As Democrats struggle to find their political footing following the unprecedented domestic accomplishments of the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term, the president shifted his focus to foreign policy and the campaign promises he made to bring peace and harmony by seeking a quick end both to the war in Gaza started by Hamas with its October 7 attack, and the war of attrition in the Ukraine following Russia’s invasion three years ago which has already claimed more than half a million lives.
While Trump’s efforts to bring those wars to a negotiated end have not yet succeeded, he has been able to demonstrate the power of what the Wall Street Journal has dubbed the “Trump Doctrine” of foreign policy realism to negotiate peace and stability with other countries in the Middle East by consciously ignoring the strong cultural and religious differences between them and the United States.
Without letting up on his administration’s vigorous pursuit of Trump’s ambitious tax-cutting, regulation-reducing domestic agenda, the president embarked upon a highly productive four-day tour of the Middle East last week. By the time it was over, Trump had announced more than $2 trillion worth of commercial investments by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in America’s industrial economy. At the same time, Trump received a royal red-carpet welcome, with all of the diplomatic trimmings, and firm pledges of support for U.S. policies from the leaders of those Persian Gulf countries.
In a speech he delivered in Riyadh to the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum on May 13, Trump returned the compliment by praising the recent accomplishments of the leaders of those oil-rich states by investing some of their immense oil wealth in the economic development of their cities.
“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi [today],” Trump declared, “were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities, Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought about by the people of the region themselves. The people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way.”
TRUMP REJECTS “WESTERN INTERVENTIONALIST” FOREIGN POLICY
At the same time, Trump sought to distance his style of American foreign policy from that of previous American presidents, such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, whom he described as “Western interventionalists.” Following the guidance of the globalist Washington D.C. foreign policy establishment, those presidents alienated the leaders of Middle East nations by lecturing them “on how to live and how to govern [their] own affairs.”
But Trump disagrees. As he declared in his Riyadh speech last week, “I believe it is G-d’s job to sit in judgment. My job [is] to defend America and to promote the fundamental interest of stability, prosperity, and peace. That’s what I really want to do.”
“In recent years,” Trump added,” far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins.”
For example, in his 2006 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush stated that the goal of his foreign policy was to “seek the end of tyranny in our world.” While recognizing that “some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism,” Bush said, “In reality, the future security of America depends on it.
“Dictatorships shelter terrorists and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror.” Bush concluded that, “Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer — so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause.”
But those efforts failed, Trump declared in Riyadh last week, because, “In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it,” Trump told the Arab leaders in Riyadh, “but they had no idea how to do it themselves.”
SHOWING RESPECT FOR OTHER CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS
Trump does not believe that as America’s president he has a moral obligation to promote a thirst for freedom and democracy in other nations where such ideas violate the local culture, customs and the religious beliefs. From Trump’s point of view, by demanding that other countries hold free and fair elections or release political prisoners, previous U.S. president were actually committing acts of cultural imperialism.
He also rejects the idea of previous presidents that only by imposing Western-style liberal democracy can prosperity and happiness be brought to the Middle East. Trump believes that these goals can best be achieved by providing security, stability, economic success and respect for another nation’s sovereignty and culture even where it is radically different from America’s. And above all else, Trump rejects regime-change wars, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan that promised freedom but, in the end, only delivered death and destruction.
Trump’s new “transactional” [read: pragmatic] foreign policy approach, which puts American interests in the Middle East first, even above those of Israel, is key to understanding the major news events from the region over the past several weeks. These include successful effort to secure the Hamas release of the lone surviving Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, but without a ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza or the return any of the other hostages; an agreement by the Houthis to end their drone and missile attacks on American ships and other American targets in the region after more than 1,000 American air attacks on Houthi targets across Yemen; and Trump’s surprise announcement that he was lifting all America’s sanctions on Syria and holding a face-to-face meeting with Syria’s new president, former al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa, at the request of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, even though the new Syrian leader once fought against American forces in Iraq, his support by Trump is a gamble that could pay off for the United States, because it has an “interest in keeping Iran and Russia from dominating Syria. If the U.S. can help Mr. Sharaa balance Turkey’s influence, and Mr. Sharaa can help prevent conflict between Turkey and Israel, a new era of stability in that bloody corner of the Middle East might be possible.”
TRUMP HAS NOT ABANDONED ISRAEL
Even though Israel objected to these moves, which Trump took without consulting them, he felt that they were necessary in order to protect America’s best interests, which is his primary obligation as president.
While Trump is growing impatient with Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu’s inability to bring the war in Gaza to a swift and successful inclusion, months after he gave Netanyahu a green light to do whatever was necessary to finish the job in Gaza, Trump is still giving Israel America’s full military and diplomatic support in its efforts to decisively defeat Hamas once and for all, and to secure the return of the remaining hostages. Trump also still shares Israel’s determination to prevent Iran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons. Trump would prefer to do that through current efforts to negotiate a robust and vigorously enforced diplomatic agreement with Iran, but if that is not possible, then Trump is still ready to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities through a combined U.S.-Israeli military campaign.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorial observes that “Trump is offering a form of foreign-policy realism rooted in good commercial relations and a focus on negotiating peace and stability. . . He thinks mutual interest in prosperity can overcome even strong ideological differences.”
It also notes that “Trump’s policy may be imitating Richard Nixon’s [strategy of] detente [with the Soviet Union] in the Cold War [which also] downplayed ideological differences in pursuing arms control deals and a stable balance of power.”
TRUMP HAS ADOPTED REAGAN’S STRATEGY WITHOUT THE IDEALISM
According to Scott Jennings, a conservative political strategist who worked in the George W. Bush administration and advised former Senate GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump has changed the emphasis in traditional Republican strategic doctrine, which used to talk about making war. But now President Trump is talking about making “peace through strength,” which was Ronald Reagan’s successful strategy that eventually ended the Cold War with the collapse of Soviet-style communism without the U.S. having to fire a shot.
However, the editorial also points out a major difference between the two presidents. “Ronald Reagan won the Cold War with a combination of realism and American idealism. He built American hard power and was willing to engage the Soviets, but [unlike Trump, Reagan] also wasn’t afraid to tell the truth [about the Soviets] crushing of freedom in Russia, Eastern Europe, and beyond.”
As the editorial notes, Trump says, “he wants peace above all else. The test will be whether his [attempts to reach] deals with adversarial states [such as Putin’s Russia and the ayatollahs in Iran] are short-term expedients or longer-term strategic victories… [and they] will tell us something about his plans for China as well.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker calls Trump’s foreign policy, as laid out in his Riyadh speech, “a ruthless pursuit of national interest shorn of idealism… an unusual mix of materialism and foreign-policy realism… You can see the logic behind it.”
Baker adds that Trump, “isn’t wrong [when he says] that successive American presidents’ pursuit of high-minded ideals has often failed twice over. In the Middle East, especially, they didn’t achieve their objectives of greater freedom, peace, and stability for the region and security for the U.S., and the efforts came at a large cost to Americans.”
Jon Alterman, a global security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told the New York Times that, “Governments and publics throughout the [Persian] Gulf like Trump a lot, [because] they feel [he is unlike] Western liberals [who] want to shame them on their domestic [human rights] issues. . . [Instead,] most people there see Trump as a common-sense, like-minded leader.”
That is why, at every stop in Trump’s four-day whirlwind tour of the Middle East, he was treated with high honors and respect, as well as extravagant welcoming ceremonies. In the UAE’s capital city of Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, was lit up in Trump’s honor with an image of the American flag, and he was awarded its highest civilian honor.
In addition to massaging Trump’s giant ego, he was able to come home from the whirlwind tour of the Gulf states with firm commitments from the Saudis, Qatar, and the UAE for $2 trillion worth of investments in the United States economy. Trump has been counting on that to help him keep his promise to blue-collar American voters to bring back the millions of manufacturing jobs lost to China and other low labor cost foreign competitors over the past three decades.
TRUMP’S PRAGMATIC FOREIGN POLICY GOALS
National security reporter Eli Lake explains in a column published by The Free Press that, under Trump, “America is no longer trying to remake the world in its image. . .
“As Trump sees it, how a government is organized internally — whether it’s a liberal democratic republic or a repressive police state — is irrelevant to America’s national interests. What matters is how that state behaves. If Iran sponsors terrorism and pursues a nuclear weapon, then Trump will use at least economic coercion [and threaten military action] to punish Iran’s adventurism.”
On the other hand, “so long as Saudi Arabia and its ruling family are willing to invest in America’s economy and act as a stabilizing force in the region,” Trump doesn’t care whether it is ruled by an undemocratic monarchy.
Trump also has no problem in befriending the Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as long as his friendship with the Saudi leader is in America’s best interests, even though the prince has been accused of having ordered the murder of one of his critics, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018.
That same logic also serves as Trump’s justification for the nice things he has said in the past about Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. As long as he believes that maintaining cordial relations between them is in America’s best interests, Trump will say whatever he must to maintain a working relationship with the Russian dictator.
By contrast, when President Biden took office, he chose to condemn Crown Prince Mohammed publicly over the accusation that he had Khashoggi killed, deliberately creating a crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations. Not long thereafter, Biden was forced to embarrass himself and the United States by flying to Riyadh to plead in person with the Saudi leader to pump more oil in order to bring down the high cost of gas at the pump, after it had become a serious political problem for Biden and his administration, and the Crown Prince refused to accept Biden’s phone calls.
Lake also observes that Trump’s campaign promise to keep America out of new foreign wars resonates deeply with his working-class MAGA voters. It is mostly their sons and daughters in the U.S. military whose lives were put at risk by the U.S. involvement in the extended Middle East wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, supported by the previous presidents under the influence of the globalist Washington foreign policy establishment.
THE ONLY NATION TRUMP IS BUILDING IS THE U.S.
“[Trump’s] message — both domestically and globally — is clear,” Lake writes. “The only nation we’re building is our own. For the rest of the world, we are looking for sovereign partners who carry their own weight and increase America’s safety, strength, and prosperity across the globe.”
“Peace, prosperity, and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage,” Trump told the leaders of the Persian Gulf during his visit last week, “but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly. And it’s something only you could do. You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way. . .
“Today, the Gulf Nations have shown this entire region a path towards safe and orderly societies with improving quality of life, flourishing economic growth, expanding personal freedoms, and increasing responsibilities on the world stage. After so many decades of conflict, finally it is within our grasp,” Trump declared,” to reach the future that generations before us could only dream about — a land of peace, safety, harmony, opportunity, innovation, and achievement, right here in the Middle East.”
Trump also explained why he turned down Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent request to have the U.S. join in a pre-emptive strike to destroy Iran’s emerging nuclear weapons capability, and announced the start of a new round of nuclear negotiations with Iran instead. “As President of the United States, my preference will always be for peace and partnership, whenever those outcomes can be achieved. Always, it’s always going to be that way. Only a fool would think otherwise.”
Trump then noted his actions in support of Israel during his first term as president, including the imposition of unprecedented economic sanctions on Iran that starved the regime of the resources it needed to fund terror, while launching the successful regionwide effort to foster peace between Israel and the Arab world through American sponsorship of the Abraham Accords.
Trump expressed his disappointment that Saudi Arabia has not yet agreed to join the Abraham Accords, in large part because of the continuing fighting in Gaza, but he said that he still expects the Saudis to sign the agreement. “It will be a special day in the Middle East with the whole world watching when Saudi Arabia joins us,” Trump said. “But you’ll do it in your own time, and that’s what I want, and that’s what you want, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
THE HIGH COST OF BIDEN’S WEAKNESS AND INCOMPETENCE
However, that process toward regional peace in the Middle East was interrupted, Trump noted, by the misguided policies of the Biden administration over the past four years. Biden lifted the sanctions that Trump had imposed “on Iran in exchange for getting nothing and sent the regime tens of billions of dollars to fund terror and death all over the world.”
Trump also blamed the Biden administration for enabling Iran to fund Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, “one of the worst days ever in the history of the Middle East,” and for removing the Houthis from the U.S. blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations even while they were launching missiles and drones at Israel, Saudi Arabia and ships sailing in international waters towards the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Trump said that “the Biden administration’s extreme weakness and gross incompetence derailed progress toward peace, destabilized the region, and put at risk everything we had worked so hard to build together” during his first term as president.
But now that he is back in the White House again, Trump said, “We have achieved the swift return of American strength at home and abroad. Now, working with the vast majority of people in this region who seek stability and calm, our task is to unify against the few agents of chaos and terror that are left.”
TRUMP OFFERS IRAN A CLEAR CHOICE AND DEMANDS A QUICK ANSWER
Trump then made it clear he recognizes that, “The biggest and most destructive of these forces is the regime in Iran, which has caused unthinkable suffering in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen and beyond. . .
“While the Arab states are focused on becoming pillars of regional stability and world commerce, Iran’s leaders have focused on stealing their people’s wealth to fund terror and bloodshed abroad. The most tragic of all, they have dragged down an entire region with them.
“Yet I’m here today not merely to condemn the past chaos of Iran’s leaders, but to offer them a new path and a much better path toward a far better and more hopeful future. . .
“I want to make a deal with Iran. If I can make a deal with Iran, I’ll be very happy if we’re going to make your region and the world a safer place. But if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors, then we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero, like I did before. . . And take all action required to stop the regime from ever having a nuclear weapon.
“This is an offer that will not last forever. . . Things are happening at a very fast pace. . . So they have to make their move right now, one way or the other. Make your move.”
Trump and his chief negotiator with Iran, Steve Witkoff, have both also made it clear in their latest statements, after some initial confusion over the point, that they will not permit Iran to retain any ability to enrich uranium on their own, as the only way to make sure that Iran never gains the ability to make a nuclear weapon.
According to a column by Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek, which was published by the Free Press alongside Lake’s analysis, “Trump’s Riyadh speech was a rejection of the idea, shared by [former presidents] Obama and [G.W.] Bush, that Western-style liberal democracy is essential to human flourishing in the Middle East.”
TRUMP’S FOREIGN POLICY SEES THE WORLD AS IT ACTUALLY IS
Trump’s approach isn’t isolationism, she argues, but rather a foreign policy built on an appreciation of the world as it actually is — not as Western liberals wish it to be. . .
Ungar-Sargon recalls that in his infamous June 2009 address to Islamic leaders in Egypt apologizing for America’s attitude towards the Muslim world, President Obama defined his foreign policy as “based upon [his claim] that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
But Ungar-Sargon writes that “President Trump’s foreign policy is not built on the fiction of shared principles but respect for our differences and with alliances built on the unflinching, hard reality of economic partnership — even between [ideological or religious] foes.”
Similarly, Lake reminds us that, “it’s valuable to remember a central tenet of conservative thought, best expressed in the phrase ‘up to a point.’ Democracy promotion is a good thing, up to a point.
“The flaw of the nation-builders [such as Obama and Bush],” Lake writes, “was the hubris [to believe] that American ingenuity and treasure could impose drastic change on cultures rooted in centuries of tradition.”
TRUMP’S PHILOSOPHY OF “PEACE THROUGH COMMERCE”
By defining peace through commerce as the new cornerstone of American foreign policy, Trump has made a conscious decision to de-couple it from America’s lofty founding democratic ideals that many of our allies don’t share, and establish it, instead, on the more practical and pragmatic principles of mutual economic self-interest. Meanwhile, at the same time, Trump is willing to give our cooperating Arab world allies the benefit of the doubt concerning their good intentions.
For example, in his Riyadh speech, Trump declared, “Before our eyes a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.”
Hopefully, Trump and supporters of his foreign policy will argue, at least some of that will be true, if not today, then perhaps someday soon.
According to Ugar-Sargon, Trump is betting that he can persuade the Sunnis and Shiites to put aside their religious differences and their traditional dislike of Israel in order to take advantage of a massive financial opportunity.
As Trump put it in Riyadh, “If the responsible nations of this region seize this moment, put aside your differences, and focus on the interests that unite you, then all of humanity will soon be amazed at what they will see right here in this geographic center of the world.”
At the same time, Ugar Sargon reminds us that Trump’s commitment to Israel “is genuinely held and runs deep, but the Israeli right ought not seek to force [Trump to make] a choice between his America First, peace through strength agenda and their own aims.”
A YEAR OF UNIMAGINABLE DEVELOPMENTS
Nevertheless, Israel and its friends should be thankful, because just one year ago, we were still reeling in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack. The much more favorable regional strategic picture Israel faces today would have been unimaginable at that time, Yet, in today’s reality, former Syrian leader Bashar Assad is now gone, Hamas’ military power is broken and its top leadership is dead, Hezbollah in Lebanon has been neutralized, and Iran has been isolated.
Meanwhile, President Trump is actively making lucrative deals between America and nations across the region who until recently were enemies. He is also urging them to put aside their long-standing differences and join with Israel in the Abraham Accords, in order to pursue the mutual advantages of regionwide cooperation, peace and the promise of a better future for their children.
