life in Cambodia now is much, much better than it was a few decades ago. And of course, we're starting from a very, very low base because about one quarter of the population of Cambodia was killed in genocide in the 1970s. And so from Hun Sen's perspective, he sees himself as the leader who has presided over the longest period of peace in Cambodia's modern history. And during this peacetime, Cambodia's economy has boomed. It's been one of the fastest growing economies in the world since the late 1990s. Now, of course, there have been negative side effects to this growth, and it's exacerbated other problems, including environmental destruction, corruption, and rampant crime. So Cambodia is ranked 150th out of 180 countries by the Transparency International ranking for perceived corruption.

Okay, so what's in store for Cambodia once Hun Sen steps down? How will Hun Manet run the country?

Hun Manet is a charismatic graduate of America's West Point Military Academy. He also has a doctorate in economics from the University of Bristol, and he's enjoyed a meteoric rise through his father's party, the Cambodian People's Party. Now, this is unsurprising given that Cambodia is very, very much run on a patronage system that is controlled by Hun Sen. There's been some speculation that because of Hun Manet's Western education, he might be a more liberalizing force for Cambodia. But I mean, I think we need to be skeptical about this given how close he is to his father and given how much he has sort of benefited from his father's policies and being complicit in what his father is currently doing to Cambodia.

And Sulin, you mentioned political repression in Cambodia has been especially brutal of late.

That's right. So it's not uncommon for members of the Cambodian opposition or activists to say to me that they genuinely worry about being killed in a quote-unquote mysterious traffic accident that happens in Cambodia and is a way for those in power to deal with people they see as opponents of them. So I spoke to someone who lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, and for obvious reasons we can't play their voice. But they said to me that their parents' generation has pretty low expectations given that they lived through war and genocide. From their parents' perspective, as long as there's no war, life is okay. That is the situation right now. There is no war in Cambodia. It really has flourished economically over the past few decades. But what this person said to me is that for the younger generation, they're not just satisfied with no war. They're really angry about stuff that they see happening in Cambodia right now— corruption and the inequality, the fact that the children of ministers fly on private jets and eat at very, very fancy restaurants while you have working-class Cambodians getting into enormous debt.

So there is this sense of discontent But it seems that these elections won't do much to ease that discontent.

It's very unlikely that change is going to come anytime soon, given that the opposition has been silenced and that this upcoming election on July 23rd is so rigged that most people think that the ruling party, which currently holds all 125 seats in Parliament, is probably going to get a similar number of seats in this upcoming election. Another person I spoke to in Phnom Penh was saying to me that he doesn't even think of this as an election. He thinks of it as an obligation. Many civil servants and teachers are actually pressured to go and vote, and there's this really performative nature about it. So the reality is, when thinking about Hun Sen's legacy, this elaborate democratic charade is another thing he will be remembered for.

Sulin, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks very much, Hooray.

Across history, humans have used a range of materials to build their homes. We began with what nature immediately provided. Mud, straw, animal skins, wood, stone. And then following the footsteps of the Romans, we began to make widespread use of baked bricks and concrete. With the Industrial Revolution came a dramatic shift towards metals. Iron and later steel transformed how buildings were constructed and consequently the way that they looked. So what's the next chapter in this story? Perhaps it's one that's already been written.

Stockholm Wood City is gonna be the world's biggest wooden city, and it's being built in a place called Sickla, which is a southern part of the Swedish capital in Stockholm.

Paul Marchili is the innovation editor at The Economist.

There's gonna be about 2,000 homes and some 7,000 offices with the shops and restaurants and everything else. And in all, it'll cover 250,000 square metres.

And why are they doing this with wood?

Well, Sweden is a very environmentally conscious country, so it likes to take the lead with things. And also, it's obviously got a lot of forests, and probably all that forest is renewable. So every time they cut down a tree, they plant one or even more. So that's a resource they can harvest. Now, wood is also, besides being very sustainable, a very green way of building. Because the problem with building a city or building anything really, is the three main materials you use— concrete, glass, and steel— are incredibly big pollutants. They emit a lot of carbon dioxide during manufacture. Now, if you're building wood, you lock up carbon emissions because the carbon is contained within the wood, which is breathed in, if you like, as carbon dioxide while the wood is growing.

And what kind of wood are we talking about here?

It's not just your ordinary lumber, as you say in America, which is what you might buy from a DIY place and nail together. It's what they call engineered wood. And what that means is they take layers of the wood and line up the grain in the wood very specifically to the particular part of the building they're making. So it's a composite structure, and composites are very strong. So you can end up with something, you know, as strong almost as steel and concrete, yet a lot lighter and obviously a lot less polluting. The other good factor about engineered timber is that it's produced in a factory. It's prefabricated. So the cross beams, the particular walls or ceilings, is made specifically for that part of the building. And then it is brought to the site and put together there. And that reduces construction costs quite considerably, and it makes building faster. And it's also likely to be profitable. Atrium Lundberg, which is the Swedish company responsible for this project, they're looking at a 20% return on investment, or even better.

Okay, Paul, lots and lots of positives here, but maybe an obvious question: isn't there a fire hazard to be aware of?

That's something everybody worries about, and with quite good reason, really, because there have been a lot of city fires in the past. But the thing about engineered timber in particular is you're talking about a big mass of wood. So if you can imagine going camping in a forest and you want to light a fire, but all you've got is a couple of big logs, you've got no tinder, no little bits of dry wood, try and light that with a match, you won't have any luck. So that's one plus factor that makes actually this fairly fireproof in a sense. Now, the US Forest Service did some tests on what was used in what is currently the world's highest wooden skyscraper. And they said it's extremely fire resistant and issued it with its highest rating. So fire risk shouldn't really be a problem. Plus, of course, the fact these timber buildings will have all the usual fire precautions in anyway, like sprinkler systems and alarm systems. And if you think about those big old fires of old, like the Great Fire of London, I mean, what really fueled them was lots of small bits of wood, which acted like kindling rather rather than big beams. Very often the big beams will survive.

Paint a picture for us, Paul. What will the city's new skyline look like?

The classic image of a modern city is tall, futuristic-looking skyscrapers, whizzy high-speed train lines, and superhighways. Well, that sort of would happen, but instead of this grey concrete jungle, you might have a warmer look to it, a wooden look to it, of course. And so it could look a lot more attractive. Cities could be, you know, all sorts of shapes and sizes, but then they will also be fairly tall because there's a little bit of a race going on to see just how tall you can build a wooden skyscraper. The current height record is a building called Ascent in Wisconsin. That's 87 meters tall and it's built largely from wood. And that was finished about a year ago. And so before that, a Norwegian building was the tallest, but even that record is going to be going soon. That will be probably stolen by a wooden tower going up in Ontario, and there's even a 100-meter wooden tower planned in Switzerland. So we will begin to see high-rise wooden buildings as well, probably not quite as high as we see in some cities, but a little bit more low-rise, and I think rather attractive.

Well, I look forward to seeing it. Paul, thank you so much for joining us.

That's a pleasure.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can email us at podcasts@economist.com. And if you're not a subscriber to The Economist, what are you waiting for? Join the club. Get a free 30-day digital subscription by going to economist.com/intelligence. At atlas.com/intelligenceoffer. The link is in the show notes. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

In 1946, CARE delivered the world's first care packages to Europeans devastated and hungry from 6 years of war. 80 years later, this spirit lives on. The fisherman who saved his neighbours during a cyclone. The woman who guided her colleague through a firefight to safety. The girl who challenged the elders who told her she couldn't play soccer. Yet the question lingers: Who cares? You do, and so do we. Join us at care.org/whocares.