As is his habit, Donald Trump made his Middle East visit a whirlwind of activity. Saudi Arabia pledged to plow $600 billion into the U.S. economy amid a flurry of other high-tech announcements. Trump’s personal empire is making out well too: Qatar is donating a new Air Force One that is supposed to eventually be part of the Trump presidential library, and the president’s family has signed deals for golf courses and beachfront villas.
For observers of American foreign policy, Trump’s speech at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum was equally consequential. He hailed a “great transformation” in the region that was “not created by the so-called nation-builders, neo-cons, or liberal nonprofits,” but rather “by the people of the region themselves.” Many are hailing or lamenting this as a radical departure from prior policy, but it is in many respects a return to an older strategy, albeit updated for the information revolution. This policy depended on a different set of calculations than Trump has used so far, however, and it may fail without it.
Since FDR met Ibn Saud in 1945, America’s Middle East policy has focused on maintaining access to energy from the Persian Gulf. To do this, Americans needed a favorable balance of power and reliable suppliers. Now that information technology is revolutionizing economies and societies around the globe, the Trump administration has added a third goal: integrating Gulf Arab investors into the American-led tech ecosystem that will battle China for control of the world’s information networks.
During most of the Cold War, the first two goals naturally led to a set of partnerships: Turkey tried to bottle up the Russians at the Bosphorus and the Persians wanted the Russians off their turf. Saudi Arabia wanted to prevent any other power from dominating the region, and also to stabilize global oil markets at a price high enough to cover its expenses but too low for industrialized countries to seek new sources of oil. And Israel shredded the Soviet’s Arab nationalist proxies that tried to dominate its neighborhood.
These partnerships benefited the United States. Its allies generally feared and despised each other, but deft American diplomacy capitalized on their strengths. Israel helped the United States break the Soviet threat to the region, and the Saudis helped bankrupt the Kremlin.
Two big trends have created the great transformation that Trump spotted. The first is that the Arab contest between the Islamists and the tech-focused modernizers has replaced the old battle between traditional monarchies and Arab nationalists. The modernizers, led by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, are trying to pivot from merely supplying oil and gas to becoming global leaders in advanced technology. The Islamists, often disguising themselves as democratic activists, want to topple the modernizers and reverse most of their reforms.
The region’s power politics have shifted too. The fear of Tehran drove the Gulf Arabs and Israel together, but thanks to Israel’s military and Turkey’s Syrian proxies, Iran’s regional empire is a shadow of its former self. That bond grows weaker as their shared enemies do.
Trump sees the massive opportunities created by this transformation. The modernizers can unleash massive investments that could determine if American or Chinese tech companies dominate this century. And a weaker Iran could make for a more tranquil region.
Those opportunities are at hand—but not yet in hand. Trump told the Saudis their relationship is “closer, stronger, and more powerful than ever before,” and that “it will remain that way. We don’t go in and out like other people.” That verbal reassurance does not match his improvisational style though, and his partners are hedging their bets. The Gulf Arabs are buying Chinese tech products, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, “I think we will have to wean ourselves off of American security aid, just as we weaned ourselves off of American economic aid.”
Iran and its remaining proxies are weaker, but still dangerous. The Houthi missile attack on Israel during Trump’s speech underlines that the bombing campaign was only partly successful. And Tehran still has a pathway to the bomb. Some of Trump’s staffers have suggested that he could allow Tehran to keep its uranium enrichment program, the sort of concession that Barack Obama and his coterie of “liberal nonprofits” offered Iran in 2015. Trump tore up that deal, and over 200 congressional Republicans recently encouraged him to push for the “total dismantlement” he demanded earlier this month.
During his visit, Trump hailed “the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi,” which are products of a different sort of American nation building. American companies like Aramco and Bechtel enriched the Gulf Arabs and made their cities gleam. But that only happened because Washington got the hard-power realities right.
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