Sure, this is more of a purge than an anti-corruption campaign:
A campaign of mass arrests of Saudi Arabian royals, ministers and businessmen expanded on Monday after a top entrepreneur was reportedly detained in the biggest anti-corruption purge of the kingdom's affluent elite in its modern history.
The reported arrest of Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar followed the detention of dozens of top Saudis including billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in a crackdown that the attorney general described as "phase one".
The purge is the latest in a series of dramatic steps by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to assert Saudi influence internationally and amass more power for himself at home.
But corruption that served Islamist ideology abroad that could be tolerated by Saudi elites while Saudi Arabia had the oil money to cope at home is another matter altogether when Saudi Arabia faces low oil prices and wants to transition their economy to one that adds value rather than being based on a single scarce extraction industry.
This article makes that last point directly:
Prince Mohammed says he is determined to remodel his conservative country into a modern state no longer dependent on oil.
That article has a lot of useful details on these efforts.
If Saudi Arabia wants that prosperous future it needs to make the kingdom friendly to investment and peaceful mutually beneficial interaction with the rest of the world.
If this purge by Salman puts Saudi Arabia on a non-Islamist path at home (and that is a major caveat given the power of the Islamists there), the jihadi wave that has roiled the Arab and Moslems worlds and inflicted collateral damage on the rest of the world as terror spilled out of those regions could be checked and rolled back.
Marry elite self interest to the yearnings of the Arab Spring still evident and we might yet see Islam modernized rather than suffer because too much of it is clinging to (or tolerating from fear or indifference) the 7th century with beheadings and bombings.
Our wars abroad against jihadis just buy time for the Moslem world (and mostly the Arab portion, but not exclusively) to resolve their civil war in a way that benefits them and the rest of the world.
This could be the kind of effort that our military struggle since 9/11 has bought time to achieve.
I am an optimist, I freely admit.
UPDATE: More on the purges here, which also notes the arrest of the head of the National Guard--the traditional home of loyal tribal armed power which is the foundation of internal defense; and here, which would have mentioned a Red Wedding if it had happened..
