Name? Mohammed bin Salman
Westphalian identity? Saudi Arabian
Age? 35
Why is he in the news? Saudi Arabia hosted this year’s G20 summit. While MBS hoped for a glorious summit with many family pictures (pictures of all world leaders at the end of the summit) he ultimately had to host the summit digitally with his father.
Why do we care? The G20 summit is a forum where the 20 economically strongest countries come together and try to align combined efforts on global issues. This year’s declaration focused on pandemics, global warming and trade … all things we happen to care about as well.
Why should you care? This year’s summit was not as prominent in the media as it usually is. Maybe it is due to the lack of handshakes between leaders and what we interpret of them. Nevertheless, the G20 summit is actually very important if you care about being vaccinated anytime soon and, more importantly, if you care about a fair distribution of vaccines ALL over the world.
Who else cares? Better to ask who did not care? And unsurprisingly, it was President Trump. While he attended the morning session, stating he’d look forward to working together with everyone for “a long time…” during the afternoon session he was seen golfing for four hours. Maybe that’s why the G20 countries actually agreed on issues concerning sharing a vaccine, global warming and trade?
Any further comments? Saudi Arabia and especially MBS were really looking forward to this summit and the opportunity it provides to claim a bigger role in the international sphere. But rather than being a great statesman and producing lasting images of everyone working together alongside MBS, all that the media reported about MBS was this statement: “We were able to reaffirm the spirit of cooperation that has always been the cornerstone of the G20 successes.” If that isn’t a statement for the ages I do not know what is.
