The President’s Riyadh Speech Sets the U.S. on a New Course
U.S. foreign policy under President Trump is looking far different than the typical flavors of interventionism that have been presented to American voters over the past few decades. On Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the place where the president delivered a pathbreaking speech during his first state visit in 2017, Trump gave another stemwinder that could be a turning point for U.S. foreign policy.
After walking out to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” President Trump castigated our foreign policy elites and charted a course for a prosperous and peaceful Middle East, one set on leaving behind the tribal chaos and U.S.-caused instability. Rejecting typical Republican talking points about showing “strength”—which all too often has only meant more bombing and more war—Trump outlined a prudential, interests-based foreign policy that calls for far less meddling in the Middle East while simultaneously preserving the U.S.’s independence of action against rising threats elsewhere.
The president condemned Iran’s continued provocations in the region. But he also took a page from Washington’s “Farewell Address,” holding out an olive branch and saying that they need not be “permanent enemies.” Trump said he wants to make a deal with Iran—but he wouldn’t hesitate to “inflict massive maximum pressure” economically or forcefully respond to terrorism or a nuclear attack. The prospect of the U.S. joining Israel in a bombing campaign of Iran’s nuclear sites now seems more remote than ever, especially as the relationship between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly somewhat cooled as of late.
In the speech, Trump also argued for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords and formally recognize Israel; during a visit on Wednesday, Trump likewise implored Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharai, to do the same. He also announced that the U.S. would lift its long-term sanctions against Syria in order to “give them a chance at greatness.”
For the United States, Trump has secured what the White House calls a historic arms deal with Saudi Arabia and also $600 billion in investments in the U.S., including in AI and energy. Trump touted his successes in his whirlwind first 100 days, noting the conclusion of the U.S. military’s recent campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. “We hit them hard, we got what we came for — and then we got out.” It’s been reported that because Trump didn’t see acceptable progress after 30 days of bombing, along with munitions running low and two fighter jets being lost, he decided to pull the plug.
His non-interventionist instincts not only showed up here but were a centerpiece of his Riyadh speech. Reminiscent of his campaign rhetoric in the months before the 2016 election, the president denounced the disastrous string of bad foreign policy decisions that have led to stunning losses in American blood and treasure.
Trump noted that “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, Haval, Baghdad, so many other cities.” Rather, the “modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves.”
He continued, touting the nationalism of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region: “The people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way. It’s really incredible what you’ve done.”
In a stirring rebuke of the bipartisan “invade the world” dogma that presidents in both parties have followed, Trump torched the “so-called nation builders.” They wrecked “far more nations than they built,” the president said, and intervened “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.” Trump could’ve added, as Onsi Kamel has called attention to numerous times, that Christian communities in the Middle East have been devastated, partially due to the interventionist foreign policy U.S. elites (and their big-name evangelical backers) have preferred.
For Republicans, the still dominant strain is an overly hawkish foreign policy that often mutates into straight interventionism. The calculus seems to be not if but when the U.S. should invade other countries so that we can “fight them over there before they come here,” by far one of the worst excuses for bloodshed ever conceived. Democrats, meanwhile, tend to follow a liberal internationalism that’s seemingly clothed in dovish rhetoric. But this actually conceals a warfighting core, which is best summed up in the meme showing a plane adorned with a rainbow flag dropping bombs.
These various forms of interventionism have roots going back to the turn of the 20th century. Progressives of both parties began acting as unelected stewards of other countries in order to help deliver moral uplift to their peoples. However, in their most honest moments, some progressives presented a far darker alternative if such plans failed to materialize. The University of Chicago professor Charles Merriam, who also advised several presidents, including FDR, infamously noted in A History of American Political Theories that “Barbaric races…may be swept away.” Merriam even counseled that “interference with the affairs of states not wholly barbaric, but nevertheless incapable of effecting political organization for themselves, is fully justified.”
In his Riyadh speech, Trump forcefully rejected this kind of deadly paternalism, root and branch. The past 20 years should have been more than enough evidence that trying to export democracy to those who clearly don’t want it has been an utter failure. Even the Soviets failed to tame Afghanistan, which has been called the “graveyard of empires” for good reason.
Instead, the president once again touted a nationalism that respects the differences in peoples, traditions, and customs rather than the dogmas offered by the scions of U.S. foreign policy who mistakenly believe they are universal truths. “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 president said. “And it’s something only you could do. You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way, that’s a good way.”
Capping off the speech with a jab at George W. Bush’s infamous musings on Vladimir Putin, Trump noted, “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 U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins…. It is God’s job to sit in judgment—my job is to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity, and peace.”
A more stable Middle East will allow the U.S. to shift its focus to China. American Reformer contributor Ronald Dodson has argued that the United States needs to devote its energies to keeping “Eurasia divided and China constrained.” Eurasia must not become “locked into a sinocentric configuration—one that fuses Iranian energy, Russian military-industrial depth, and Chinese strategic coordination into a single bloc capable of overturning the Western-led order.” Hopefully, after Trump’s Middle East trip, the U.S. can focus its resources on an adversary that has both the means and the desire to cause our country significant harm.
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