Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia

ished his reputation in Riyadh, particularly with Crown Prince Abdallah (p. 142). One of Abdallah’s first actions as ruler was to remove Bandar from his post as Saudi ambassador in Washington (p. 147). US-Saudi relations subsequently went from bad to worse (p. 149), and stayed frosty as Barack Obama undertook a halting rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran and expressed guarded support for the popular uprisings that swept across the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010–11. Nevertheless, the uprisings prompted Abdallah to send Bandar to Pakistan and the PRC to inquire whether these two countries would come to the aid of the Saudi government if its efforts to placate the kingdom’s restive populace through massive state expenditures turned out to be unsuccessful (pp. 160–61). Abdallah rewardedBandar by appointing himhead of external security operations (p. 168).Yet as soon as Salman succeeded Abdallah as ruler, Bandar was unceremoniously cashiered (p. 169). How this affected the kingdom’s dealings with Washington is left largely unaddressed. Instead, the text focuses on Salman’s unprecedented reliance on his own sons, the war in Yemen, Saudi relations with Pakistan, Riyadh’s deepening rivalry with Tehran, and several other topics (pp. 169–79). The book closes with a discussion of the domestic problems that presently confront the kingdom’s leadership (pp. 199–203), which intimates that the energetic new crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, could implement the kind of structural reforms that might ensure the regime’s survival. These remarks coexist uneasily with the “Preface to the Paperback Edition” of 2019, which accuses Crown PrinceMuhammad of ordering themurder of Jamal Khashoggi, supervising “themost repressive purge in the country’s modern history” (p. x), and initiating in Yemen “the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today” (p. xi). Riedel in the update claims that “beneath the surface, the Kingdom is in turmoil, more unstable today than at any time since [the ouster of King Saud bin Abdul Aziz in] 1958” (p. xii). And Bandar bin Sultan is no longer there to put things right.