https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/trumps-clownish-plans-for-the-middle?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=73370&post_id=152149470&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=17yiss&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Trump's Clownish Plans for the Middle East

To the extent that the new Trump administration has a discernible agenda for the Middle East, it has nothing to do with putting American interests first.

Daniel Larison || November 25th, 2024

Mike Waltz’s recent comments about the incoming administration’s policies in the Middle East do not inspire confidence:

“I think now is a moment to craft some type of arrangement that doesn’t just put a pause for future October 7ths — truly bring stability to the Middle East and sets the stage for what we saw just a few years ago with the Abraham Accords,” Waltz said, referencing treaties Israel struck during Trump’s presidency with Morocco and some of its other semi-close neighbors.

“We had peace deals being signed on the White House lawn, just four years ago. Look at where we are today. I am confident President Trump and his leadership and the team he is putting around him will get us back to that point in pretty short order.”

Pretending that the normalization agreements under Trump were “peace deals” seems to be a requirement for Trump supporters, but it isn’t true. None of the governments that normalized with Israel had been at war with Israel, so the deals had nothing to do with making peace. In each case, the U.S. cajoled or bribed these governments to formalize the informal contacts they already had. It is hard to see what U.S. interests were served by any of this, since the U.S. ended up making all the concessions and providing all the benefits for the authoritarian clients while getting nothing in return. 

There is a good case to be made that the normalization agreements made conflict more likely by trying to cut the Palestinians out of any settlement. Trump’s policy was defined by the sidelining and dismissal of Palestinian aspirations and interests. Biden’s efforts to continue and expand on Trump’s agreements helped to pave the way for the current wars. If Trump tries more of the same, the result will be continued regional instability. 

The wars in Gaza and Lebanon have in turn made additional normalization agreements politically impossible for the foreseeable future. Mohammed bin Salman may not care about Palestinians, but he is constrained from moving forward with any talk of normalization while the slaughter and starvation in Gaza continue. The incoming administration may imagine that they can get back to what Trump was doing in 2020, but they are going to find other regional clients much less accommodating than they were in the past. 

The Trump administration will have an even harder time of securing cooperation from the other client states if it indulges the Israeli government by accepting formal annexations of more Palestinian territory, whether in Gaza or the West Bank. If the U.S. backs new settlements and annexations, it could be looking at the collapse of the existing agreements as well. Adding more agreements would be out of the question.

Trump’s choice of a real estate mogul as his Middle East envoy is an indication of how inept the diplomatic efforts of the new administration are going to be. The envoy, Steve Witkoff, is a “pro-Israel” hawk with no diplomatic experience, and he thinks that Jared Kushner has an “exceptional grasp of the dynamics” of the region. This has all the makings of an internationalclown show.

To the extent that the new Trump administration has a discernible agenda for the Middle East, it has nothing to do with putting American interests first. The focus is entirely on how the U.S. can do favors and facilitate deals for Israel at our expense. That is what Trump’s first four years in office were like, and there is no reason to expect anything different this time. The U.S. ought to be disentangling itself from the region as much as possible, reducing its military footprint, and downgrading its ties with as many clients as possible. Instead the new administration is planning to increase U.S. commitments and keep American forces bogged down in the Middle East for four more years.