President Donald Trump redefined America’s role in the world during last week’s four-day trip to the Middle East.
Since World War II, the United States’ foreign policy has been driven by an assumed responsibility to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world and to stand against oppressors and tyrants everywhere.
That mission has mired us in unwinnable conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, extracting a huge cost in American resources and lives without changing much for the people in the places we sought to liberate.
No more nation building, Trump declared in his speech in Saudi Arabia, with the entire Arab world listening. No more “giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”
“In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they’ve built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” the president said. “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.”
The new Trump Doctrine vows America will not concern itself with the internal workings of other nations, nor decide what’s best for their people, as long as they don’t threaten the U.S. or its interests.
That’s a sharp turn from what had been the prevailing U.S. view that countries governed by despots and ideologues present an inherent threat to America and that threat justifies our efforts at regime change.
Batya Ungar-Sargon, writing for the online Free Press site, said, “Trump’s speech was a rejection of the idea, shared by Obama and Bush, that Western-style liberal democracy is essential to human flourishing in the Middle East.”
The president isn’t bowing to isolationism, she argues, but to reality.
America will no longer judge the worthiness of another nation as a strategic or trading partner based on their human rights scorecard, green energy commitments or fairness of elections. Rather, the prime consideration will be what that nation can do for us.
That applies even to our historical tormentors, such as Syria. Trump lifted the sanctions on that terrorist incubator despite its new ruler’s long association with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
“I don’t like permanent enemies,” Trump said.
The president noted correctly that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other prosperous Middle East nations are not the products of Western blueprints. They were mostly built by monarchs. And while we may chafe at many aspects of their rule, they have managed to keep the brutal Islamists in check.
Trump expressed optimism that Syria and other nations, including Iran, will make the right choices for their future. History suggests they won’t. But history also confirms there’s not much America and its allies in the West can do about it.
Former Michigan Governor and Assistant Secretary of State Soapy Williams, in his famous Africa for Africans speech, said, “what we want for the Africans is what they want for themselves.”
The Trump Doctrine’s abandonment of the quest to Westernize the Middle East in favor of a “judge not” policy is declaring Arabia for Arabs. If the mullahs, sheiks and sultans who rule that part of the world want its sands to be soaked in Arab blood, well, as Trump said, it’s their choice to make.
