Saudi Arabia, America’s oldest ally in the Middle East, is in the midst of the most profound changes in decades. The leadership is going through an unprecedented generational change and has adopted an aggressive foreign policy. The driver of change is the king’s favorite son, Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman.

MBS, as he’s often called, is 30 years old, remarkably energetic, and very ambitious. King Salman has promoted him to an array of powerful positions and concentrated power in his hands quickly. In addition to being third in the line of succession behind the king and his cousin Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, he often acts as the country’s top diplomat and he chairs the committee that sets economic and energy policy. He acquires new titles and responsibilities every week. Late in April he became the Saudi chief of a new cooperation council with Jordan, for example, with promises this will lead to stepped-up Saudi financial aid to Jordan.

The prince is the author of “Saudi Vision 2030,” an ambitious plan to wean the country of its dependence on oil income and create a more diverse economy. On May 7 the king issued 51 royal orders restructuring the government to implement his son’s plan, including sacking the oil minister, Ali Naimi, who had run the portfolio for two decades. The new orders also seek to encourage more foreign pilgrimage to the two holy cities of Mecca and Medinah by highlighting the opportunity for pilgrimage not just during the traditional Haj holy month, but year-round as well. Encouraging tourism is a major part of “Vision 2030.” All of the changes bear MBS’s stamp.

MBS effectively makes Saudi oil policy now. He sabotaged Naimi’s efforts to freeze or reduce OPEC oil production last month. His plan to open ARAMCO to outside investment is the centerpiece of “Vision 2030.” Oil is being used as a weapon by keeping production high to keep Iran from getting an oil bonus after the nuclear deal lifted sanctions.

The king has other and older sons with more experience than Prince Mohammed. One is Saudi Arabia’s only astronaut and another is governor of Medinah. But King Salman apparently has unique confidence in the young prince who controls access to his father and the Royal Court.

Other Saudis have been given great responsibility at an early age before. The modern kingdom’s founder, Abdelaziz ibn Saud, captured Riyadh when he was only in his late twenties. His son Faisal represented the kingdom after the First World War in London and Paris at the age of 14 and commanded an army three years later in battle. Prince Bandar became ambassador to the U.S. in his early forties. But MBS’s rise is unique for an heir to the throne in the last half-century. He is the symbol of youth in a nation where most of the population is his age or younger.

The prince is also the hand behind the creation of a new Islamic military alliance based in the kingdom. Some three dozen countries have joined. The prince envisioned the alliance as both a counter to terrorist groups like the so-called Islamic State and al Qaida as well as a counter to Iran and its allies like Hezbollah and Bashar Assad. It held large military exercises called “Northern Thunder” in the kingdom this winter.

MBS is also the architect of Saudi Arabia’s year-old war in Yemen. Initially it was called Operation Decisive Storm but then the war settled into a stalemate so the name was changed. The Saudis and their allies, especially the United Arab Emirates, captured the southern port of Aden but have been unable to wrest control of the capital Sanaa from Zaydi Shia rebels called Houthis and their partner, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A fragile cease-fire began last month. Political talks are underway in Kuwait between the rival Yemeni groups but there has been little progress. Meanwhile the Saudis and Emiratis have driven al Qaeda out of several cities along the southeast coast of Yemen. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is regrouping and is far from destroyed. But it no longer is the main beneficiary of the war.

The Yemeni people have paid an enormous cost. Both sides have been guilty of egregious violence. The Saudi blockade has left millions of Yemenis at risk of malnutrition and without medical help. The rebels have starved the city of Taiz for months.

The Saudis claim they acted to prevent Iran from creating a puppet regime on the kingdom’s southern border. They were concerned when the Houthis set up direct air links from Sanaa to Tehran and offered use of the port of Hodeida to Iran. Hezbollah and Iran have provided some military advisers to the Houthis, but their influence on the rebels is limited.

The king and his son are pro-American but disenchanted with President Barack Obama. He has sold the kingdom over $100 billion in arms on his watch, according to the Congressional Research service. Obama has backed the Saudi-Yemen war with diplomatic, logistical, and intelligence support. U.S. advisers are now on the ground fighting al Qaeda.

But the Saudis cannot forgive Obama for abandoning Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. If one autocrat could be thrown under the bus, who might be next? They don’t like the Iran nuclear deal and believe Obama has been indecisive in Syria. MBS says he wants America to do more, not less, in the region. He is courting American journalists and think tanks.

King Salman has already dismissed one succesor. His half-brother, Crown Prince Muqrin, was removed from office a year ago without warning or explanation. The 80-year-old king could remove the current crown prince, his nephew Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and elevate MBS at any time. The old guard in the royal family, which believes MBS is reckless and inexperienced, won’t like it, but they have few options to resist. If the king does put his son in the crown prince position the kingdom will skip a whole generation. It’s already been a remarkable journey for MBS.

This piece was originally published in The Daily Beast.

William Galston and E.J. Dionne, Jr. make the case for universal voting – a new electoral system in which voting would be regarded as a required, civic duty. Why not treat showing up at the polls in the same way we treat a jury summons, which compels us to present ourselves at the court? Galston and Dionne argue that universal voting would enhance the legitimacy of our governing institutions, greatly increasing turnout and the diversity of the American voter base, and ease the intense partisan polarization that weakens our governing capacity.

Citing the implementation of universal voting in Australia in 1924, the authors conclude that universal voting increases citizen participation in the political process. In the United States, they write, universal voting would promote participation among citizens who are not likely to vote—those with lower levels of income and education, young adults, and recent immigrants. By evening out disparities in the electorate, universal voting would put the state on the side of promoting broad civic participation.

In addition to expanding voter participation, universal voting would improve electoral competition and curb hyperpolarization. Galston and Dionne assert that the addition of less partisan voters in the electorate, would force candidates to shift their focus from mobilizing partisan bases to persuading moderates and less committed voters. Reducing partisan rhetoric would help ease polarization and increase prospects for compromise.. Rather than focusing on symbolic, political gestures, Washington might have an incentive to tackle serious issues and solve problems.

Galston and Dionne believe that American democracy cannot be strong if citizenship is weak. And right now, they contend citizenship is strong on rights but weak on responsibilities. Making voting universal would begin to right this balance and send an important message: we all have the duty to help shape the country that has given us so much.

Galston and Dionne recognize that the majority of Americans are far from ready to endorse universal voting. By advancing a proposal that stands outside the perimeter of what the majority of Americans are likely to support, Galston and Dionne aim to enrich public debate—in the short term, by advancing the cause of more modest reforms that would increase participation; in the long term, by expanding public understanding of institutional remedies to political dysfunction. 

Downloads

• Download the paper

Audio

• Dionne and Galston discuss their paper on universal voting

The new 2013 budget unveiled by President Obama on Monday again contains the Automatic IRA, which was developed by Brookings' Retirement Security Project in conjunction with The Heritage Foundation. This year's version again includes an important change that will also encourage more employers to offer a 401(k) account to their workers. However, important changes to the Saver's Credit, which had been in previous budgets failed to make it this year.

Nearly half of American workers - an estimated 78 million- currently have no employer-sponsored retirement savings plan. The Automatic IRA is a simple, easy to administer and understand system that is designed to meet the needs of small businesses and their employees. Employers facilitate employee savings without having to sponsor a 401(k)-type plan, make matching contributions or meet complex eligibility rules. Employees are enrolled automatically into an IRA with a simplified system of investment choices and a set automatic savings level. However, they retain complete control over all aspects of the account including how much to save, which investment choice to use, or even to opt out completely. Automatic IRAs also offer savings options for the self-employed, for independent contractors, as well as providing those who are changing jobs the ability to continue their retirement savings.

The new 2013 budget would also double the size of the tax credit that employers receive in return for starting a new 401(k) plan from $500 annually for three years to $1,000 annually for the same period. This increase will ensure that the credit covers more of an employer's costs, and should encourage more employers to offer such a plan. This is a very good move, but the credit could be still further expanded to $1,500 for three years as will be proposed by a new House bill coming from Rep. Richard Neal. As Congress examines the proposal, it will have the opportunity to also expand the smaller credit that would be offered to employers that start an Automatic IRA to ensure that they are fully reimbursed for all expenses connected with starting and operating such an account for their workers.

A disappointing development is the failure to again include proposals to expand and improve the Saver's Credit by making it fully refundable. The Saver's Credit is an incentive for middle-and lower-income taxpayers to save in 401(k)-type accounts or IRAs. Retirement Security Project research found that more than 69 million taxpayers had income that was low enough for them to be eligible for the Saver's Credit in 2007. However, nearly 45 million of these filers actually failed to qualify for the credit because they had no federal tax liability. If the Saver's Credit was made refundable as RSP has proposed and deposited directly into the account as a match for savings, those 45 million taxpayers could have taken advantage of the program and had significantly higher retirement savings.

“There is room for everybody in America,” wrote French-American author Hector St. John de Crèvecœur in 1782’s Letters from an American Farmer.

Like most of the founding generation, Crèvecœur believed the sheer size of the new nation meant for a prosperous future. But he was also celebrating an attitude of openness, a willingness to embrace new citizens from around the world into what he called the “melting pot” of American society.

The embrace of openness has survived, in spite of occasional outbreaks of anti-immigrant sentiment, for the intervening two and a half centuries. The United States remains an immigrant nation, in spirit as well as in fact. (A fact for which, as an immigrant from the Old Country, I am grateful). My wife is American, and my high schoolers have had U.S. passports since being born in London. Right now I'm applying for U.S. citizenship. I want America to be my home not just my residence. My story is of course very different to most immigrants - but the point is, all of our stories are different. What unites us is our desire to be American.

But this spirit may be waning. Thanks only in part to Donald Trump, immigration is near the top of the political agenda – and not in a good way.

Trump has brilliantly exploited the imagery of The Wall to tap into the frustrations of white middle America. But America needs immigration. At the most banal level, this is a question of math. We need more young workers to fund the old age of the Baby Boomers. Overall, immigrants are good for the economy, as a recent summary of research from Brookings’ Hamilton Project shows.

Of course, while immigration might be good for the economy as a whole, that does not mean it is good for everyone. Competition for wages and jobs will impact negatively on some existing residents, who may be more economically vulnerable in the first place. Policymakers keen to promote the benefits of immigration should also be attentive to its costs.

But the value of immigration cannot be reduced to an actuarial table or spreadsheet. Immigrants do not simply make America better off. They make America better. Immigrants provide a shot in the nation’s arm.

Immigrants are now twice as likely to start a new business as native-born Americans. While rates of entrepreneurialism are declining among natives, they are rising among immigrants. Immigrant children typically show extraordinary upward mobility, in terms of income, occupation and education. Among children born in Los Angeles to poorly-educated Chinese immigrants, for example, an astonishing 70% complete a four-year-college degree.

As the work of my Brookings colleague William Frey shows, immigrants are migrants within the U. S., too, moving on from traditional immigrant cities — New York and Los Angeles — to other towns and cities in search of a better future.

New Americans are true Americans. We need more of them. But Trump is tapping directly and dangerously into white fears of an America growing steadily browner. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, more than four in ten white seniors say that a growing population of immigrants is a "change for the worse;" half of white boomers believe immigration is "a threat to traditional American customs and values."

Immigration gets at a deep question of American identity in the 21st century. Just like people, societies age. They might also settle down, lose some dynamism. They might trade a little less openness for a little more security. In other words, they get a bit stuck in their ways. Immigrants generate dynamism and aspiration, but they are also unsettling and challenging.

Where this debate ends will therefore tell us a great deal about the trajectory of the nation. An America that closes its doors will be an America that has chosen to settle down rather than grow, allowing security to eclipse dynamism.

Disruption is not costless. But America has always weighed the benefits of dynamism and diversity more heavily. Immigration is an important way in which America hits the refresh button and renews herself. Without immigration, the nation would not only be worse off, but would cease, in some elemental sense, to be America at all.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Fortune.

You were probably just thinking to yourself that the civil war in Syria isn’t complicated enough, that there aren’t enough warring parties, and that the constantly shifting sides have become predictable and tired. Well, don’t despair, there are now rumors emerging out of Turkey that may introduce enough new dimensions to the conflict to keep you confused well into the next decade.

The Turkish press is reporting that the Turkish government may be about to invade Syria along a 70-mile stretch of Turkey’s border with Syria to create a 20-mile deep safe zone. This issue is currently the subject of heated speculation and controversy in Ankara, making it quite difficult to figure out what is really happening.

But beyond the fevered speculation, why would Turkey want to invade Syria anyway?

Syria has long been a threatening mess, but neither Turkey nor anyone else has exactly been lining up to send their national armies into Syria. Sure, foreign fighters are plentiful in Syria and all of the regional powers, as well as the United States and Russia, have supported proxies there. But even after more than four years of bloody, destabilizing warfare, national armies have avoided it like the plague. The reason is quite simple: The complicated Syrian civil war has quagmire written all over it. As hard as it is to send a foreign army into Syria, it would be harder still to get it out.

In Turkey, particularly, the idea of military intervention into Syria remains very unpopular among the populace. The possibility that intervention might backfire and unleash Islamic State (or ISIS) terrorism within Turkey, or even reignite the bloody Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s southeast, remains an ever-present fear.

Now, however, the theory goes that Syrian Kurdish advances against ISIS have caused such concern in Turkey that the Kurds will create some sort of state or autonomous region along Turkey’s southern border. To prevent that outcome, the Turkish government, we are told, is finally willing to intervene in Syria.

Well, maybe. But, in our view, the reason that Turkey might now finally be contemplating such a step says more about changes in the domestic and international standing of the Turkish government than about the course of events in Syria.

Domestically, the outcome of the Turkish election of June 7 has seriously scrambled Turkish politics. After nearly 13 years in power, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its absolute majority in parliament. The AKP, which still holds a plurality of seats in parliament, has 45 days to form a government with at least one of the minority parties. But it seems clear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has very little interest in coalition government. The leaders of the two main opposition parties, the nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP), have both demanded the re-opening of corruption cases against the AKP. Erdoğan may fear that those corruption cases may eventually touch even his family.

Erdoğan would undoubtedly prefer an early election to subjecting his party or even his family to the indignities of prying prosecutors. But to achieve a better outcome than the AKP managed in June, he needs to demonstrate to the population the pitfalls of weak, coalition governments. As the possibility of intervention in Syria increases, as the markets spooks on the prospects of war, and even if a few bombs were to go off in the Kurdish areas, the growing sense of national insecurity would only serve to make Erdoğan’s case that the country needs the firm hand of one-party leadership. With a big enough victory, it might even serve to bring back prospects of constitutional change to increase the powers of the presidency. At that point, an early election would be worth having.

Insecurity works

Internationally, Turkey may be driven by the sense the White House now prefers their Kurdish partners in Syria to Turkey. The Turkish government is extremely angry about the emerging alliance between the United States and the Syrian Kurds, especially the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian affiliate of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). They attribute Kurdish success against ISIS to the American willingness to support Syrian Kurdish forces with air power and supplies. In the Turkish view, the PYD is simply a branch of the PKK, which both Turkey and the United States have branded a terrorist group. Allowing the PYD to unite the Kurdish areas of Syria would therefore represent an existential threat to Turkey.  

By threatening to intervene in Syria, the Turkish government seeks to change a U.S. policy that it finds potentially very damaging to Turkish interests. As Erdoğan no doubt reminded Vice President Biden when they talked the other day, Turkey has the ability to have a far greater impact on the fight against ISIS than the Kurds do. (The Turkish government might tell their domestic audiences that a prospective intervention in Syria is to stop the Kurds, but they will tell international audiences that it is to fight ISIS.)

Interestingly, to achieve both these international and domestic advantages, it is not necessary or even wise to actually go through with the intervention. Domestically, all that is necessary is to convince the population that the situation is sufficiently insecure to require firm, one-party leadership. Internationally, it just requires using the prospect of intervention to gain U.S. attention and convince the U.S. government to reduce its support of the PYD. At the current moment, the prospect of intervention is very useful for the Turkish government. Actual intervention, with all of the attendant risks of quagmire, is significantly less appealing.

So that means that it is probably not strictly necessary to spend your time trying to understand how the myriad factions within Syria will respond to the presence of the Turkish military on Syrian soil. On the bright side, you now have some really good reasons to enter into the nearly as confusing realm of Turkish domestic politics. Maybe start with our Turkish election series.

For another take on this issue, see the post from Kemal Kirisci and Sinan Ekim. 

The recent outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas is a serious setback to ongoing Turkish-Israeli normalization efforts. Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, its third operation against Hamas since leaving Gaza in 2005, in response to rockets and missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel. As in Israel’s two previous Gaza campaigns, Operation Cast Lead (2008-09) and Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), Turkey quickly condemned Israel’s actions, yet offered to mediate, together with Qatar, between Israel and Hamas.

After Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the midst of his presidential campaign, equated Israeli policy towards Gaza to a “systematic genocide” and accused Israel of surpassing “Hitler in barbarism,” Israel accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Turkey and Qatar of “sabotaging the cease-fire proposal,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry about Erdogan’s statements.

Turkish leaders’ harsh rhetoric sparked violent demonstrations in front of Israel’s embassy in Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul, lead the Israeli government to evacuate diplomats’ families, and issue a travel warning advising against travel to Turkey, which prompted numerous cancellations of tourist travel. On Sunday, Netanyahu refrained from declaring Turkish-Israeli reconciliation dead, but accused Erdogan of anti-Semitism more aligned with Tehran then the West.

These heightened Israeli-Turkish tensions come just as the two countries were negotiating a compensation deal for families of victims of the May 31, 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. The deal was intended to facilitate a long-awaited normalization between the two countries, more than a year after Israel’s official apology. The draft stipulated an estimated $21 million in Israeli compensation, the reinstatement of each country’s ambassador, and the reestablishment of a senior-level bilateral dialogue. However, a series of issues has prevented the deal’s finalization, including: Turkish domestic political considerations about the timing (related to March 2014 municipal elections and August 2014 presidential elections) and Israeli demands for Turkish commitments to block future lawsuits related to the Marmara incident.

With the ongoing Gaza conflict, prospects for normalization have again faded at least in the short term, and policymakers on both sides seem to have accepted a limited relationship. Erdogan even declared publicly that as long as he’s in power, there is no chance “to have any positive engagement with Israel”, dismissing any prospect for normalization. Israeli-Turkish animosity runs deep, not only among leaders, but at the grassroots level as well. While it may be difficult to look beyond the short term, a focus on the broader regional picture suggests four reasons why the two countries would benefit from restoring ties.

• First, they share strategic interests. Turkey and Israel see eye to eye on many issues: preventing a nuclear Iran; concerns over spillover from the Syrian civil war; and finally, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) and security and stability in Iraq. A resumed dialogue and renewed intelligence sharing can pave the way for more concrete cooperation between Turkey and Israel on all these regional issues, with development of a joint approach toward Syria topping the agenda.
• Second, regional environment may be beyond their control, the bilateral relationship is not. Normalization can eliminate one factor of instability in an unstable region.
• Third, Washington sees greater cooperation and cohesiveness in the U.S.-Turkey-Israel triangle as essential. President Obama has sought to restore a dialogue between Ankara and Jerusalem, including efforts to “extract” an Israeli apology and Turkish acceptance. Senior U.S. officials remain active in trying to improve the Turkish-Israeli relationship.
• Fourth, normalization may convey benefits in the economic sphere, with possible cooperation on natural gas, tourism, and enhanced trade. Gas in particular is viewed as a possible game-changer. In 2013, bilateral trade first crossed the $5 billion mark, and data from the first six months of 2014 indicates a continued rise. A political thaw can help accelerate these joint business opportunities. 

Nevertheless, at this stage it is clear that serious U.S. involvement is required for Turkish-Israeli rapprochement to succeed, even in a limited fashion. At present, there are far greater challenges for U.S. foreign policy in the region. The question now is whether the relationship between two of America’s closest regional allies reflects a new “normal,” or whether the leaders of both countries – and the U.S. – can also muster the political will to reconnect the US-Turkey-Israel triangle along more productive lines.

Check back to Brookings.edu for Dan Arbell’s upcoming analysis paper: The U.S.-Turkey-Israel Triangle.