Karen Elliott House

In the increasingly unstable mideast, Saudi Arabia is the most important Arab nation–and the least understood. Why should the world care about this shrouded kingdom? Because it is the world’s leading exporter of oil, the lifeblood of global prosperity, and of Islamic terrorism, perhaps the greatest threat to world peace. Yet because the kingdom’s royal family shrouds its secrets from both Saudis and foreigners and makes it difficult for all but the very intrepid to explore the kingdom, it remains all too impenetrable, which is exactly how the Al Saud rulers like it. Conventional wisdom holds that the kingdom remains stable in a region of rising instability even as power passes from one geriatric leader to the next. Yet, recall that the old Soviet Union, too, was viewed as rock-solid as power passed rapidly from one old man to the next upon the death of Brezhnev. Within a decade, the Soviet superpower imploded. Does history hold a lesson here for those who equate stagnation with stability. stability.