Trump in the Middle East and Around the World
A Modest Suggestion for a Trumpian Middle East Policy
The elections are over and we will have a new President who will be able to try to clean up the geopolitical mess that the Biden-Harris administration caused. His first appointments at the UN, State and NSC are encouraging. During the campaign Trump made sure everyone understood that these wars did not happen under his watch and that he can end them, rather quickly. But pressing for solutions to problems with just the force of personality has caused the middle east in general and Israel in particular more problems than need have been. While de Gaulle was able to liberate Algeria from France (or France from Algeria) by the simple force of his personality allowing France to betray its allies in Algeria without electoral blowback and with positive results for his country, in Israel that has not worked out as desired.
Two other generals turned political leaders, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon decided, seemingly overnight, to pull a de Guale and unilaterally withdraw from Lebanon and Gaza respectively, assuming that, like when they were generals, they could force their will upon people. They did force their will upon Israelis but not upon the Gazans or the Shiites in Lebanon. In spite of the nonsensical claims that both were of the greatest security moves in the country’s history, the 95% understand these moves differently – certainly in the post-October 7 world.
Anwar Sadat also made a move with the force of personality and brought his country peace with Israel at the expense of his life. However, his successors did not take advantage of his bravery and, instead of using the “peace dividend” for the use of the people and instead of opening up the economy to more free market growth, plowed more and more dollars into the military while allowing the its officers to make money on the side by controlling large chunks of the economy (including smuggling into Gaza).
Without going further into personalities in the middle east, of which there has been an overabundance, nothing takes the place of a proper understanding of the region and its culture, its strategic makeup and importance. Our first suggestion to the President Trump is to wait until all the pieces fall into place before risking his reputation and before using putting his enormously creative personality to the test. The two great moves of his first administration were the movement of the embassy to Jerusalem, which showed the world that Israel is a country that is a permanent presence in the region and the second of course was the Abraham Accords. Both of these were bold moves but only hard work, understanding and most probably hard nudges from the President himself allowed them to succeed. Both moves could have blown up in his face had he acted spontaneously and not put the effort into reaching the goal. As a real estate person, he knows that getting the deal done is only a preview of finishing the project successfully. I don’t know how he works but my guess is he understands this better than most and won’t put himself at risk until all the pieces are in place.
But what should the goals of American foreign policy be regarding the middle east? The Obama-Biden-Harris view is one that includes “justice” for the Palestinians before anything else and includes an old “balance of power” theory that fits better in pre-Napoleonic Europe than the contemporary middle east. When the disagreements of the opposing powers center on land, spheres of influence and economics then the balance of power can prevent wars. In the middle east, that is not (yet) the case. It could be that in the coming decades or more the middle east powers will tire of the jihadi and ideological wars but that is not where we are now. The goal has to be non-belligerency between states with Israel as the prime power.
Currently, Iran controls the chaos in the middle east via its proxies and its own missile, drone and nuclear weapons programs and either a radical weakening of their economic and military power must be attained or, regime change must occur. If the former, then the work of preventing Iran from regaining power must be a constant task if the latter then the economic noose on the country can start to be loosened.
Ironically, if there is regime change and a non-Islamist regime is established then they might in fact become a US and Israeli ally in the fight against other Jihadi groups – be they from Afghanistan and Pakistan (which border Iran and threaten them even now) or from Sunni Arab governments and terrorist organizations in the rest of the middle east. However, let’s not jump to conclusions either about a potential rapprochement between Israel and Iran or think that the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran will bring peace and prosperity to the middle east. The Trumpian policy in the middle east should not be geared towards the utopian vision of “peace” – that will not happen in the coming century. The middle east has always been and for the near future will be a violent place. With the advance of technology comes the increase is cheap and productive firepower and non-state actors will use that to their advantage. Deterrence will work with even corrupt and ideological states, but not with terrorist organizations or other non-sate actors. We saw this tragically with Hamas and see it now with Hezbollah’s continuing war against Israel in spite of sustaining military defeats that would have brought actual nation-states to their knees.
Once this is understood, the Trumpian policy needs to be Israel centered for a number of reasons. The first is that Israel is the only country in the region that has the technological and military knowhow to maintain a state of non-belligerency between states in the region. This does not mean a state of “peace” or even non-violence since, as we just stated, non-state actors in the guise of Jihadi terrorist groups will continue to be active. From a fiscal point of view, the US needs allies that can carry the load. The US does not seem to want to be involved in keeping the global peace on its own and it must have major allies in the various regions who can help military and economically.
You are saying to yourself – but wait, fiscally, the US is funding the Israeli military. That is true and not true. Israel, by US law and the Israel-Egypt peace treaty is given up to $4billion in military aid a year. All of this money is spent in the US – so essentially it is money given by the American taxpayer to pay for weapons and other equipment produced in US factories. Also, this amount is just 15% of Israel’s 2023 defense budget (the current war skews both these figures upwards but we don’t yet have good numbers on this). This needs to be renegotiated and the aid needs to be reduced by about 15% a year for the next seven years and then ended. The US and Israel could agree to subsidize purchases from American companies if that makes sense, but the outright gift of $4billion to Israel from the US fisc has to end. Ideally, Israel will pre-empt and make this offer but if not, the next administration should bring it up. This will put both countries on a stronger footing (although admittedly $4billion is a drop in the bucket regarding the US budget deficit, but will be an example to the rest of America’s allies) and will allow Israel to operate without the pressure of domestic US politics. There are certainly times when the US government understood that Israel needs to act more aggressively to help Israeli and US interests, but the administration felt that US domestic politics would not support the moves. If the “free money” is no longer there, then both sides can act more independently.
An Israel-centric Mideast policy will also send a message to the Sunni Arab world that they are expected to fall in behind this policy – it doesn’t mean that they have to love or even sign peace agreements with Israel but they do have to understand that military or terrorist attacks on Israel will mean that Israel has a free hand to respond as it feels necessary and the US will not “reign them in”. But it is not just the Arab world that needs to understand this new policy but Russia and China, too. Again, they don’t have to love Israel, but it will no longer be tolerable for them to assist Israel’s enemies militarily. Russian assets that are used to help Israel’s enemies need be at risk – and the Russians need to know this. As for China, they will have to turn to another region for a military presence. A strong Israel will need to have friendly relations with China but relations that are understood as secondary to its relations with the United States. As the US will still maintain a (diminished) military presence in the region, China will understand this well.
Walter Russel Meade wrote recently of that President Trump “genuinely doesn’t want to preside over a new round of ‘endless’ wars, small, hard-to-win conflicts in faraway places over issues that he believes are marginal to core American interests. But he also likes being a powerful world figure whose interventions on global issues are decisive”. While I wouldn’t consider the middle east a marginal US interest it is a region that, as the US returns to energy independence and even export, will see its importance fall. The Israel-centric US Mideast policy proposed here will allow the US to concentrate its military prowess elsewhere. While it is hard to believe that the US will be able to eliminate its presence in the Persian Gulf, for example, it certainly will be able to reduce its presence there if Israel becomes a more robust country with improved naval capacity and a rebuilt ground forces. Its air force already seems to be able to roam freely in the skies of the region.
While in the short term, the US might be called upon to help Israel rebuild its ground forces and navy, the long term gain of not having to place multiple carrier groups in the region will more than make up for it fiscally. The idea would be for Israel to replace most, but not all of America’s military presence in the eastern Mediterranean and to be able to use its air and naval forces to help the US reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. In order to further reduce the need for an expensive US military presence would be a more robust US-Indian relationship. A formal US-Israel-India alignment would provide enough manpower and hardware to deter aggression by any state actor. The ability of the US to withdraw substantial forces would help reduce its military and fiscal risks. Formal alignments would assure that the US could still provide added muscle when needed. This would allow President Trump to, in Meade’s words – keep small endless wars off the agenda while allowing the US and its President’s voices to be heard. It would also keep other regional allies like the Gulf states, Ethiopia, Kenya and Egypt in the US orbit and reduce Chinese and Russian influence.
This model could be followed in other regions of the world, too and would allow the US to revive the Monroe Doctrine in the Western hemisphere and renew its commitments in the Indo-Pacific. The one way to increase defense capabilities while not blowing the budget is by depending on economically and militarily successful countries such as Israel to help maintain US interests globally. Being a superpower is becoming more complicated and more expensive and adding truly capable allies to its playbook help lighten the load.
You might be thinking that the US is already doing that with treaty alliances like NATO – but there are no NATO countries (with the possible exception of France, but no one knows for sure) that can defend itself without the active participation of US forces. There is no reason why that cannot change and this middle east paradigm we have proposed can form the basis for new superpower-ally relationships in the free world. It is clear that the American people want three things with their foreign policy - the spread of freedom and decency in the world, the commitment in dollars and blood of their allies towards that goal and US supremacy in global politics. In today’s world, the first and the third are not attainable without the second and the US needs to move front and center in building up its allies to a level that they can help with the second.
Israel is a key country in this. It has superior technology, a first rate economy and a dedicated and well trained armed forces. What it lacks, is that mass of population. But as Israel is now 9.174m (as of 2023) and at current growth rates will in 10 million before the end of the decade. Israel is no longer the small, scrappy county it was thirty years ago but now is a major contributor to the global economy and therefore in a perfect position to be a main contributor to the defense of the free world. There need to be other countries that can do the same. We wrote a few weeks ago of “A New Paradigm for a non-Polar World” and this is a continuation of that. The Trump victory cannot be turned into a neo-isolationism since that will not only bring an end to the free world but will bring an end to American economic dominance and prosperity – something no American wants. The unrivaled US economic creativity can continue only if the US is the main superpower in the world and that can only happen if other countries step up and help.
We feel that a Trumpian middle-east policy as outlined above will create an example for the world’s other regions and maintain the free world’s supremacy. Trump is assembling an interesting and creative foreign policy team that seems to be aggressive in pursuing American interests, broadly understood. This can be accomplished without being active in every sphere by counting on allies like Israel to carry the burden. The success of this middle east policy will encourage other free countries to do what needs to be done to contribute to the broad-based interests of the free world.
Regarding the Palestinian issue we could hope that a more robust Israel-US relationship can lead to the adoption of the Confederated Emirates of Palestine solution that we suggested last year (here and here). This solution is based on middle eastern culture and political tradition and not Western ideas of sovereignty.
If successful, we can look to other countries in other regions to follow this example. Countries such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, Germany, Poland, Finland and Sweden can be the Israel of their regions. India too can play a constructive role with the free world and the model suggested here might bring them closer to the free world militarily, diplomatically and economically since it allows them the independence of action they crave.
Creativity, boldness and planning is what is needed to re-create US foreign policy. This is one modest proposal to get America on its way.