Trump And The Puzzle Of The Middle East

Since I am a foreign policy nerd I will be posting for the next couple of days on what a Pres. Trump will be facing…

Let me begin with the Middle East……

The region is awash with conflict and new prez will have to face the music and decide which is the best course for the US…….

I have found a couple of op-eds from the region that take on a Pres. Trump…….

The one statement made by then nominee Trump was that he would push to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv…..that one short sighted statement could make the Middle East a lot more confusing than it is today……

Israeli government ministers and political figures are pushing the US president-elect, Donald Trump, to quickly fulfill his campaign promise to overturn decades of US foreign policy and recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv.

Their calls came as one of Trump advisers on Israel and the Middle East, David Friedman, told the Jerusalem Post that Trump would follow through on his promise.

(the guardian)

This one issue will illustrate to me if he has the nuts to be the president……..

First is a letter to the American people from a Middle Easterner…….

Dear American people, congrats on the new president! There are 59 Million of you who are celebrating this. Let me tell you how things look like from the other part of the world, the Middle East.

Some people here are happy as you are, but for a different reason. They see Trump as representing the true face of America: white supremacy. He does not try to beautify racism, elitism, xenophobia behind rhetorics, he says it as it is. They think for what America has done in the world, this is what suits it best. Others are wary of his deeds as a president, internally and towards the outside. However, both camps agree on one thing: he is a very bad choice. And he is no different from the leaders we are fighting to overthrow here.

Source: A Middle Eastern take on Trump’s election | openDemocracy

Next is an op-ed on the election results……

The election of Trump today may not necessarily be the unmitigated disaster it is currently being portrayed as – at least not necessarily for the Middle East.

There may even be a sigh of relief in many quarters in the Middle East precisely because Trump’s more isolationist discourse, if it were to be put into practice, would mark a sharp departure from Clinton’s hawkish, interventionist record.

Though by no means a dovehimself, Trump has publicly expressed concern over the US expanding its security umbrella across the world to secure allies that Clinton would have been more willing to protect with US blood and treasure – even if that means propping up unsavoury dictatorships at the expense of the people they rule.

Source: The devil you don’t know: Trump is not all bad news for the Middle East | Middle East Eye

My last op-ed is one about the US and other international powers and the Middle East…….it is pretty good advice….the US has been using the Middle East as its playground and experimental canvas…..you may not agree with their points but they are looking at it from their point of view not some pundits that has never set foot in the region…….

It is important that you read these…..America has troops fighting and dying in the region we all should be concerned on what Trump’s policies will be…..

From my point of view there are a couple of positive whispers on Trump and the Middle East……

While the 2016 presidential campaign didn’t focus all that heavily on foreign policy, President-elect Donald Trump made it pretty clear during the debates he wasn’t enamored of the US strategy in Syria, and within days of the vote was already very public in his intention to end a significant aspect of US involvement.

Trump revealed in an interview on Friday that he fully expects to end the US aid to “moderate” rebels in Syria, saying that the US “have no idea who these people are,” and insisting that the focus of the war should be on ISIS, not on starting a fight with Syria and Russia.

While the exact details aren’t clear, this would be a massive shift in US foreign policy toward Syria, as while publicly the US has sometimes suggested their focus is wholly on ISIS, privately officials have conceded for years that the US goal in Syria has been a stalemate, with the hope of the country becoming such a wreck that they can impose terms to resolve the situation.

(antiwar.com)

And then there is the Palestinian question……for decades the US has pussy footed around a real solution to the problem of a 2 state solution……we have turned a blind eye at the suffering and the abuses by Israel on the Palestinian people…..but will Trump approach it any differently?

Despite top figures in Israel’s far-right government seeing his election as the end of the peace process, President-elect Donald Trump is talking about his serious interest in the challenge of trying to reach “the deal that can’t be made.”

During the campaign, Trump had presented his experience as a deal-maker as a major boost for making a push at peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, fueling considerable disquiet during the Republican primary for promising to approach the talks as a neutral broker.

There has been considerable split both in the expectations from outside of the Trump campaign on what he will bring to the peace process, and also within, as Trump’s campaign aides within Israel certainly didn’t do anything to harm the far-right’s impression that he’d roll over and let them do whatever they want.

Was his statement about the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem just another campaign device? Could there be a solution hidden in the Trump agenda?

Then there is the M-IC under a Trump administration……

President Donald Trump will confront a major contradiction: on the one side, he has made noises about tearing up the US-Iran deal, and on the other side, he wants better relations with Russia. Can he have both?

Incoherence has been at the heart of a great many of the policies articulated by Trump. He has moved away from his postures easily – after his election he has ducked the question of repeal of President Obama’s health insurance reform and of the Muslim ban. He demoted the wall on the US-Mexico border to a fence. His surrogate – Walid Phares – told BBC that Trump would not tear up the deal with Iran. ‘Ripping up is maybe too strong a word,’ Phares said. ‘He’s will take that agreement, review it, send it to Congress, demand from the Iranians to restore a few issues or change a few issues, and there will be a discussion.’ Even this is unlikely. Most rationally Trump would have to bury his denunciation of the Iran deal.

Source: Donald Trump’s Middle East Policy Is a Disaster | Alternet

Granted Trump is not an open book at this point…..but will he be any different after 20 January 2017?

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