Trump on tour
Trump resets America’s Middle East policy in surprising ways
Hawks are out and pragmatists are in, at least for now
THE SAUDIS put on plenty of pomp for Donald Trump when he visited Riyadh, their capital, this week: f-15 fighter jets to escort his plane, riders on Arab horses to accompany his motorcade, lunch in a palace with chandeliers the size of cars.
But the most enduring image came from a nondescript antechamber, where on May 14th he shook hands with Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s president, a former jihadist who not long ago had a $10m American bounty on his head.
The first meeting between American and Syrian presidents in 25 years had been expected, though it was not confirmed until the last minute.
But the previous afternoon brought a genuine surprise.
In a speech at an investment forum, Mr Trump announced that he would lift sanctions on Syria, where Bashar al-Assad, its longtime dictator, had been toppled in December.
The audience gave him a standing ovation.
“Good luck, Syria,” he said.
“Show us something very special.”
The stated focus of Mr Trump’s four-day, three-country trip (which was still happening as The Economist went to press) was trade and investment.
In Saudi Arabia he signed a package of deals said to be worth $600bn; Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), his other two stops, had prepared their own mega-deals.
They make for good headlines—even if large chunks turn out to be illusory.
Saudi Arabia is probably serious about its pledge to invest tens of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence, health care and sport, which all fit with its plans to develop new industries and diversify its oily economy.
It may be less committed to an arms deal valued at $142bn, almost twice its $78bn defence budget, especially when its finances are under strain from low oil prices.
Some of those weapons will not be sold for years; others never will be.
No matter: Mr Trump adores superlatives, and the kingdom gave him a chance to tout the “largest defence sale” in history.
Indeed, down to the small details, the Saudis showed a keen understanding of their guest.
They played two of Mr Trump’s favourite campaign-season jams during his speech: he took the stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and walked off to “YMCA”.
Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, drove him to dinner in a golf cart.
A mobile McDonald’s was parked outside the media centre in case any Trump-friendly journalists shared the president’s fast-food fetish.
Mr Trump returned their affection.
His nearly hour-long address was full of fulsome praise for Prince Muhammad and his father, King Salman (the latter was a curious omission from the schedule, raising questions about his health).
He hailed America’s bond with Gulf states and spoke of a “golden age” in the Middle East.
He is not the first American president to herald a fresh start in the region.
Barack Obama promised a “new beginning” in 2009.
Those were welcome words after the wars of the George W. Bush era, but it was never clear what they meant in practice.
The Arab spring began the following year, upending whatever plans Mr Obama had.
He spent the rest of his presidency fighting fires (and occasionally fuelling them).
America’s current president sounded very different.
Where Mr Obama urged democracy and human rights, Mr Trump praised “safe and orderly” autocracies.
He offered some surprising self-criticism—albeit of his country, not himself.
At one point he assailed the American “interventionists” who had “wrecked” the region.
“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation-builders’,” he said.
“The birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves.”
He made only a brief mention of Israel.
He did urge Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham accords, a 2020 pact in which four Arab states recognised the Jewish state.
But he told them to do it “in your own time”: a recognition that Saudi Arabia has its own priorities, and that (for now) normalisation is not one.
It sounded, to many Arab ears, as if Mr Trump was promising a new era in relations—one in which America would listen more, lecture less and break with old orthodoxies.
The Syria announcement showed how that might look in practice.
Mr Trump ignored the hawks in his own administration, who view Mr Sharaa with suspicion, and the lawyerly caution of many Washington foreign-policy hands.
Here was a chance to do something bold, and he took it.
Iran is still smarting over the fall of the Assad regime, a longtime ally.
But it may have taken cheer from Mr Trump’s friendliness towards Syria’s new rulers.
If he could lift sanctions and embrace an old American foe—he later called Mr Sharaa a “young, attractive guy”—perhaps he might do the same with the Islamic Republic.
Allies found it encouraging, too.
Mr Trump said he decided to remove the sanctions at the urging of Prince Muhammad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president.
Both have long complained that America does not listen to them.
Yet they convinced Mr Trump to take a controversial—but commendable—decision that offers him few political benefits at home.
It was no less remarkable that Saudi Arabia and Turkey, longtime rivals, were united in their backing for Mr Sharaa. Unlike in Mr Obama’s days, the region now seems ripe for a positive change.
The fall of the Assad regime gives America a chance to pull Syria out of Iran’s orbit; a peace deal with Israel is plausible.
Joseph Aoun, the new president in neighbouring Lebanon, is serious about trying to disarm Hizbullah, an Iran-backed militia that has ridden roughshod over the state for decades.
Gulf states are keen to preserve their detente with Iran, which in turn is desperate to make a deal with America to avoid war and shore up a rickety regime.
Will he stick with it?
The question is how long such enthusiasm will last.
This most recent version of Mr Trump denounced interventionism and said the people of Gaza “deserve a much better future”.
Just two months earlier, though, he ordered the Pentagon to start an open-ended bombing campaign against the Houthis, a Shia rebel group in Yemen, and allowed Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to wriggle out of a ceasefire and resume Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mr Trump’s visit to the Gulf seems like an effort to reboot his Middle East policy.
But neither consistency nor seeing things through are his strong suit: he could reboot it again—or simply abandon it.
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