Trump Maiden Voyage: Riyadh, Brussels, Sicily

President Donald Trump’s ambitious nine-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Europe has set in motion important changes in U.S. foreign policy with respect to the Middle East, but not with Western allies and trading partners.

Trump must have hoped that the prolonged spectacle could distract attention from his mounting legal and political travails.  Yet, the pomp and circumstance of the international stage has afforded him little respite in that regard. Even as he was receiving a gold medal from the al Saud monarch and swaying awkwardly with sword dancers at the royal palace in Riyadh, knives were being sharpened in Washington.  Allegations of “Russian collusion” remain unproven, but Trump’s fateful decision to fire FBI Director James Comey has provoked charges of obstruction of justice and set him on a collision course with the U.S. intelligence agencies.  A Special Prosecutor has been appointed with sweeping, open-ended investigatory powers.  Trump dissipated the political capital that he had accumulated as a result of the Tomahawk strike on Syria’s Shayrat air base in April.  Condemned to years of investigation amid the specter of impeachment Trump is now reportedly assembling his own legal defense team.

These ominous developments will almost certainly derail key elements of the Administration’s domestic legislative agenda.  However, U.S. presidents have greater latitude in foreign policy, and Trump will use this to serve his own pressing political needs alongside interrelated commercial and geopolitical objectives. These objectives will not correspond to the vague populist rhetoric of the campaign trail, but rather to the interests of the leading sectors of corporate America—Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and oil and gas industries—that have clearly established a dominant position within the administration.

In Riyadh, flanked by the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Blackstone Group, and Lockheed Martin, Trump sealed a $350 billion dollar arms deal over 10 years, with $110 billion to take effect immediately and promises of hundreds of billions of dollars of new Saudi investments in the United States.  U.S. defense stocks soared to an all-time high.  The arms deal includes Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system and four multi-purpose combat ships, a type that has not been sold to a foreign power in decades and that will enable Saudi Arabia to project greater power against Iran in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. 

Discussions were also held with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt on the formation of an “Arab NATO,” a Sunni alliance in tacit cooperation with Israel against Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.  One day before Trump arrived in Riyadh U.S. F-16 fighter jets taking off from a Kurdish-controlled military base in eastern Syria guarded by hundreds of U.S. troops attacked a tank convoy of Shia militia aligned with the Syrian government near a “safe zone” patrolled by Russian forces.  Unlike the missile strikes on Shayrat this was not a symbolic show of force in response to an alleged chemical attack, but an attempt by the United States to wrest control of southeastern Syria from the government.  The United States now appears to be seeking to fill the power vacuum left by a retreating ISIS that has lost the support of its Turkish patron.  De facto partition of Syria has been a longstanding U.S. objective. 

These developments represent in important respects a departure from Obama’s foreign policy.  During his campaign Trump adopted a harder line on Iran, as did members of his foreign policy team including most notably Defense Secretary James Mattis. Declaring the Iran Nuclear Deal a “disaster,” Trump declared his intention to jettison it. The deployment of additional U.S. forces in Syria and air strikes of April and May also signify greater openness to military intervention as Trump appears to have ceded operational decision making power to the Pentagon.  Moreover, Trump has eschewed the rhetoric of human rights in favor of the language of realpolitik.  As he declared in Riyadh, “We are not here to lecture.  We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be or how to worship.”  Finally, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Trump orchestrated something of a “reset” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Yet, there are also significant continuities in U.S. policy:  While personal relations between Obama Netanyahu were strained, the massive flow of dollars and weapons from Washington to Tel Aviv continued without interruption.   While Trump has largely shifted to the language of realpolitik, the Obama administration’s use of human rights rhetoric was opportunistic and selective. Before leaving Washington for Riyadh Trump stated that he would allow the Iran Nuclear Deal to remain in place at least for now, and introduced only modest new sanctions against a limited number of Iranian individuals and organizations.  Although the Trump administration has carried out two air strikes against Syrian government forces and allies, it has thus far avoided frontal military confrontations with Syria, Iran, or Russia. In September, 2016 the Obama Administration killed 60 Syrian soldiers in an air raid in eastern Syria that it claimed was a case of mistaken identity.  

Indeed, ever since 1945 U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia has been essentially bipartisan.  Since the oil crisis of the 1970s the United States has pursued bilateral deals with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to recapture the wealth transferred to these states resulting from increasing oil prices. Saudi oil has been sold to the rest of the world in U.S. dollars and the United States has recouped its own increased dollar expenditures with sales of ordinary goods, weapons, and large-scale infrastructure and engineering services to the Saudi Kingdom. In part as a result of this relationship, Saudi Arabia possesses the world’s third largest military budget, surpassing that of Russia.  Many of the weapons sales agreed upon in Riyadh were authorized by the Obama administration, which provided extensive support for the Saudi’s devastating military campaign in Yemen, and also replenished Egypt’s military arsenal.  By encouraging proxy wars and threatening Iran the formation of a U.S.-led Sunni alliance will greatly increase the potential for instability and conflict throughout the Middle East.

Compared to significant developments in the Middle East, the NATO Summit in Brussels was relatively uneventful and even anticlimactic.  European leaders agreed to join the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, a mostly symbolic move. Although there will continue to be much handwringing among European leaders, Trump nevertheless reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the alliance that had been voiced by every leading member of his foreign policy team since his election.  His dismissal of NATO as “obsolete” has been replaced by strident demands for greater burden sharing.  Underlying these demands are commercial considerations.  European members of NATO have already made significant concessions.   Germany and France have agreed to substantial new purchases of U.S. military equipment.  Italy has committed to purchase 90 F-35 fighter jets for $94 million each. 

The G-7 Summit meeting in Sicily is also unlikely to bring about substantive changes in U.S. relations with key allies. It seems certain to feature much debates over a final communique that has in any case become virtually irrelevant.  To be sure, the United States is likely to take a much tougher line with trading partners as it renegotiates NAFTA, revives in some form the negotiations over a U.S.-EU trade agreement,  and re-sets trade and investment relations with China.  This tougher line will not, however, embrace populist trade policies or allow for a retreat from the American imperium that is based on globalization. 

Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.