Corruption Catch-All

In the coming week I will revert to the theme of the Russian Revolutions and their consequences; but the overnight News about Saudi Arabia, combined with discussions of the current situation in China as President Trump attends the apotheosis of President Xi, raises an omnipresent global issue.

The Saudi Crown Prince has emerged in that role after an elaborate process to bring [at last] a grandson of the hugely prolific founder of the country, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, into the pole position to be the next king: the first of the next generation to have a high degree of probability of succeeding to the notionally absolutely powerful top position. From the nineteen fifties until now a succession of sons of the first king, by a succession of his wives [many of whom were sisters, cousins and other close relations of each other], have held the post; but the lastborn among them are now in extreme old age. There is probably a registrar of the dynasty who knows exactly how many princes and princesses there are, including the offspring of Ibn Saud's brothers; many of whom are intermarried with each other. The international media report their number to be some thousands as, unlike the British Royal Family, all the family members have royal titles.

The contrasting British position is that sons and daughters of monarchs are princes and princesses, but that children of princesses and children of daughters of the monarch's sons and sons of the sons of the monarch who do not stand in the direct line of succession are not princes or princesses. Thus the children of Princess Anne, and of the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent [sons of sons of George V] are not princes or princesses. This keeps the 'inner' or 'close' royal family manageably small.

The contrasting situation in Saudi Arabia means that these thousands of royal persons expect high status and high incomes; which were affordable when the family was smaller, the oil price was higher and the monarchy was able to use its position as the 'swing producer' in OPEC to enforce the price control system that they established in 1973. With ever-more royalty and shrinking oil prices as Russia increases its influence as an oil producer and fracking develops in the USA, the Saudi model of the past century is redundant. The new Crown Prince has spent the last two years securing his position among this thousands of cousins, and is now making moves to modernise the system. There are bound to be winners and losers from such a revolution, and alliances have been formed that may or may not prove strong enough for the Crown Prince to consolidate his position for a reign of up to half a century. He has now made the big move: the arrest of dozens of individuals [including several royalty] some of whom have been ministers in the government: all of them charged with corruption.

In a system like the Saudi, where the term Byzantine denotes a situation insufficiently arcane to explain the regime in operation, almost anybody - high or lowly in terms of hierarchy - can be charged with what a German or a Belgian would recognise to be corrupt practice. Charges of corruption will be upheld against many [if not all] of the arrested parties; and the purge can go on indefinitely, as in the Stalin era in the USSR where ever-wider definitions of crimes against the state can be used simply to keep all the survivors in a state of abject subordination to the dominant power. It will be the greatest challenge for the Crown Prince, if he succeeds i holding his position through this exercise, to stop when the purge has gone far enough.

President Xi's situation in China is similar to that which the Crown Prince clearly intends to prevail in Saudi Arabia. In his first five-year term as head of the party and head of state Xi has ensured that nobody stands to challenge him during the coming five years in a way that could ensure that he is forced to stand down after his second quinquennium.  China's rise to wealth has been faster and much more broadly-based than in the case of Saudi Arabia. The control of the country by the party has meant that the power-brokers in every region have been able to grant and deny licenses and permissions for every kind of activity; thus successful individuals in the buccaneering capitalism that has emerged have necessarily squared themselves with the power structure. Some people in power have held to the standards of Confucian and Leninist integrity that have been expected of them: some have not. Some can have cases manufactured against them, in what is ultimately a dictatorship: some guilty people can be so useful to the top men that their crimes can - pro tem , at least - be ignored.

Precisely the same sorts of process are happening in China and Saudi: the consolidation of the power of the dictator is secured - and gains at least a good measure of popular support - by bringing guilty exploiters of public office to account. Simple!

Trump Triumphs?

President Donald Trump is having a great time in the Arab world. His hosts, led by Saudi Arabia, expect that he will reverse President Obama's raprochement with Iran [which will cause problems for the newly re-elected President of that country] and open up trade and other relations - including access to US territory - to some of those who would have been excluded from the US if Trump's attempted decree to 'ban Muslims' from the US had not been stymied by the lawful authorities.

The upside from all of this, besides The Donald getting a 'very heavy' gong from the King of Saudi Arabia, is that the Gulf States will buy advanced American weapons [some of which Obama refused to let them have], thereby increasing the profitability of the arms industry - including its British contractors; and the Arab states promise to invest heavily in the next generation of US technology and production. President Trump, of course, is claiming that this is a very quick response to his campaign promises to regenerate the rustbelt: which was a major factor in delivering him the election victory last year. But it is clear that the Arab managers of sovereign wealth funds, who have decades of shrewd investment behind them, are not going to invest in steelworks and metal fabricating factories in the midwest that will not have a chance of profitability in competition with low-wage output from emergent economies. The Arabs will select the knowledge industries and high technology projects that will have a very high probability of being doubly productive: they will have high productivity which means a high turnover per employee; and great productiveness which means that they will generate large profits for the firms that own them, that can be allocated to further projects and to high shareholder payouts and to rising wages for employees [which will raise the general level of demand in the US economy]. Trump and his colleagues may be able to offer incentives [such as have existed through the Obama presidency] for some of the investments to be located in the midwest, rather than on the Atlantic or Pacific coasts; but the plant will not offer mass redeployment of the horny-handed sons and daughters of toil who voted so enthusiastically for Trump. There will be a few posts for janitors, car park attendants, caterers and cleaners: but the tragedy of middle-age uemployment will not be removed by the direct outcome from the President's trip.

Other outcomes from the middle-east leg of this tour will be irritation in Iran, an escalation of the conflicts in Yemen, in Syria and possibly in Iraq, and deeper disillusion on both sides in the Palestine conflict and among the US Jewish population that has hitherto backed Trump enthusiastically. The tour goes on to the Vatican [a photo call], to Belgium [ a meeting of NATO which Trump appears to be learning to love: in contrast to his rhetoric on the campaign trail], and to a high-finance gathering at which he will be, at best, a passenger.

The pot of dissent from his actions as President is bubbling on in the US, and may overboil at any time.

I read that US Psychiatrists maintain strict patient confidentiality, and there is a rule against any doctor with specialist skills publishing any speculative piece about the mental state of a currently-serving officer of state. On the other hand, there are just the beginnings of breaches in that rule as the antics of a very non-standard head of state cause more embarrassment. I am sure that the top women and men in the profession will hold to its highest standards; but as international incredulity expands, there will be more speculation on every level.

The deals that the Donald has done this week are between the US and other governments: they will stand; and that should benefit some few of the American long-term unemployed, as well as the rising sectors of the US economy.