Opinion | Spurned by West, Saudi Crown Prince MBS heads to China, becomes unlikely peacemaker for India and Pakistan

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman created quite the buzz this week with his whirlwind weeklong Asian tour, starting in Pakistan on Sunday before moving to India and wrapping it up with a two-day stop in China that ended on Friday.

Many headlines have been written about the lucrative deals that he and his entourage dangled before Asian governments keen on strengthening economic ties with Riyadh. But to focus too hard on these would be to miss the bigger picture: the Saudi prince’s desire to get his Vision 2030 economic diversification initiative on track, and pursue a strategy that has been pioneered by Dubai – investing in ports and other infrastructure in the Indian Ocean, for which India and Pakistan, as partners, make a natural fit.

One reason Vision 2030 has been stuck in first gear, of course, is the fallout from the Jamal Khashoggi affair, which saw the well-known journalist and critic of the Saudi government killed inside the country’s Istanbul consulate – prompting international outrage, especially from the West.

That is why East and South Asia are now the objects of Riyadh’s desire. Western investors have backed away from the table for fear of being called out for supporting a murderous regime. In the Middle East, rivals such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey have continued to trumpet the issue for their own ends. In the rest of Asia, meanwhile, there has been mostly silence – resulting in Saudi largesse.