Donald of Arabia

In Riyadh speech, President announces total repudiation of U.S. military imperialism in the region.

Since 1898, the guys who developed and executed U.S. foreign policy have modeled it after British foreign policy during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries—that is, a policy of meddling in the affairs of the rest of the world in an effort to expand British domination.

On the whole, the British were considerably better at global meddling to their advantage than the Americans have been. This was because the guys who staffed the East India Company and later the Foreign Office tended to be educated and deeply interested in the peoples (and their languages) they were tasked with dominating. Richard Francis Burton and T.E. Lawrence were notable examples of British army officers who were capable of forming real relationships with foreigners.

Since World War II, U.S. foreign policy has increasingly neglected diplomacy and instead relied on U.S. aircraft carrier power projection—that is, “Do what we tell you to do or we’ll bomb you.”

During the presidency of George W. Bush, this policy was intensified to “Do what we tell you to do or we will bomb you and then overthrow your regime and replace you with an American-compliant regime.”

That U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for the last twenty-two years has achieved nothing but death, destruction, instability, and mass migration to Europe has not dissuaded Washington’s foreign policy establishment to change tack.

On the contrary, the guys who fervently pursued the Bush-Netanyahu doctrine of regime change have made it clear that they want to continue on the same course.

Yesterday in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he IS changing tack in the Middle East. His speech struck me as one of the most remarkable foreign policy pronouncements in American history.

Before our eyes a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.

This great transformation has not come from Western intervention, or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. 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 Kabul, Baghdad, and so many other cities.

In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.

In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it's our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins.

Peace, prosperity and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly. And it's something only you could do. You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way.

I believe it is God's job to sit in judgment, and my job is to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity, and peace.

Wow.

Judging by video coverage of the visit, Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud had a grand time together and announced several U.S.-Saudi deals in the technology sector.

Many have objected to the Crown Prince’s terrifying methods in dealing with political opposition. After he succeeded his father as prime minister in 2022, he purportedly let everyone in the Kingdom know that there is a new sheriff in town and that no one should even think about challenging him.

A remarkable upshot of this—perhaps because he let Saudi clerics know that he won’t tolerate any trouble from them either—is that Riyadh has, like Dubai, become a much more open, cosmopolitan city that welcomes foreign investment and is trying to promote tourism.

During his speech he addressed the Crown Prince directly:

Mohammed, do you sleep at night? How do you sleep? He tosses and turns like some of us. It's the ones that don't toss and turn — they're the ones that will never take you to the promised land. Critics doubted it was possible, what you’ve done, but over the past eight years, Saudi Arabia has proved the critics totally wrong. Oh, what I would do for the crown prince.

Reading between the lines, President Trump is trying to encourage the Crown Prince to assist in working out a deal with Iran to create regional peace and stability. The idea, it seems to me, is to convey the idea that great times lie ahead for Saudi Arabia in developing prosperity and peace. The country therefore has so much to lose from a regional war.

Could Saudi Arabia—the birthplace of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam—play a leadership role in persuading the rulers of Iran to become more cooperative?

The Middle East is a place of shifting sands, so I don’t know.

What I do know is that most of the guys in Washington and in the U.S. mainstream media have demonstrated for many years that they have no understanding of the region or how to improve it.

Fox News commentator Mark Levin recently had the temerity to suggest that Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, had used an anti-semitic language by stating his rejection of the “neocon element” in U.S. foreign policy circles.

Give it a rest Mark. By saying such things, you meet Einstein’s definition of insanity—that is, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

The Neocon vision—set forth in the 1996 paper “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”—hasn’t worked, so Witkoff and Trump are trying a new strategy in the Middle East. I hope they succeed.