In today’s world, certain moments matter not because of what is visibly happening, but because of what remains deliberately hihidden.
Kabul 24: The renewed encounter between Mohammed bin Salman and Donald Trump is exactly that kind of moment: the intersection of two personal power projects, each with its own urgent needs, and it is precisely those needs that are quietly reshaping the future of the region.
From the very first day he entered politics, Trump has been crystal clear: his view of the world is neither values-based nor institution-based; it is transaction-based.
In bin Salman he does not see a strategic partner but a lever—a young leader who has rewired every traditional circuit of power in Saudi Arabia at unprecedented speed and who is willing and able to pay cash on the barrel for any grand bargain.
To Trump, MBS is the perfect counterpart for the scenes he loves most: mega-deals, media spectacles, and quick, loud victory announcements.
The other side of the table is no less straightforward. Bin Salman is carrying out the most ambitious redesign of power in modern Saudi history—a project that is as bold as it is risky.
To lock it in place—from NEOM to a domestic defense industry to the energy transition—he needs two things above all: hard security and international cover.A strong-looking Trump can deliver both, and crucially, he can do so without asking the moral, legal, or institutional questions that usually fill American political and media space.
Yet the tension at the heart of this relationship is that the Trump–MBS closeness is less a “strategic alliance” than a mutual survival pact.
Both men instinctively understand that the other can manufacture at least one domestic narrative win. Trump gets to say, “I made a historic deal with the Saudis.” MBS gets to say, “The strongest man in America has our back.”The problem is that both also know they can walk away from the other when it suits them.
This relationship is not anchored in institutions, nor in shared American or Arab values; it rests entirely on immediate need.If the political winds in Washington ever turn decisively against Trump, no one will be left to defend this relationship, because a significant part of it was built on short-term, volatile calculations.
That is the hallmark of “personal agreements that live and die with the individuals.” Far from creating regional order, they tend to make it more fragile.
The recent bin Salman–Trump meeting may look warm and friendly in the media frame, but something entirely different is flowing beneath the surface: an alliance of two personal projects whose ultimate cost will be paid neither by Trump’s Washington nor by Riyadh, but by the region on one side and, on the other, by the America that Trump is in the process of passing through
