Balance of Power: A Saudi Prince Wants to Reinvent His Kingdom

It’s been a headline-grabbing week in Riyadh, even by Saudi Arabia’s recent standards.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled plans to build a city from scratch on the Red Sea coast, offering a lifestyle he said would be unmatched in the kingdom -- and even the world. It’s an outsized project in keeping with the prince’s known ambitions, from creating a sovereign wealth fund to dwarf all rivals and selling a stake in the world’s biggest oil company.

Yet the prince didn’t stop there. He vowed to crush extremism and take the conservative kingdom back to “moderate” Islam. He also included a line for oil traders, backing the extension of OPEC production cuts beyond March 2018.

The announcements stunned global bankers at an investment conference in the Saudi capital, and unsettled those still grappling with the pace of economic change in Saudi Arabia. Supporters predictably heaped praise on a bold attempt to transform the kingdom; others were quick to note how some previous mega-projects have failed.

The prince is trying to perform an unprecedented balancing act, remaking the economy as well as Saudi Arabia’s social and political fabric. Residents of his new city would enjoy freedoms unheard of in a kingdom founded on austere Islam. But it’s not yet clear he can deliver on his promises.

Sign up to receive the Balance of Power newsletter in your inbox, and follow Bloomberg Politics on Twitter and Facebook for more.