Trump After Arabia

One must not read too much into claims of Israel being snubbed by US President Donald Trump who omitted the country from his whirlwind Middle East itinerary. But it’s been a week that left diplomats and world leaders dizzy. And given Trump’s impulsive, say-it-and-make-it MO when it comes to diplomacy, much would appear to have changed. So much so that people are talking about a Trump Doctrine in foreign policy. A doctrine for a transactional president? Well, we may now have a name for it: Trump is not an isolationist president. That much is clear. He is actually a mercantilist president. If there’s a mantra, it’s capitalism and commerce, the cure-all for global conflict and driver of prosperity-for-all, as long as the president gets along with those currently in his ever-changing plans. So far, so good.

First, the Israel equation. The US remains and will remain Israel’s biggest backer and key defence supplier. Israel enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader Trump had invited to the White House after his inauguration. Nevertheless, the differences between them are real and have been building up for a while. Some of Trump’s timing has been taken as evidence of attempts to deliberately irk the Israelis: he called a ceasefire to US strikes against the Houthis in Yemen only days after the militants fired two ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. He met Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadist and member of Al Qaeda, and announced the lifting of US sanctions on the country without consulting Israel. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has held a fourth round of talks with Iranians and it is apparent now Trump is willing to settle for a limited deal that will curb Iran’s nuclear plans. Again, not welcome news in Israel and it precludes joint anti-Iran military action with the US.

The Gulf Arab states are no doubt more than happy. Most of all because of the things Trump said. Declaring in Saudi Arabia that he wants “commerce not chaos,” the US president played to the gallery in Riyadh castigating his predecessors, “the so-called nation-builders and neo-cons” who gave “you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs”. Trump was clearly hitting out at neo-con George W Bush and Barack Obama, who undertook a Middle East ‘apology tour’. All things considered, it’s too big a leap from the extremity of Joe Biden’s “pariah” label for Saudi Arabia to a clean cheat to governments which have never held human rights among the top of their concerns. Not a word was said about climate change. Very little was said of Gaza either. Ironic? Not quite.

There’s a case to be made for the US stopping its lecturing across the world—and Trump’s running commentary through and after Operation Sindoor or the periodic homilies from DC on religious tolerance in India can be a case in point—but to divorce rule of law and human rights altogether from foreign policy would delegitimise ‘American values’. What respect could the US command if it stopped believing in itself?

To come to the commerce end of it, Team Trump will thump the $600 billion promised investment from the Saudis, with a publicised long-term rise to $1 trillion, and the $142 billion arms deal as well as the $1.2 trillion economic exchange with Qatar. These are being packaged as good for bringing jobs back to America. And yet, there’s little about the deals that’s tangible. A great show so far, but of dubious substance.

What has certainly happened, however, is that Moody’s, the last of the three big ratings agencies, downgraded the US’ credit standings to a notch below the highest triple-A rating (Fitch and S&P had downgraded the US much earlier, in 2023 and 2011, respectively). The concern centres round the administration’s rising debt levels, made worse by the Republicans plans to enact further tax cuts.

In a little more than a week, the Trump administration has:

– struck several deals with the Gulf Arabs
– got Hamas to release a US-Israeli hostage by talking to the group directly
ended the war on Houthis
– lifted sanctions on Syria
– cut back on the tariffs imposed on China
– kept talking to Tehran about a nuclear deal
– ordered Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to hold talks with Russia
-gave itself credit for the ceasefire in the Indian subcontinent (which India has dismissed, as the agreement was bilateral).

A lot of attention had been paid initially to Family Trump’s own business interests in the Gulf to explain Trump’s energetic pursuit of whatever bargain he thought he could strike. But the centrepiece of the discomfort in DC remains the luxury jumbo jet the Qatari royal family plans to gift the president to replace Air Force One, which bring security and ethical problems of its own. The US Constitution is clear about emoluments: no American public functionary can take “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.” Trump wants to bequeath the $400 million Boeing 747-8 to his presidential library but given the cost of overhauling the plane—and of course the ethics involved—Congress may have to vote on whether to accept it. To date, no president has disregarded the emoluments clause. Will Trump be the first?

Which brings us back to where it all began. Never before has US foreign policy owed everything to the impulses and mood swings of one man. The Qatari jumbo jet only illustrates the point.

The State Department reportedly was not happy about lifting sanctions on an Islamist regime in Syria that is evidently victimising minorities (read Alawites). On Ukraine, Trump first agreed with European leaders who were recently in Kyiv that further sanctions would be called for if Russia didn’t stop the bloodshed and accept the ceasefire, but promptly ordered Zelensky to meet Putin the moment the Russian president called for direct Moscow-Kyiv talks. Putin, unsurprisingly, was a no-show. The back-and-forth on tariffs was no different: after imposing 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports and warning Beijing not to retaliate, when that retaliation came and the markets tanked, Trump cut those tariffs to 30 per cent.

The myth of Trump being an isolationist has been busted. The axiom of his being a transactional president has been tweaked but reaffirmed. And what kind of mercantilist talks so much but changes so little on the ground?

Fact: Tariffs against China have changed five times.
Fact: Global markets can’t come out of the turmoil.
Fact: Putin hasn’t shown the slightest sign of changing course.
Fact: Netanyahu hasn’t eased up on Gaza at all but may be doubling down.
Fact: Hamas still holds Israeli hostages.
Fact: The US has had a ratings downgrade.
Fact: Trump’s natural allies have lost elections from Canada to Australia thanks to him.

After four months in office, Donald Trump can’t dump the global disorder on his predecessor or predecessors. He owns the Gaza war and the Ukraine war. He owns the long-term instability and uncertainty afflicting global markets, which will not be redressed by merely cutting new deals. If Trump’s ultimate goal is tackling China, the US has already lost the AI and tech war and his roller-coaster is only wasting everybody’s time.

Benjamin NetanyahuDonald TrumpIsraelNews BriefOperation SindoorSaudi Arabiatrade tariffWeb Exclusive