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In a nation\u2019s collective memory, heritage and lived experience do not sit side by side. They fuse. They form an identity that cannot be erased and a leadership that does not easily lose its footing. On Saudi National Day 96, which will be marked on Sept. 23, the slogan \u201cOur pride is in our nature\u201d returns with new force. It reminds us that the dignity of nations is not borrowed. It grows from a clear understanding of who they are \u2014 and from the skill of turning a civilizational inheritance into the language of the present.<\/p>\n
National identity is not a festive costume. It is a living system of thought, culture and politics built across centuries of trial, adaptation and construction.<\/p>\n
When we look at strategic leadership in the public realm, one fact becomes clear: leadership styles are not imported ready-made. They take shape inside history, cultures and social worlds. Leaders in the Arabian Peninsula, and in Saudi Arabia above all, have long displayed qualities fitted to their own environments: adaptability, resilience and a talent for seizing opportunity at local, regional and global scales.<\/p>\n
It is necessary to recall how colonial inheritance reshaped governing structures across much of the world. Western powers, over centuries of expansion, imposed values and systems on people for whom those values were never part of their cultural story. The result was often leadership models that ignored or suppressed local symbols. Aggressive nationalism and recurring conflicts followed, as those same powers sought to keep their dominance.<\/p>\n
\nContemporary Saudi leadership demonstrates that there is no contradiction between authenticity and modernity<\/p>\n
Dr. Turki Faisal Al-Rasheed<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
History, however, is not read from one angle alone. The Arabian Peninsula produced leadership experiences that joined authenticity with modernity, the local with the global. Leadership here was never a carbon copy of Western templates. It was always an intelligent translation of local reality.<\/p>\n
As the geopolitical landscape changed, the idea of strategic leadership itself had to be revisited. Distinguished leaders from this region have displayed a spectrum of leadership marked by independence and by tangible developmental success.<\/p>\n
Consider Imam Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Muhammad Al Saud, known as Saud the Great, and his senior counselor Sheikh Jabr bin Rashid in the First Saudi State or Imam Faisal bin Turki and his principal military arm, Prince Abdullah bin Rashid. They skillfully combined religious, tribal and economic elements in their strategies, even under harsh conditions and scarce resources. Yet a limited grasp of external dynamics constrained the early state\u2019s success. That remains a fundamental strategic lesson: internal strength is not enough without a sophisticated reading of the international environment.<\/p>\n
Later leaders understood the need to add the external dimension to the equation of rule, especially after the peninsula faced its first external invasion. That deeper understanding continued with King Abdulaziz, who maneuvered with great skill through the complexities of world politics and built alliances that placed the nation strategically on the global stage. Historic Saudi leadership was never isolationist. It was interactive. It built bridges to the world without losing its roots.<\/p>\n
Today, King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman show a firm commitment to reform and sustainable development. They renew the domestic landscape while steering the nation strategically away from international conflicts that do not serve its interests. Vision 2030 is not merely an economic plan. It is a recasting of national identity in a changing world. It shows that a nation can act as a global player without surrendering its distinctive character.<\/p>\n
\nA strong identity comes from conscious openness. Preserving a culture means reproducing it in every generation<\/p>\n
Dr. Turki Faisal Al-Rasheed<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
True pride comes from knowing one\u2019s own nature \u2014 and from the ability to hold authenticity and modernity together, the local and the global, the preservation of identity and openness to others.<\/p>\n
This approach reflects a deep understanding of leadership in an age of globalization. Globalization is often treated as an economic force that turns countries into interconnected markets. It also demands cultural exchange and adaptation. That process can flatten cultures. It can also create space for dialogue and for the protection of local identities \u2014 provided leaders remain conscious of their own symbols and of who they are.<\/p>\n
Leadership in the Arabian Peninsula is not uniform. Religion, tribal belonging and the pursuit of economic growth all play decisive roles in effective rule. As the strategy of Ardashir, founder of the Sasanian Empire, put it: \u201cThe king remains by religion, and tax is the pillar of the king.\u201d The point is the same: the philosophies and strategies of government must align with the values of the people.<\/p>\n
In the Saudi context, this complexity appears in the leadership\u2019s capacity to preserve Islamic values and authentic Arab traditions while driving economic and social development. Contemporary Saudi leadership demonstrates that there is no contradiction between authenticity and modernity. There is integration, born of a deep reading of society and of its aspirations.<\/p>\n
In this crowded global landscape, especially for developing economies, mixing local wisdom with the best global practices is essential. Western experience itself shows how rapid globalization can weaken local culture unless local leaders promote and protect their own symbols with intention.<\/p>\n
The spread of architecture suited to the local environment in modern Saudi buildings is telling. It is evidence of a consciousness that progress does not require abandoning identity. Buildings that respect the desert climate, social traditions that adapt to the demands of the age and an economy that opens to the world without losing its local reference point \u2014 all are expressions of wise leadership that understand the future is built on the foundations of the past.<\/p>\n
History offers a deeper lesson about how civilizations actually form. As the Cambridge historian Josephine Quinn has argued, the idea that humanity has always been divided into distinct, enduring \u201ccivilizations\u201d is a relatively modern invention, dating to 19th-century Europe. The plural word \u201ccivilizations\u201d itself only appeared in the 1820s, when the French historian Francois Guizot began treating them as separate historical and geographical entities, arranged as a ladder with Europe at the top.<\/p>\n
That framework insists civilizations are closed organisms that evolve from within. It ignores a more important historical fact: change almost always arrives through contact and exchange. The alphabet behind Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin first appeared in the turquoise mines of Sinai, where people far from home adapted Egyptian hieroglyphs into a tool for their own languages. Gunpowder and siege techniques traveled from China through Mongol campaigns into Europe. Mathematics and science entered Latin Europe through the Islamic presence in Sicily and southern Italy.<\/p>\n
Civilizations are not formed in isolation. They are formed at crossroads, in exchanges and in mutual borrowing. The House of Wisdom in Abbasid Baghdad was less a building than a conscious policy of gathering knowledge from India, Persia and the Greek world. Successful empires, including Rome and the Islamic caliphate, kept relatively open borders and avoided mass forced conversion, understanding that an imposed language or religion closes off both revenue and ideas.<\/p>\n
Today, in an age of digital networks and instant communication, the idea of closed civilizations looks weaker than ever. Cities, trade, digital networks and shared crises all reveal how connected humanity is. Yet the language of \u201ccivilizations\u201d multiplies: civilization versus barbarism, multipolar claims of \u201ccivilizational states.\u201d All of them rest on one premise \u2014 that humanity consists of separate cultures that can be ranked or excluded.<\/p>\n
This is where conscious leadership matters: protecting local identity without locking it in. The Kingdom, under its current leadership, offers a model of how to open to the world without losing the self. Opening to tourism, investment and cultural exchange does not mean abandoning values and traditions. It means presenting them to the world with confidence and pride.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pride is in our nature\u201d is not only a festive slogan for Saudi National Day 96. It is an intellectual, cultural and political program that answers the questions of our time. \u201cNature\u201d here is not an inherited habit to be consumed. It is civilizational capital to be invested.<\/p>\n
Saudi leadership, across its long history, has proved its capacity for this rare combination. From Saud the Great to King Abdulaziz, from King Salman to the crown prince, a strategic continuity appears: religious, tribal, economic and external elements held in a precise balance that adapts to each age.<\/p>\n
A strong identity does not come from isolation. It comes from conscious openness. Preserving a culture does not mean freezing it. It means reproducing it in every generation.<\/p>\n
In a world that changes quickly, and in which the language of cultural closure grows louder, the Kingdom offers another model. Culture and identity must be protected in an age of large transformations unfolding before our eyes. But protection does not mean freezing them. It means remaking them in every generation according to their aspirations and their challenges.<\/p>\n
Let us mark Saudi National Day 96 not only as a historical anniversary but as a moment to think about our future: how to build a nation proud in its nature, connected to the world and sure of itself. Our pride is truly in our nature \u2014 and our nature is the secret of our survival and our advance.<\/p>\n
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Dr. Turki Faisal Al-Rasheed is a researcher in strategic studies and public leadership and the author of<\/em> \u201cSaudi Arabia\u2019s Transformation: Uncertainty and Sustainability\u201d (Routledge, 2026). X: @TurkiFRasheed<\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n