🌎 Trump’s New Middle East

RJ Hamster

8 hours ago

GEOPOLITICS

How Trump is Shaping a New Middle East

The US is shifting alliances as it prepares for a new world order.

_THE STORY_

There is a famous quote attributed to the communist pioneer Vladimir Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Such a quote summarizes the last few weeks in America’s Middle Eastern policy, which has borne witness to a fundamental shift in how America conducts foreign policy in the Middle East.

Walking in lockstep with Israel is out — closer ties to Syria and Saudi Arabia may just be in.

_THE HISTORY_

Since Israel’s independence in 1948, it and the United States have been extremely close allies. America was one of the first to recognize the existence of an Israeli government, doing so on the day independence was declared.

Since then, America has consistently supported Israel. The country’s victory in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was due in large part to the Nixon administration’s round-the-clock shipment of American supplies and weaponry. Likewise, no American president has ever called for a one-state solution (the preferred solution of the Palestinians).

The US and Israel have not always walked in lockstep. In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower opposed Israel’s attempt to work with England and France to wrest control of the Suez Canal from Egypt.

And it was President Ronald Reagan who effectively ordered Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to stop bombing Beirut in 1982. President Barack Obama, at the very end of his time in office, refused to block a UN Security Council Resolution critiquing Israel’s settlement policy.

But by and large, the two countries have always been close. The US benefits from Israel’s strong intelligence apparatus, while Israel maintains the financial and military backing of the most powerful nation in the world.