If you want to make the world a better place, just do business and make deals.
That is the essence of Donald Trump’s foreign policy laid out unashamedly this week. And in the Middle East, it might just pay dividends.
Can it work elsewhere, most of all to end Russia’s war with Ukraine? Or will it make matters worse?
For his critics, Trump’s Middle East tour has been purely transactional and amoral. No lectures to the autocrats of the region about human rights. No pressure to make them more like America.
But that’s the point. That was where previous US presidents went wrong, Trump said.
Trump the showman, Trump the deal maker, is back on the world stage.
Own your story, and say you’re winning, always. We are used to how Donald Trump operates, as president as he was real estate developer.
His Riyadh speech for instance, was littered with half-truths, outright falsehoods and exaggerations. But it also wove a narrative of success, and, pushed hard enough, that can acquire its own momentum. Others want in on it.
Ask the Syrians. Ahmed al Sharaa, former Jihadi and one of America’s most wanted and now Syrian leader has been actively courting the US president. Reported offers of a Trump Tower in Damascus and a minerals deal like the one with Ukraine appear to have paid off.
Trump met Syria’s interim president Ahmad al Sharaa in Riyadh. Pic: Saudi Royal Palace/AP
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Trump calls Syrian president a ‘young, attractive guy’
Persuaded by both Saudis and Turks, the US president is lifting all US sanctions on Syria. But Trump wants more. He wants Syria to join his biggest diplomatic achievement, the Abraham Accords. They are the normalisation agreements brokered by the Trump administration in its first term between Israel and Gulf nations.
That would utterly transform the region. There are obstacles. Israelis will need persuading, to say the least. But if Trump wants it, they may find it hard ultimately to stand in his way.
Will the same business-first approach work to bring peace to Ukraine?
After a frosty initial meeting, Trump and Zelenskyy appeared to settle some of their differences during talks at the Vatican in April. Pic: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP
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On the one hand, it seems to have already helped Ukraine. The minerals deal it has signed with President Trump is understood to have made him far more sympathetic to their cause. This reportedly coincides with growing impatience with Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire.
However, in the long term, Russia may offer more attractive prospects for deals with the Trump administration. Putin’s officials have reportedly been making much of those prospects. Russia has enormous mineral and hydrocarbon wealth to offer.
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Why is Trump welcoming the Saudis in from the cold?
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President Trump has at times, and utterly unfairly, seemed to resent Ukraine standing in the way of progress towards a lucrative rapprochement with Moscow. The minerals deal may have made him more even-handed.
The hope is that will motivate the US to be firmer with both sides and do more to pressure them to end this war.