US President Donald Trump was going to Saudi Arabia for big business deals, experts said. Instead, Trump stole the show using his time to lay out a vision for a new world order that discredits an entire class of “interventionists” on the left and right in his own country.
“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,” Trump said, in his most cogent defence of his “America First” foreign policy.
Trump’s speech on Tuesday could only have been delivered in the oil-rich Gulf, where it will certainly be welcomed by autocrats whose ultimate focus is to preserve their families’ rule at all costs. But it is also bound to resonate with millions of young Arabs and Muslims who see their countries as emerging middle powers, or believe their futures have been held back by decades of US intervention.
“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation builders,’ neocons, or liberal non-profits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Baghdad, so many other cities,” Trump added.
In typical Trump fashion, his speech glossed over the human rights abuses and crackdowns of Arab Gulf leaders and their meddling with weaker neighbours convulsed by wars in places like Sudan and Yemen, critics will point out.
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But Trump’s speech will be remembered as his best answer to those in the West who say his decision to make the Gulf his first foreign trip abroad for the second time as president is all about avoiding protesters, rubbing shoulders with autocrats and enriching his family with Gulf bling.
The president of the United States held up Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as the models for a world where the United States doesn’t intervene.
“The birth of a modern Middle East has been brought 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,” he said.
In one swoop, Trump excoriated an entire class of US diplomats, aid workers, think tankers and analysts. The irony is that he did so in a gilded room packed with those much richer and powerful: bankers like Larry Fink, tech bros like Elon Musk, and elite Saudi sheikhs.
Tuesday already offered an example of how Trump’s beliefs are reordering the world in unpredictable ways, which have left some of his traditional allies queasy and critics surprised.
Trump ended his speech by announcing that he would be lifting all US sanctions on Syria.
The country, often considered the heartland of the historic Levant, has been under sanctions since 1979. Economic restrictions on Syrians multiplied over the decades and reached their peak after the former Assad government unleashed a brutal crackdown on protesters, sparking a civil war.
“We are taking them all off,” Trump said, referring to the full raft of sanctions. “There is a new government that will hopefully succeed. I say good luck, Syria. Show us something special.”
To drive home the point of his disdain for the traditional foreign policy establishment, Trump did not allude to deep discussions with his national security advisors, or even aid workers and the United Nations.
Syrians, Trump told the world, had two advocates to credit.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, a fiery populist whose roots lie in Islamist politics, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the scion of a royal family and grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder.
These two men share the belief that their country’s global clout is growing as alliances like Nato wobble and the US reassesses its foreign commitments.
If Trump follows through on his pledge to lift all sanctions, it could deliver a blow to the US’s closest ally, Israel, which has been launching strikes on Syria and advocating for its neighbour to be carved up into zones of influence among Druze and Kurds.
Trump’s Obama moment?
Perhaps the closest parallel to Trump’s address on Tuesday was US President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo promising a new beginning between the US and the Muslim world after the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.
For a man who considers himself a transformational president, Trump will hope his speech doesn’t age like Obama’s. It was thoroughly discredited as a result of his drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and overshadowed by his decision to back uprisings against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
There is already a sense that Trump is reshaping how the Republican Party views American foreign policy. Some of Trump’s closest media allies, like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, have stepped up their criticism of Israel’s occupation of the occupied West Bank and war on Gaza in a way that would have been unimaginable for the allies of a Republican president two decades ago.
Astute political operators sense change is in the air.
“We receive close to $4bn for arms. I think we will have to wean ourselves off of American security aid, just as we weaned ourselves off of American economic aid,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, in a potential nod to the the growing power of Trump whisperers who want the US to focus on spending at home, not abroad.
Of course, Trump himself unleashed a devastating bombing campaign on the Houthis in Yemen earlier this year. He has also backed Israel’s decision to resume war in the Gaza Strip.
But there are some signs Trump’s instincts are pulling him in another direction.
His nuclear talks with Iran have assuaged Arab Gulf leaders who are concerned about a regional war, even as they have infuriated Israel.
At the beginning of this month, Trump fired his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who was seen as an advocate for launching preemptive strikes on Iran.
The Arabian way
Trump surprised many last week when he announced a ceasefire with the Houthis, who he said had stood “brave” in the face of US fire. The Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, were lobbying Trump to stop the attacks, having been burned by their own disastrous war against the group a few years ago.
That is one key contrast between Trump’s and Obama’s speeches. Trump’s address said as much about the rise of middle powers in the Arab and Muslim world as it did about the US’s dealings with them.
The US has a history of being impressed with strong Arab leaders, only to sour on them later. That was the case with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the firebrand Egyptian nationalist whom the US supported to reduce the influence of colonial Britain and the Soviet Union in the region. Nasser later forged a partnership with the Soviet Union.
Still, Trump’s speech may mark the first time a US president has celebrated Arab states asserting their independence from his own country, or at least its established policymaking class.
In that sense, Trump may believe he has something in common with the Arab monarchs that extends beyond a taste in private planes and glass towers.
“They told you how to do it,” Trump said, referring to his so-called western interventionists, “but they had no idea how to do it themselves.”
He said that “Peace, prosperity, and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly.”
“You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way.”
