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Wants to dominate the Middle East: The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Photo: BANDAR AL-JALOUD / AFP
Actually, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would have wanted to make the big show at the weekend: a magnificent opening ceremony, shaking hands with the world's most important heads of government.
Because Saudi Arabia will hold the G20 meeting - as the first Arab country ever.
The glamorous pictures should have whitewashed all the taboos of the past few years: the insidious murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the abuse of women's rights activists, the brutal course of the Yemen war.
But Covid-19 thwarted the Prince's plans.
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G20 summit in Osaka 2019: The Saudi crown prince among the mighty of the world - Mohammed bin Salman wanted such images for his home game in Riyadh
Photo: Susan Walsh / AP
Chancellor Angela Merkel will stay away from the summit, as will French President Emmanuel Macron and American President Donald Trump.
The G20 summit in Saudi Arabia will only take place via video switch due to Corona.
A pandemic enforces what human rights activists have been calling in vain: Nobody will come to Riyadh.
Financial issues in the focus of this year's G20 summit
No major decisions are expected from this year's G20 summit.
For Donald Trump it will be the last major international appearance as president.
Actually, the meeting of the 19 richest countries in the world and the EU should have been about climate protection and migration.
Now, because of Corona, the focus will be on debt relief for poorer countries whose finances were precarious even before the pandemic.
The Saudi crown prince is pursuing two goals in hosting the G20 summit:
In economic terms, he wants to present his realm as open and attractive to investors
.
He urgently needs it, because Covid-19 is endangering his plans.
To make the oil-dependent economy sustainable, he wanted to invest hundreds of billions.
But the double shock caused by the corona crisis and the falling oil price means that the Crown Prince had to cancel investments and increase the tax.
Politically,
too
, he wants to establish his country as a heavyweight
.
Even if Saudi Arabia is increasingly involved as a junior partner of the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East and North Africa, it does not yet have the regional supremacy that Mohammed bin Salman hopes for.
The Saudis are again blatantly threatening to develop their own nuclear weapons if Iran continues to develop its capabilities - with China's help, Saudi Arabia has already secretly started to build a civilian nuclear program.
But the threats do little to mask Saudi Arabia's weakness: there is still no real strategy against rival Iran.
Last year, Tehran attacked Saudi Arabia's oil production and exposed Riyadh.
No help came from Washington.
"The dogs are returning to the White House"
The change of power in the White House means another problem for Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump ignored the Saudi Arabian taboos and erratic maneuvers, but the future President Joe Biden has announced that he will focus more on cooperation with democracies.
Some Saudi media promptly commented Biden's election with the headline: "The dogs are returning to the White House" - ostensibly because of Biden's dogs Major and Champ, but at the same time a serious insult in the Middle East that should not have gone unnoticed in Washington .
Shortly afterwards, the Saudi Arabian reports disappeared again.
The G20 summit shows: Even if most countries apart from Canada have so far held back with clear criticism, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has not yet been rehabilitated internationally.
A meeting of the mayors of the world's major cities should actually have taken place within the framework of the G20 summit.
But New York, Paris and London boycotted, Berlin was silent.
A supposed reformer who has real reformers executed
Mohammed bin Salman remains caught in an obvious contradiction, as the Human Rights Committee of the Bundestag has just stated, from which the Crown Prince does not seem to find a way out: on the one hand, he wants to be portrayed and celebrated as a modernizer, on the other hand he lets the real reformers of Saudi Arabia lock up, flogged or executed.
The meeting organized by Saudi Arabia is reminding the world of the fate of Loujain Alhathloul, 31, and her colleagues: Saudi Arabia's best-known women's rights activists have been imprisoned for two years.
Your crimes?
Demands such as the right to drive a car, which the Crown Prince himself later introduced.
Loujain Alhathloul's family has not been admitted to her or informed of her health for weeks;
The UN recently described it as worrying.
So far, the Saudi royal family seems to have only reacted with audacity to international criticism - as in 2018, when it wanted to withdraw its students and doctors from Canada with loud fanfare, only to row back quietly and secretly.
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has just described the temporary German arms export embargo against Saudi Arabia as “wrong” and “illogical” and threatened to buy elsewhere.
The noise is not surprising at this point: In the coming weeks, Berlin will have to decide whether the embargo will be extended again.
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