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“Get shit done guy” I advocated for a MBS or Pinochet is that in question?
“A guy like that is vanishingly rare” Outside of white societies and some East Asians how many successful Democracies are there?
“Paper over flaws due to sheer natural wealth?”
Have you heard about the natural resource curse? How many non-white civs have monetized natural resources? Besides MBS. Two biggest oil reserves Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
I am suggesting that you are badly overestimating their competence.
Also, you haven't really articulated why it's a win for America that Trump's cronies get license to loot Venezuela (assuming that even pans out).
Other than, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Others have already answered you on this, but let me turn it around. Where are the successful autocracies? Every country people want to live in is a liberal democracy and that is not a coincidence. Democracies are institutionally more capable of reform and less prone to corruption. Even democracies with serious corruption problems (e.g. in Latin America or Eastern Europe) are generally better off than their authoritarian counterparts.
The resource curse is a meme. Insofar as it is a thing, it is a thing where natural resources allow incompetent authoritarian regimes to prop themselves up well past the point where they would otherwise collapse. With a few exceptions in one direction or the other (e.g. Japan, Norway), developed countries generally have both excellent natural resource endowment and economies which do not depend on natural resource extraction.
KSA and the other Gulf States lucked into sitting on top of an enormous share of a critical resource while having proportionally small populations (KSA has fewer people than CA, and the other Gulf States are even smaller). Natural resource extraction is generally a low-tier economic activity. These states could never function as they do without oil wealth.
KSA isn't even doing particularly well compared to other oil states. It's bigger, in both land area and population, but MBS has an insatiable love of expensive vanity megaprojects rather than serious economic diversification.
Nice word play.
Is China a country?
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There actually is no such a thing. There is negative correlation between QoL and share of natural resources in GDP but positive correlation between QoL and quantity of resources in soil.
in ME, not only KSA but also UAE and Qatar. In Africa, Botswana is good on African standards (it's the only "green" corruption index in all of Africa!)
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Most of Latin America is successful democracies now.
Which ones? That aren’t somewhat narco states or commie? I would only say Chile (who had Pinochet)
And I don’t hate Sheinbaum though she’s not really Mexican. But she won’t get rid of the cartel influence. Which means outside of Mexico City and Monterrey she’s not the dominant force.
Chile, Argentina (even before Milei; the problem isn't lack of democracy, the problem is Latin Americans tend to like commies), Panama (thanks GHWB), Uruguay, Colombia (hasn't been a narco-state for a long time), Ecuador, Costa Rica, Belize.
These countries aren't particularly wealthy, of course.
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