President Trump makes a new Middle East Possible

Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, January 5th, 2025 - 13 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, International, israel, Palestine, Peace, uncategorized, war - Tags:

Now I sure don’t like him, but the U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump makes more things possible in the Middle East than the Biden administration.

For the sake of this proposal let’s make a whole group of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Israel, Oman, Gulf States etc, and just refer to it as the Middle East for now.

Here’s some Trumpian reasons to simply extract the United States military out of that whole area for the foreseeable future.

First, nothing about the Middle East warrants U.S. investment there. The oil that the U.S. still needs to import comes largely from Canada and Mexico. The United States doesn’t need the Middle East’s oil. It could get by without importing a minor share from Saudi Arabia. This may also trigger a broader internal U.S. oil-to-climate change reality debate that the European Union has had to face via the Ukraine War.

Second from Afghanistan right through Libya, United States military involvement has just made most things worse, at immense cost and fruitless outcomes. U.S. policy in the region is an expansive and unnecessary disaster. Any 1,000+ page tome from Robert Fisk makes the same argument.

A particularly Trumpian point is that it’s a really poor deal to the United States taxpayer, with Middle East military and diplomatic investment well in excess of US$70 billion a year – outside the trillions spent on hot wars and the long scarring of U.S. ex-military citizens in homelessness and mental damage. Donald Trump knows what a bad deal looks like. The U.S. taxpayer investment in the Middle East should be closer to zero.

The United States can achieve its remaining goals in the Middle East – such as preventing major terrorist attacks, curbing nuclear weapon proliferation, and checking Russian influence – without any troops on the ground there. The consequences of a U.S. military withdrawal country by country won’t all turn out like Afghanistan.

And finally it’s time to admit, to help close the door behind you, the U.S. just isn’t good at this Middle East solution stuff. There’s no reason to keep trying to be a primary diplomat in the region when Dubai is now better at brokering regional deals than anyone else. Since the Camp David Accords under President Clinton, the U.S. hasn’t achieved much diplomatically in the region (unless you count Trump’s State Department direction over the Abraham Accords). With United Nations peacekeepers in the region now largely ignored – or worse attacked as in southern Lebanon late in 2024 –  the United States could also simply stop funding U.N. peacekeeping there as well since they don’t appear to be effective.

As for the United States, so for any country including our own using the moment to reflect on their own involvement to simply state:

The entire Middle East is a small, poor, weak region beset by an array of problems old and new that pretty much have nothing to do with most Americans – and that no United States military effort can fix. The countries that do have money and influence are big and mature enough to simply sort themselves out.

Sure we could worry about what will replace the Syrian government. But the United States’ objectives in Syria have largely been met. Assad’s rule is finished. The Iranian and Russian troops that supported the regime have withdrawn from the country. If the United States wants the new Syrian government to be capable of alleviating the current humanitarian crisis, control the country’s borders, and beginning the process of reconstruction, maintaining a U.S. troop presence in defiance of the wishes of that government will be counterproductive.

Against Iran, the loss of a friendly government in Syria is a significant blow: Tehran has lost its main route for shuttling arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and thus its path to rebuild its severely weakened “axis of resistance.” Washington no longer has a pressing need to maintain its military presence or the crushing sanctions that were initially designed to incapacitate the Assad regime. President Elect Trump should plan to remove the approximately 2,000 forces currently deployed in Syria. 

As for Israel, after 2024, it’s clear that Israel with deep U.S. help has destabilised its neighbours enough to assert that Israel has eradicated the threats around it for the foreseeable future. If broad regional chaos against all enemies was the intended outcome, job done. Israel needs the United States a whole lot less than it did. Less reason to stay.

We could also worry about stable government in Lebanon, but it hasn’t had one for many years and it hasn’t bothered any other country except Israel.

There are certainly some truly knotty problems to solve, including Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Yemen’s perpetual war, millions and millions of refugees everywhere,  and the Kurds. What exactly is the United States interest now in solving any of them? One answer is that within the resulting anomie of a full U.S. withdrawal, ISIS grows again, or states form with the scale of repression of Afghanistan.

But the response to that reason is simple if cold: in people and material, 20 years of investment in Afghanistan wasn’t worth it. So don’t keep repeating the same massive mistakes. Some things just aren’t up to the United States to fix. Nor are they fixable by the combined efforts of the United Nations.  

The United States under Trump can go focus on its own people and problems for a term or two. Let the Middle East restabilise without the United States there.

In December 2024, after the resistance push into Aleppo, the President-Elect wrote on Truth Social: “The United States should have nothing to do with [Syria.] This is not our fight.”

U.S. military withdrawal in the Middle East could start with Syria, then Oman, then Saudi Arabia, and keep going and getting out of there. Including Israel.

For President-Elect Trump, there’s a deal to be done. The upside is worth the risk. 

13 comments on “President Trump makes a new Middle East Possible ”

  1. Stephen D 1
    5 January 2025 at 6:31 pm

    The moment the USA stops funding Israel, it’s gone.
    The influential Jewish vote goes with it.

    Reply
  2. SPC 2
    5 January 2025 at 7:07 pm

    The same attitude permeates the political right in domestic nation state politics, hand over sovereign status to investors and let oligarchy run the market run.

    No forever war to defend any people, not even the poor of ones own land.

    Reply
    • aj 2.1
      5 January 2025 at 8:31 pm

      In geopolitics a vacumn will be filled. I don't see cutting and running in the USA DNA. Especially if it's the sensible and rational move.

      Reply
      • SPC 2.1.1
        6 January 2025 at 10:51 am

        The USA abandoned the women of Afghanistan when they aided the "mujāhidīn" to take over there, and when they left to allow the Taleban to return to power.

        The Turks are murderous towards Kurds and never acted against Islamic State etc,

        Reply
      • Dennis Frank 2.1.2
        6 January 2025 at 5:07 pm

        I had both those reactions also, and your third point is also valid (even if hell freezes over before the US establishment sees it).

        Reply
  3. John 3
    5 January 2025 at 10:24 pm

    Trump will make a new middle east possible but not the way this article suggests… He will be heavily involved in the middle east. He will expand his Peace covenant "The Abraham Accords" created during his first term, with a bunch more nations aka confirming it with many (Dan 9:27).

    Trump is the Antichrist and this is his peace covenant that starts the end.

    Reply
    • Dennis Frank 3.1
      6 January 2025 at 5:14 pm

      Ah, so that's why all those christian fundamentalists voted for him! Thanks for clearing that up. Ever since he hit the tv news headlines waving a Bible at the cameras whilst remaining mute throughout the entire event I've been puzzled by it.

      I toyed with the possibility that he was doing zen suppression of his usual narcissism but wasn't confident he could be that clever…

      Reply
  4. SPC 4
    6 January 2025 at 11:16 am

    Not from Syria (containment of Turks vs Kurds) for some time yet, not from the bases in the Arabian peninsular while there is a threat to Red Sea shipping and security (from an Iranian threat) provides the means for Abrahamic Accords type leverage.

    Iraq maybe, if there is a guarantee Kurds are safe – a Baghdad and Ankara axis vs Kurds is in play there.

    https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/gaza-the-american-elections-and-the-fallout-of-a-disaster/

    Reply
  5. Mike the Lefty 5
    6 January 2025 at 12:25 pm

    Another question is whether a Trump-led US will encourage Israel to expel all the remaining Palestinians to other Arab countries around the region and simply annex Gaza, rebuilding it as another part of Israel.

    Reply
    • SPC 5.1
      6 January 2025 at 12:59 pm

      The failure of peace talks in 2000, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and then the end of Palestinian unity (Hamas rule in Gaza, PA rule limited to the WB) has provided Likud the landscape in which to continue to expand West Bank settlements.

      The WB settlements being their main objective (permanency).

      Hamas and Gaza played a distraction role.

      It still does.

      Gaza will be re-built and hopefully civil society will emerge there. Then Likud will want the world to move on (while the WB remains occupied).

      The lack of Palestinian nation state existence impacts on rights to the gas offshore from Gaza.

      Reply
  6. Dennis Frank 6
    6 January 2025 at 5:28 pm

    A good thought-provoking overview. I wonder if the Saudis sense that geopolitical ground moving out from beneath them.

    If you're right about US no longer needing their oil, the CFR would front input to Trump on that basis, huh? Granted his temperament is to rebel against establishment views, if they happen to shift into accord with his view he'd feel the zeitgeist as wave to ride.

    I agree with your logic re regional military dis-investment – yet Stephen's comment @ 1 is also valid (& T's family ties are relevant). Retreat into isolationism would be a re-run of traditional US foreign policy thus comforting all conservatives who aren't imperialist.

    Reply
  7. CallToAccount 7
    7 January 2025 at 1:22 am

    What about ISIS? Specifically it’s barbaric approach to everything ‘different’, culture, religion, race, history…. surely you remember the horrific cross border scale of it all? Withdraw, disengage, tax cut and then… what? Repeat the cycle.

    Reply

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