In the first major diplomatic trip of his second term, President Trump wheeled and dealed with Middle Eastern nations.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed several agreements with the Trump Administration on energy, investment, defense, mining and more–totaling ~$600B. The deals encompass $142B in arms sales, the largest single international defense transaction in US history.
In Qatar, our two nations agreed to an economic partnership worth $1.2 trillion; full details here. That lofty number is in addition to commercial exchanges totaling $243.5B–a portion of which entails the sale of American made jetliners to Qatar Airways, and a multibillion dollar defense agreement/security partnership.
In the United Arab Emirates, the White House secured another ~$200B in commercial deals, ranging across a variety of commercial and oil/gas sectors.
But the most consequential diplomatic moment of the trip occurred during President Trump’s speech in Riyadh, in which he rejected neocon ideology and praised the independent progress spearheaded by regional leaders. His speech signaled a significant course reversal from the foreign interventionist playbook employed by both Democrats and Republicans alike for decades–and laid out a trailblazing path towards a peaceful and prosperous globe. A telling excerpt from his Earth-shaking address below:
“It’s crucial for the wider world to know this great transformation [in the Middle East] has not come from Western interventionists, or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
“No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi 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 Baghdad and so many other cities. Instead, 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 [who] 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.”
President Trump’s vision for his Teddy Roosevelt (i.e. “Speak softly and carry a big stick”) like approach to foreign policy was backed by action this week: he publicly encouraged Iran to take his “olive branch,” negotiate a good faith nuclear deal, or face “maximum pressure.” Additionally, he lifted sanctions on Syria. Following his meeting with the new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, he announced his White House would consider going a step further, and normalize state ties with Syria. Iran and Syria have long been unreceptive (to say the least) to American interests in the Middle East. These de-escalatory gestures, and President Trump’s deals with other nations in the region (hopefully) indicate a new era is at hand for the Middle East and America alike.