In Conversation: On Inside the New Saudi Arabia

Victor McFarland is assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri. His research interests center on energy, the environment, and U.S. relations with the Middle East, with a special focus on Saudi Arabia. Oil Powers: A History of the U.S.-Saudi Alliance (Columbia University Press) is his first book. In it, connecting foreign relations and domestic politics, McFarland challenges the view that the U.S.-Saudi alliance is the inevitable consequence of American energy demand and Saudi Arabia’s huge oil reserves. Oil Powers traces the growth of the alliance through a dense web of political, economic, and social connections that bolstered royal and executive power and the national-security state. McFarland shows how U.S. and Saudi elites collaborated to advance their shared interests against rivals at home and abroad. Facing objections from their own people, Washington and Riyadh chose to shield their partnership from public oversight and accountability. American support empowered the Saudi royal family and helped the kingdom expand its influence across the Middle East, Saudi elites also encouraged a rightward shift in U.S. foreign and economic policy–with profound long-term effects. Oil Powers reveals the role of the U.S.-Saudi alliance the entrenchment of a global order fueled by oil. Odd Arne Westad, author of The Cold War: A World History, note that “The extraordinary relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has influenced both countries, often for the worse. There is no better guide to the origins of this complex alliance than McFarland’s new book. Anyone with an interest in

Mohamedou Slahi was born in a small town in Mauritania in 1970. He won a scholarship to attend college in Germany and worked there for several years as an engineer. He returned to Mauritania in 2000. The following year, at the behest of the United States, he was detained by Mauritanian authorities and rendered to a prison in Jordan. He was rendered again, first to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and finally, on August 5, 2002, to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he was subjected to severe torture. He was cleared and released on October 16th of 2016 and repatriated to his native country of Mauritania. No charges were filed against him during or after this ordeal. Larry Siems is a writer and human rights activist. He is the author of The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post-9/11 Torture Program. Detained in his native Mauritania at the behest of the United States, Slahi was eventually taken to the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba in 2002. Until his release in 2016, the United States never charged him with a crime. Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody and daily life as a detainee. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir — terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. Published now for the first time, Guantanamo Diary (Back Bay Books) is a

Susanne Koelbl is a journalist and a military and foreign correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel. Her dispatches have covered conflict areas and wars around the world, including the Balkans, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. She is known for her probing reports from Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea. Her book Dark Beloved Country: People and Power in Afghanistan was published in 2009. In her exceptional interviews with state leaders, intelligence-chiefs and Islamic extremists, Koelbl repeatedly challenges the powerful, including the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (wanted for genocide with an international arrest warrant), or the underground Hamas leader Khaled Mashal. Koelbl has excellent contacts in all political camps in the Middle East. She has been travelling to Saudi Arabia since 2011. Most recently she lived in Riyadh during 2018-2019. Saudi Arabia plays a key role in the world, yet few have first-hand knowledge of who lives, suffers, and wields power there. Behind the Kingdom’s Veil: Inside the New Saudi Arabia Under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (Mango) is a deep dive behind the walls of one of the world’s most secretive countries. It’s a place where religious conservatism and strict laws governing women’s freedoms support a single goal-preserving the power of the House of Saud. Chapter-by-chapter the black box that is Saudi Arabia opens. We are eyewitnesses to the inner workings of the new as well as the traditional Saudi Arabia; have breakfast with Royal Highnesses, meet Osama bin Laden’s bomb-making