ISAS Insights

Saudi Arabia is faced with its most serious challenge, to transform and reconfigure an old, religiously legitimised, rent-dependent, and West-dependent for security, Kingdom into a diversified economy, popularly legitimized and sensitive to the decline of the West and the rise of the rest. This requires a multi-pronged strategy that includes rewriting its South Asian engagement beyond the issues of oil and expatriates. The Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s recent Asia visit aimed at securing greater security and economic partnership, an objective he cannot achieve without recognizing South Asia as being part of a post-American global system, defined by the SCO and the rise of the BRICS countries. The article explains the domestic and regional determinants of Saudi Arabia’s quest for a new South Asia Policy and the gradual rise of its South Asia profile.