FLASH
Shkruar nga Dritan Haxhiraj 
From sword dancing with Trump to the golden fist of power: how Mohammad bin Salman became the most sophisticated autocrat of the digital age
Part Two, continues from Part One
If Barack Obama's speech in Cairo in June 2009 was later interpreted as one of the impetuses of the Arab Spring, Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia on May 20, 2017, also deserves a place of honor in the history of modern conspiracy theories.
Did Trump know that within weeks of stepping foot in Riyadh, a silent coup would take place within the royal family? Did the Saudis ask him for a “green light”? Did they get American blessing for their domestic revolution? These questions remain unanswered, but the coincidence is shocking.
Just a month later, King Salman overthrew the rightful heir, Muhammad bin Nayef, and installed his son in his place: Mohammad bin Salman, or simply MbS. A 32-year-old unknown to the wider international public, but with an insatiable ambition to be everything in an absolute state.
Within a few months, MbS becomes defense minister, controls oil, the economy, and national strategy, seizing power with a playbook that resembles that of Xi Jinping, Putin, and Erdogan.
Populist, authoritarian, adept at creating modern images while maintaining unquestioned traditional control, MbS becomes the only man who matters in Saudi Arabia.
The path to power was not only political, it was also spectacular. The kidnapping and “golden imprisonment” of dozens of princes at the Ritz-Carlton for corruption transformed the internal narrative of power into a reality show of global proportions. This movement, which critics called the “mafia with a tie,” brought over $100 billion to the Saudi state coffers. Just for comparison: it is five times more than the annual Gross Domestic Product of Albania.
But if the kidnapping of the princes was an internal coup, the kidnapping of Saad Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, was a signal to the world: MbS would speak the language of power. Everyone was shocked. But no one punished him.
At the same time, to soften his domestic and international image, the prince announced a reform that had been awaited for decades: the right for Saudi women to drive. The liberal world reacted with enthusiasm, as expected. But no one asked why a minimal act of civilization had to come through such an authoritarian spectacle.
MbS knew how to operate. Visits to Silicon Valley, meetings with Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, created a new aura for the young prince who used the same old violence, but with a packaging that evokes admiration in the West.
Was it Jared Kushner who taught MbS this style? Was Trump's visit the moment when the green light was turned on for "authoritarian modernization"? Was $110 billion in weapons an investment in the guarantee that the US would not interfere in the way the monarchy was run?
The history of the answers to these questions is left for later books. But what we do know is that MbS is not an exception to the Saudi past, he is its perfection. He is not reform, he is the control of reform.
And while Thomas Friedman enthusiastically described it in an interview with The New York Times in November 2017, the international community was more silent than critical… (Continued…)/ Pamphlet
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