Trump's Record-Breaking Arms Deal with Saudi Arabia Exposes a System
Built on Blood and Carbon
When Donald Trump arrived in Riyadh on his
first official foreign visit this week, he did not come bearing olive branches
or climate pledges. He came with contracts. At the centre of his visit stood
what he branded "the largest defence sales agreement in history"—a
sprawling $142 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. The White House’s own
fact sheet glowed with superlatives: cutting-edge warfighting equipment from
over a dozen U.S. arms firms, training programs for Saudi military personnel,
and embedded support for the kingdom’s defence infrastructure.
But this was no ordinary defence contract. It
was part of a broader $600 billion investment promise from the Saudi
monarchy—sealed in parallel with pledges to deepen strategic and commercial
ties between the two nations. At the time, Trump also promoted his real estate
venture, Trump Tower Jeddah, and rolled out the red carpet for Saudi-backed LIV
Golf events at his private clubs. Meanwhile, his son-in-law Jared Kushner
quietly secured a $2 billion investment from Riyadh’s sovereign wealth fund,
despite glaring conflicts of interest.
Behind the press releases and handshakes,
however, this deal laid bare a more disturbing reality: the fusion of
militarism, elite wealth extraction, and climate catastrophe.
A Toxic Alliance: Human Rights Abuses and Geopolitical Expediency
Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, has been widely accused of war crimes in Yemen, state-sanctioned
assassinations (most notably of journalist Jamal Khashoggi), and domestic
repression. Yet, the Trump administration—and successive U.S. administrations
before and after—continued to greenlight arms sales and intelligence-sharing,
treating Riyadh as a key bulwark against Iran and a lucrative client for U.S.
weapons manufacturers.
The proposed normalisation of relations
between Israel and Saudi Arabia, encouraged by Kushner and endorsed by
Washington, was floated as a diplomatic win. In reality, it functioned as a
cover for a deeply transactional foreign policy: peace was secondary to
profits.
War as a Business Model: Who Profits?
Arms companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon
Technologies (RTX), Boeing, and Northrop Grumman were the primary beneficiaries
of the Saudi deal. But the real money flows upwards. A small cadre of
ultra-wealthy individuals—CEOs, institutional investors, and politically
connected elites—extract enormous wealth from these arrangements.
Asset management giants such as BlackRock, Vanguard,
and State Street are the largest shareholders in these defence firms. Their
clients range from everyday retirees to billionaires, but their profits
disproportionately benefit those at the top. Executives at these funds, like
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, command vast fortunes and wield enormous influence
over global markets—while remaining largely unaccountable for the ethical
implications of their portfolios.
Many investors in these funds are unknowingly
complicit in the war economy. Their pensions and savings are tied to an
industry that thrives on instability, repression, and conflict. This profit
structure is deeply embedded: war leads to more arms sales; more arms sales
boost corporate profits; and those profits are recycled into elite wealth,
political influence, and continued militarisation.
The Overlooked Emissions of Empire
The environmental cost of war is rarely
counted—but it is immense. Modern militaries are among the world’s largest
consumers of fossil fuels. A single F-35 fighter jet burns through thousands of
litres of fuel per hour. Massive naval fleets, bombing campaigns, and global
supply chains emit staggering volumes of CO₂.
The U.S. Department of Defense is the single
largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, yet military
emissions are routinely exempt from international climate reporting. The
Trump-era arms deal with Saudi Arabia, like many others, directly contributes
to this carbon-intensive system.
Beyond the emissions, war decimates
ecosystems, destroys infrastructure, and forces communities to rely on
carbon-heavy survival strategies. Post-conflict reconstruction is often fossil fuel
dependent. Climate change, in turn, fuels further instability, creating a
feedback loop of militarisation and ecological collapse.
Climate Militarised Capitalism: The Triple Crisis
What we are witnessing is not a series of
isolated events but a systemic pattern: a form of climate militarised
capitalism in which war, environmental destruction, and wealth inequality are
mutually reinforcing.
Profits flow to a few, while the costs are
borne by the many—and by the planet itself.
It is a system where arms companies profit
from war, asset managers profit from those companies, and billionaires profit
from both, while ecosystems collapse, populations flee, and climate targets
slip further from reach. The Saudi arms deal was not just about geopolitics—it
was a blueprint for this model.
A Call for Accountability and Demilitarisation
If we are serious about planetary health,
peace, and justice, we must challenge this architecture at its roots. That
means:
- Ending arms sales to regimes that violate human rights
- Divesting public funds from weapons and fossil fuels
- Including military emissions in climate agreements
- Breaking the political stranglehold of the
military-industrial-financial complex
It also means confronting uncomfortable truths
about where our pensions, savings, and tax dollars are going—and whose pockets
they are lining.
As the climate emergency deepens and new
conflicts erupt, we face a choice: continue enriching a war-fuelled elite, or
dismantle the machinery that profits from destruction. Trump’s arms deal with
Saudi Arabia may have faded from the headlines, but the system it represents is
very much alive—and pushing us all closer to the brink.
This article is part of this blog’s ongoing
investigation into the global war economy, climate collapse, and elite wealth.
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