Is Saudi Arabia the next failed state?

Their plan to wean themselves off oil is a disaster in the making

Will Saudi Arabia's new plan fail?
(Image credit: REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser)

Saudi Arabia has been a hot bed of bad news recently. First, there was their horrifying war in Yemen, then their empty threat to start selling off U.S. debt. Most recently, the 30-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who heads the Saudi Council for Economic and Development Affairs (and also serves as defense minister) laid out a new plan, dubbed "Vision 2030," to transition the country away from selling oil. While it may sound positive — vision! less oil! — the plan is actually pretty ominous.

As detailed in an interview with Al-Arabiya, the core of the plan is to spin up a sovereign wealth fund with Saudi assets, plus a public sale of a small portion of the Saudi national oil company Aramco. More funds would be added from oil revenue over time, so that eventually Saudi Arabia would end up owning something like "10 percent of global investment capacity." In another interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Prince Salman made the strategy even clearer: "Make investments the source of Saudi government revenue, not oil."

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.