Victor Davis Hanson: Trump is Doing What Neocons Wouldn’t in the Middle East

Donald Trump just wrapped up a very successful tour of the Middle East Gulf States. He took that occasion of being overseas, quite a regular, to blast the prior administrations. I think he was talking specifically about the George W. Bush administration as a faulty foreign policy administration. What he's emphasizing is that there is a common bond in the world, and that common bond is in the heart of everybody. They want peace, and they want prosperity, and they want security. What Donald Trump is trying to say is, let's just not get into politics, let's not get into offending foreign leaders, let's just start with a blank slate. We want to help our friends, win over our neutrals, not to lecture them, but to create economic matrixes, nexuses, in which people find that it's in their vested interest to profit rather than to kill people. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Donald Trump just wrapped up a very successful tour of the Middle East Gulf States, and touched upon the tense negotiations with Iran, touched upon the Russian-Ukraine war in addition. And he took that occasion of being overseas, quite a regular, to blast the prior administrations. I think he was talking specifically about the George W. Bush administration as a faulty foreign policy administration in the sense that they were nation-building, he blasted neoconservatism, he said that they tried to interfere in the internal affairs of traditional societies. There's all an element of truth to that. But it elicited a lot of criticism. Elliott Abrams has been blasting Trump, Rich Lowry has been blasting Trump. What is their criticism? Their criticism is that his traditional Jacksonian foreign policy, no better friend, no worse enemy, intervening on the behalf of allies, trying to win over neutrals, punishing enemies, not engaging in optional Middle East wars, retaliation only, as in the first term, get rid of Baghdadi, get rid of Soleimani, get rid of the Wagner Group, etc., but not insert troops on the ground. That has morphed, according to his critics, now into a mercantile foreign policy where the chief element is to make money and not to have any idealistic element. But I would say that just because Donald Trump didn't mention idealism and that we were supporting democratic institutions doesn't necessarily mean he's not doing that. What he's emphasizing is that there is a common bond in the world, and that common bond is in the heart of everybody. They want peace, and they want prosperity, and they want security. That's not necessarily antithetical or exclusionary of freedom because, obviously, the ability to make money and the ability to be secure often has an element of what? Freedom. And so, Donald Trump's idea about foreign policy, I think, is the following, that if you get people to agree on particular elements, barometers of peace, and you engage with them economically, then they will see that it's in their advantage not to commit terrorism or war, but to try to mutually profit. And how does that work throughout the world in these conflicts? One, in the Ukrainian war, he's suggesting there'll be a DMZ between the two sides that are now fighting. They disengage. There'll be a commercial corridor where foreign entities have concessions to mine rare earths, and sanctions are lifted, and then Russia and Ukraine stop this insane war where there's 1.5 million casualties and counting aggregate on both sides. In the Middle East, he's saying to the Middle East, under the Abrams Accords, if you make a deal with Israel, it's going to be beneficial for everybody. You will tap into Israeli expertise, technology. Your oil money will be able to purchase AI, biotech, genetic engineering, all of these wonderful things, and you have a Western country right near you. And he's telling Iran, and this is where the criticism arises, we don't have any preconditions. All you have to do is stop subsidizing a now-defunct Hezbollah and Hamas. That should be easy for you. You've lost your concession in Syria. The Houthis are now under duress. Just stop it, and you don't need to enrich uranium because you have a 100-year supply of conventional fossil fuels for electricity production. But he didn't mention that the Gulf countries must reform, and they must democratize, and they must honor human rights. I think it's implicit that he wants them to, but he didn't say explicitly, and that's where the criticism came. But let me just finish by asking, I don't believe in a Manichean foreign policy, but what's the opposite of that? We had Joe Biden go over to Saudi Arabia and beg during the 2022 midterms that the royal family begin to pump oil. And why did he do that? Because he insulted them and said that they were basically a rogue dictatorship because of the incident, and they had a critic kill Mr. Khashoggi in the Turkish embassy, etc. What was the net result? Did we have better relations? Was there greater peace? And he's criticized the Netanyahu government, Biden did, and said that they had to have a coalition government, they were not democratic enough. What was the net result? Did that make us closer with Israel? Did it moderate Israel? Israel is already a free democracy. And to be frank, Donald Trump has been much more critical of the Zelensky government than Biden and the left has. Donald Trump has said the following, you have outlawed a free press, you have outlawed habeas corpus in most cases, you haven't had free elections, and you've banned opposition parties, and yet you criticize Israel, and you would never make, you make demands and try to remove the Netanyahu government. So what am I getting at is the left is not consistent in their advocacy of human rights because they give a complete pass to Ukraine. What Donald Trump is trying to say is, let's just not get into politics, let's not get into offending foreign leaders, let's just start with a blank slate. And when we see hotspots around the world, we want to help our friends, win over our neutrals, punish our enemies if they won't change. And one way that we can do that is not to lecture them, but to create economic matrices, nexuses in which people find that it's in their vested interest to profit rather than to kill people. Should he mention human rights from time to time? Yes. Should he say that the United States realist policy is more than just mutual profiting? Yes. But it doesn't change the actual fact. He's had more success getting to a ceasefire in Ukraine and more success in the Middle East than the prior administration under whose watch two theater wars broke out. And we had the disaster in Afghanistan. I don't need to go back to prior administrations, but I don't think people feel in retrospect, even as a reaction to 9-11, which was needed, that the Afghan war and the Iraq war in a cost-to-benefit analysis or humanitarian analysis for either us or for the people we tried to help were a success. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.