A few weeks after taking the oath of office in 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared at the State Department to give the first foreign-policy address of his new administration. During his talk, the new president famously declared that “America is back.” In this not-so-subtle rebuke of his predecessor, Biden was signaling that he was placing American values at the forefront of his foreign policy. As he promised in his campaign, there would be “no more blank checks” for the likes of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Donald Trump’s “favorite dictator”) and the Saudis, who he vowed to make “them the pariahs that they are” and in the process make them “pay a price.”
Students of U.S. foreign policy—and cynics more generally—understood that Biden was going to eat his words in time. In May 2021, he was on and off the phone with Sisi, who won the White House’s gratitude for helping broker a cease-fire during a round of violence between Israel and Hamas. The following summer, Biden visited Saudi Arabia, where he fist-bumped the previously unacceptable Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The idea that U.S. foreign policy reflects or at least should reflect American values is something that the U.S. foreign-policy community repeats to itself, but it is mostly a myth. The list of human rights abusers who were American partners is long, indeed.
That’s why U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech in Riyadh last week was refreshing. He dispensed with any pretense about American exceptionalism, principles, or values, acknowledging that when the United States engages in a missionary foreign policy, it can and has done a fair amount of damage to itself and the part of the world it seeks to redeem.
Before I get hate mail, let me be clear: There is cynicism and then there is Trump cynicism. The scheme to score a tricked-out Qatari 747 plane and Trump’s claim to be blithely unaware of how his sons and Zach Witkoff are cashing in on some Trump-branded crypto nonsense with the help of partners in Dubai surely belong in the pantheon of his shamelessness. The bromances with Mohammed bin Salman (“I like you took much”), Qatar’s “tall and handsome” Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and the United Arab Emirates’ President Mohammed bin Zayed, who Trump said was “a magnificent man,” are downright creepy.
Trump’s claim that he prevented “them”—whoever they are—from the designating what is routinely referred to in maps in multiple languages as the Persian Gulf (and sometimes the Arabian Gulf), as the “Gulf of I-ran” was hilarious, and not in a good way. And lifting sanctions on Syria without simultaneously ensuring that sanctions relief and normalization of relations are subject to conditions doesn’t seem to be a well-thought-out policy.
Still, Trump’s visit, and particularly his speech in Riyadh, was important for its forthrightness about what he and his administration believe is Washington’s appropriate place in the region. It is a vision—for lack of a better term—that should make both so-called restrainers and interventionists unhappy.
Trump ripped neoconservatives and liberal internationalists for the neocolonial projects of the last three decades that sapped the power and resources of the United States without actually building any stable nations. This was hardly a surprise. It’s a line of criticism that has been a theme of Trump’s three runs for the White House. And overall, it is a good thing for the president to remind audiences both at home and abroad that when Washington actively tries to make good things happen in the Middle East—Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Freedom Agenda, and building a Palestinian state—it usually fails.
In contrast, when the United States has been more defensive in its approach to the region—seeking above all to prevent disruptions to free flows of energy and threats to Israel’s security, or preventing other countries or groups of countries from challenging its primacy in the service of those issues—it’s been relatively successful. Although even those efforts have come with setbacks and mostly moral costs.
Noticeably absent from Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia was any rhetoric of restraint—the sort of blather about the need for U.S. withdrawal or “off-shore balancing” because Washington allegedly has few interests in the Middle East. Instead, it is clear that Trump wants the United States to stay in the Middle East, just in a different way than in the recent past. Trump prioritizes active diplomacy to manage and resolve problems and provide security for U.S. partners. And, most importantly for the President, he wants to promote America as a destination for foreign direct investment. It is hard to argue with any of this, especially if the Gulf states make good on their promises to pour money into economic projects in the United States.
There is no doubt that a lot can go wrong in this region. The Israelis are ramping up their military activities in Gaza, and there remains no workable plan for the area when the war eventually comes to an end. A nuclear deal that is better than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is hardly assured. Analysts can argue with his approach to these specific problems—cutting deals with Hamas does not help in the long run and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff seems to be too credulous in his talks with the Iranians.
But those flaws are separate from the basic point that Trump articulated in Riyadh, where he dismissed the shared analysis of the two long-competing camps in the United States’ approach to the Middle East with their shared analysis of Washington’s role. Separate from the president’s apparent grift and peculiarities, he is shaking off a legacy of failure.
There were parts of Trump’s trip that looked and sounded crude, but his approach is hardly wild—and that’s because it is rooted in the way the world is, not the way many folks in Washington would like it to be. And, as a result, one can expect it to be more successful than that of his predecessors.
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