As always, colonialism is the problem. They went from a colonial society with British overseers to a feudal society with Arab masters. Success in Saudi Arabia has always been about your family name and nothing else. I really don't blame the individuals since that's the worldview they grew up in, but yeah it's a shock when that worldview runs into the limits of reality.
If there's a silver lining, it's that they don't have the knowledge in-country to operate and maintain the hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons we sold them and are almost entirely reliant on US contractors. If the US stopped protecting the Saud family, they wouldn't last a month (China prefers to back Iran in the region).
If there's a silver lining, it's that they don't have the knowledge in-country to operate and maintain the hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons we sold them and are almost entirely reliant on US contractors. If the US stopped protecting the Saud family, they wouldn't last a month (China prefers to back Iran in the region).