The difficulty of predicting President-Elect Trump’s Foreign Policy

The challenge of predicting President-elect Donald Trump’s policies for the Middle East is unusually demanding. He has not previously held public office so has no foreign policy record. Neither his nor Hillary Clinton’s campaign devoted much attention to foreign affairs. His overall degree of interest in global matters is unknown, as are any specific beliefs or commitments. He is not affiliated with any particular wing of the Republican Party. He has distanced himself from neo-conservatives associated with President George W. Bush and has not consulted extensively with members of the aging foreign policy team that President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker assembled. His only high profile briefing with a noted Republican strategist was with 93 year old Henry Kissinger. Unlike Hillary Clinton he does not have strong connections to leading think tanks or academic institutions specialized in foreign policy. He has professed no clear, over-arching ideology in general or as regards foreign policy specifically. His mantra is “everything is negotiable,” suggesting he views foreign policy as the summation of negotiating encounters in which he will strive to get the “best deal” for the U.S. What the criteria will be for American interests remain largely unspecified, especially in matters other than trade. He is personally flamboyant, ego-driven, impatient and impulsive, given to contradictory rhetoric. It is, therefore, difficult to imagine him carefully and systematically pursuing an integrated foreign policy strategy, as opposed to opportunistic and episodic involvement in foreign affairs. He has no pre-existing commitments in the Middle East and North Africa (hereafter, MENA). Of the various MENA lobbies in the US, only the pro-Israeli one provided funding for his campaign, but even by that measure his indebtedness to those funders is relatively limited.

In sum, President-elect Trump is an enigma, possibly a position he personally enjoys as it feeds his narcissism and gives him a perceived advantage in negotiations. By background, temperament and interest, therefore, he is unlikely to feel compelled to articulate an overall vision for U.S. foreign policy under his guidance, to say nothing of putting forward a strategy for the MENA. He is more likely to be a tactician than a strategist, dealing with challenges as they arise rather than mapping out an overall approach. It is also worth remembering that presidents once in office can behave very differently than they promised as candidates; and that the MENA is a volatile area where sudden events can have profound impacts on even those with strong commitments to proceed in a particular direction. George W. Bush, for example, campaigned on a less interventionist platform in 2000 than his opponent Al Gore, then ordered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. His foreign policy team was in the process of crafting a major effort to address the Israel-Palestine conflict when 9/11 occurred, sidelining that intended peace effort for the entirety of the Bush presidency.

As if the enigma of President-elect Trump combined with the volatility of the MENA were not enough to render prediction risky, the current state of the U.S. is also fraught with ambiguity as regards implications for policy toward the MENA. The US is politically sharply divided, torn between Democrats and Republicans; those who want to de-globalize and those who want to foster globalization; those wishing for America to be more active as the global standard bearer for democratic values and those who argue that the U.S. should abandon its efforts to be the global moralist and peace-keeper; those who think America’s future lies with Asia and those who believe the continuing destiny of the country should be the embrace of Europe; and so on. While divisions within the body politic go back to the country’s founding, they have not been as profound in the post WWII era as they are at present.

In addition, the recent past of U.S. policy toward the MENA is no guide to the future. The failed attempt to remake Iraq and the Middle East in America’s image has put paid to nation rebuilding exercises of that nature, yet several MENA nation states have already or seem on the verge of collapsing. Failures associated with the Obama Doctrine, ranging from the catastrophic Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni civil wars, to the straining of bilateral relations with Israel and various Muslim states, to the rise of Iranian power in the region, have rendered that Doctrine unfit as a guide to an incoming President, even if (s)he had been a Democrat. Indeed, Hillary Clinton had distanced herself from the Obama Doctrine and was signaling she would strike out in the more assertive direction characterized as “liberal interventionism,” or in the more critical phraseology, “liberal hegemony.” This raises the pregnant question of whether the U.S. still has the power and the will to play the role of global hegemon and if it does not, what the fallback position should be?

Yet another “known unknown” that could dramatically impact U.S.—MENA relations is the global energy market. American “energy independence” is yet to filter through to impact broader policies toward the MENA and, in any case, depending on price levels, may never be achieved as anticipated by some. Present thinking on the relation between energy supplies and MENA policy is bifurcated. One view is that since oil and gas are fungible commodities within a globally integrated economy, any interruption of their supply will profoundly and negatively impact the U.S. Another view is that the U.S. is much less dependent on MENA oil and gas than Asia or Europe, so it can afford to turn over the management of that region and its energy supplies to those more directly dependent upon them.

In addition to these political-strategic ambiguities about future U.S. policy toward the MENA, the lack of a Trump foreign policy team in waiting not only renders prediction difficult, it slows down the process of policy formation. Once the team is assembled its various members in turn have to recruit scores and in some cases hundreds of subordinates. Because few if any of those in the core team imagined they would ever be in such a position, it will take longer than usual to field the whole foreign policy team. Then the team has to develop its internal operations as each member struggles to define his/her role and assert the interests of the bureaucracy over which he/she presides. These inevitable delays suggest that it will be many months after the January 20 inauguration before even the broad outlines of policy toward the MENA emerge.

Best guesses in the meantime

Evidence relevant to the direction of Trump’s MENA’s policies can be gleaned from his pronouncements, his personnel, and from the likely nature of bureaucratic politics that will impact foreign policy decision making.

Pronouncements

Trump has characterized the MENA as “one big fat quagmire.” This, combined with his allegation that American allies generally and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council specifically are “free riding” on U.S. military might, could be taken to suggest he will walk away from the MENA, downgrading U.S. involvement therein. Other statements can be interpreted as lending support to this thesis. His praise for Presidents Sisi of Egypt and Erdogan of Turkey, combined with his condemnation of radical Islam, can be read as his desire to unleash regional authoritarian states to extirpate violent extremism, with the U.S. shifting into a back-up role, desisting from criticism of human rights abuses and lack of democracy in these countries. Ambiguous statements about nuclear weapons have been interpreted as Trump endorsing their spread as a means by which U.S. allies can contribute to their own defense, which in the MENA would presumably mean acceptance of say Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt acquiring the bomb. His favorable statements about Russian President Putin, including in the Syrian context, suggest that he would prefer to cut a deal with Moscow over Syria and possibly other MENA issues rather than confront it. Other statements, however, seem to imply more direct U.S. engagement, indeed aggression. He has spoken repeatedly of “bombing ISIS,” of seizing oil as a spoil of war, of creating “safe zones” in Syria, of “tearing up” the nuclear deal with Iran (JCPOA) and of his commitment to increasing the U.S. military budget by some 10%, or almost $70 billion, the increase alone considerably more than the entire State Department budget.

Campaign slogans and utterances are notoriously poor guides to presidential decisions. In Trump’s case the links between words, beliefs and actions seem nebulous. He appears to view words more as means to shock and titillate than as means to communicate his thinking about problems and solutions. So basically nothing he has said as a candidate can be taken at face value or as a commitment to action. But his words are not entirely meaningless as guides to his thinking. They point to an America first orientation, but one bereft of any commitment to fostering American values abroad, focused instead on a business-like view of material profit and loss. His utterances, in sum, suggest a profound desire to outwit friends and enemies alike to America’s advantage, a classic case of beggar thy neighbor.

Strategic implications

That raises the question of how his narrow pursuit of American material interests could impact strategy and tactics for the MENA. One likely consequence will be an orientation toward power. He will want to deal with those already powerful rather than seek to empower or even protect the powerless. Cutting deals with the weak makes no sense because they have little to offer. In this interpretation he will accept the regional status quo of authoritarian states struggling to contain their populations while jockeying for power amongst themselves. So American power would be used to tilt the balance between strong actors in a direction favorable to the U.S., not to try to guide the region as a whole to a more peaceful, inclusive order. Russia would presumably be one of the players accepted at Trump’s political poker table.

Yet if this is to be the overarching approach to the MENA, how will Trump deal with those who want a seat at the table but who are presently deemed to be antagonistic to if not outright enemies of the U.S? ISIS and Iran are the two obvious regional actors who fall into these categories, while Russia and China could be thought of as extra-regional competitors to the U.S. in the MENA. Presumably he already has the answer for ISIS, which is to bomb it. But by the time he takes office it may have already been bombed out of Mosul and even Raqqa, raising the question of how to deal with ISIS’s fragments, probably reinforced by discontented Sunnis in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere? Bombing might have been comparatively easy in retrospect as violent Islamist extremists revert to subversion and terrorism, possibly in the U.S. itself. The next stage would in Trump’s playbook likely be to team up even more with state actors also dedicated to extirpation of Sunni extremists, thereby provoking yet more of them.

This raises the question of how Trump will manage Iran. It has the keys to at least temporarily ameliorate many regional problems, including that of Sunni extremism, but its strategic objective is to become the regional hegemon at the expense primarily of the Arabs, but also of the U.S. Heretofore the U.S. has condemned Iranian power projection verbally, but done little if anything to combat it and indeed, has forged tactical alliances with it to combat Sunni jihadis. Obama sought unsuccessfully to cultivate a relationship with Tehran, hoping to induce it to moderate through tactical alliances and a broader inclusion in the global order. So far that strategy has backfired, with Tehran becoming yet more aggressive in the face of perceived U.S. weakness.

Trump will thus be faced with the choice of further appeasement or getting tough. To be consistent with his statements mentioned above while reaching out to Iran would be to do so through Moscow. The deal he would offer would be to upgrade Russia globally and regionally, with U.S. support, but with conditions. In the MENA that condition would be mutual restraint imposed by Moscow and Washington on Tehran, with some side benefits, such as reduction of the U.S. military presence in the Gulf over say a ten year period. Whether Russia would be willing to trust Trump enough to move away from Tehran and tolerate if not participate in the effort to clip its wings, is an open question. Tehran would resist efforts to reduce its regional influence, thereby testing any Washington-Moscow accord. So forging a trilateral relationship in which much the junior partner would be Iran would require a deft hand, which Trump certainly has not previously displayed, nor have any of those joining his foreign policy team. The more likely approach, therefore, is for Trump to get tough with Iran, presumably in the various theatres in which it is presently active, ranging from Yemen to Lebanon.

As for Russia and China, it would seem that Trump has the cart before the horse. He has reached out to Putin, leaving China to wonder what is in store for it in the White House. Yet Russia is the globally weaker actor that over the long run has much less to offer Washington. Moreover, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of enlisting China to counterbalance Russia is even more tempting now that China is pursuing its one-road, one belt policy that will inevitably draw it into the Central Asian and MENA geo-political sub-regions, where especially in the former it will have to contest with Russia. Whether this logic sinks in with Trump and his team is an open question, but theoretically it offers them leverage over Putin. If the choice is ultimately to reach out to China in general and to welcome its greater presence from Mongolia across to the Suez Canal, then it implies more direct confrontation with a Russia that is trying now to expand its influence in the MENA. In this scenario Russia might seek to reinforce its alliance with Iran to counter the U.S. and China, although the latter has more to offer Iran, especially over the long term.

Just this brief discussion of strategic choices that will confront Trump should indicate their relative complexity, hence that at least at the outset of his presidency he will avoid making such strategic choices, concentrating instead on responses to events and tactical maneuvering. Trump’s words point to a narrowing of U.S. interests and a more restricted approach in pursuing them. They do not provide a clear guide, however, to how this might work out in practice. Some further hints are provided by his choices of key national security personnel and speculation as to how they will interact.

Personnel

None of Trump’s personal advisers during his campaign are foreign policy specialists. The Republican Party has been shorn of foreign policy expertise by virtue of being out of power for eight years and because of the disastrous, neo-conservative adventures under Bush that discredited all involved. So there was a blank slate of names of foreign policy experts both in the Trump camp and the Republican Party more generally awaiting the President-elect. This void was reflected in the immediate aftermath of the election when such names as Michelle Bachman, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, James Woolsey and others with reputations as ideologues with no substantial claims to competence were bantered about. His first appointees as Chief of Staff and chief strategist/senior counselor, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, respectively, have spent their careers in domestic politics and the media, so have no foreign policy experience or track records.

The initial foreign policy posts filled, those of National Security Advisor and head of the CIA, were taken by retired General Michael Flynn and Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo. The former is a controversial figure in light of his strong anti-Iranian and anti-Islamist statements, his removal by President Obama from the post of head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and his wholehearted engagement in the Trump campaign. Pompeo became controversial when he endorsed waterboarding and like Flynn, has made anti-Islamist statements. These appointments were followed by the nomination for Secretary of Defense of retired Marine General James Mattis, a nomination that requires a special Congressional waiver because General Mattis has not been retired for seven years, the period specified by law before a former officer can become Secretary of Defense. Like General Flynn, Mattis is on record as a strong critic of Iran and Islamism, presumably the cause of him being removed by President Obama as head of the Central Command five months before his term was to expire. He worked with General Petraeus in the preparation of the counterinsurgency manual based on U.S. experience in Iraq and he commanded troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Once retired he became an adviser and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, an organization with a reputation for being conservative and supportive of an aggressive U.S. foreign policy. Mattis is more senior to Flynn in service and reputation and presumably soon by virtue of being Secretary of Defense, but as National Security Advisor Flynn will have closer proximity to Trump. All three of these nominees appear to share the view that Islamism in general and Iran specifically pose threats to the U.S., threats that may require military responses. But none of the three has experience in foreign policy decision making, which say General Petraeus has had. Another retired Marine General who served in the Middle East, John Kelly, was nominated to be Secretary of Homeland Security. His last command before retirement was that of SOUTHCOM, which covers Central and South America in which issues of migration, crime and criminality loom large, presumably a key reason for his selection given the importance of Latino illegal migrants and gangs in the U.S.

After weeks of speculation about the nominee for Secretary of State, the media reported on 10 December that it had been informed unofficially by the Trump transition team that the CEO of Exxon-Mobil Corporation, Rex Tillerson, would be nominated and that John Bolton would serve as his deputy. The former has no record of public service but has conducted negotiations with a wide range of foreign heads of state, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He is on record as being supportive of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Bolton, on the other hand, is an arch-conservative who served as Ambassador to the UN for two years under George W. Bush before being forced out of the position by Senate Democrats, who refused to confirm his appointment.

So if Tillerson and Bolton are in fact nominated and then confirmed, they will represent two very different schools of thought about U.S. foreign policy. Tillerson, like Trump, is a businessman who believes in doing deals with those in power, eschewing broader philosophies or political values. Presumably he would support Trump’s inclinations to strike deals with the Russians, probably including Syria and other outstanding MENA issues, maybe even an effort to rein in Iran in cooperation with Moscow. Bolton, on the other hand, is strongly critical of Russia and Iran, raising the question of how such different types could possibly work together. One possible answer is that as someone with experience in the foreign policy bureaucracy, Bolton will focus on process while Tillerson would be in command of substantive matters. Bolton would also provide political cover among conservatives for an effort to strike deals with Moscow and Tehran. That the two names were floated together is suggestive of Trump’s desire to appease conservatives while simultaneously broadening the foreign policy team, and his delight in catching just about everyone, including interested foreign actors, by surprise.

Political-bureaucratic context

The combination of the Trump leadership style and the absence of a coherent, experienced foreign policy team promises to produce a reactive, tactically driven rather than strategically derived set of policies for the MENA. Since there is no foreign policy guru on the team, each member will by the nature of bureaucratic politics be pulled in the direction of his institutional mandate. While a President deeply interested in and experienced in foreign policy decision making, especially if backed up by a “guru,” as was Nixon by Kissinger and Bush by Baker, can forge a coherent team around a set of strategic principles, this is unlikely to occur under Trump. His interest and knowledge are limited. His style is reactive, not strategic, focused on bargaining and deal making rather than more broadly based, long term strategizing. He is unlikely to provide highly directive presidential leadership, building cabinet consensus around a clear set of objectives. The gap between the cabinet and the President will be filled by his White House staff, probably even more so than during the Obama Administration. But in the case of Obama, he had reasonably clear ideas about what he wanted or, more accurately, what he did not want in the MENA, thereby providing guidance to his staff for their management of the cabinet. This guidance will under Trump be more intermittent. So responsibility for day to day management will inevitably be delegated to the Secretaries of State and Defense, to the National Security Adviser, the Director of the CIA and Head of National Intelligence and Homeland Security.

This management structure will be too loose to produce a tightly configured strategy and runs the risk of producing policy incoherence. It will accentuate the long established trend of securitization of policy toward the MENA, as the DOD, CIA and NSA will continue their ascent vis a vis the Department of State, unless as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson forges a very strong relationship with Trump which then enables him to consolidate his and his Department’s pre-eminence over foreign policy decision making. While this is possible it must be rated as an outside chance. Tillerson, presiding over a much weakened Department of State, will be an outsider as the only key member of the foreign policy team without a military background. Whether his ego can accommodate Trump’s overweening one is also a question. None of the military/security departments or agencies or their heads has a brief to produce strategy, however, only to combat threats. The emphasis on securitization might well be reinforced by provocations that ISIS or its successors may perpetrate out of much the same motives that caused al Qa`ida to attack the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The implications of personnel choices and the political-bureaucratic context in which they will operate, combined with Trump’s pronouncements, are essentially to rule out major strategic options as conscious, well thought out plans in which members of the foreign policy team are all assigned clear roles. Some unlikely strategic choices, for example, are that Trump will seek to emulate the Obama Doctrine or “liberal interventionism,” or that he will attempt regime change, nation building or democratization, or undertake broad coalition building among regional and extra-regional states in the Bush/Baker manner. A “pivot to Asia” also seems unlikely not because turning America’s back on the MENA is, but because engaging systematically with Asia across a broad front would sorely test the fragile foreign policy structure Trump will build. To the extent there will be strategic choices, they will generally imply lesser U.S. ambitions, such as reducing the US role and presence in the MENA; upgrading Counter-Terrorism and Counter Insurgency operations conducted with “host governments,” which may simply be strong men in failed states; possibly an initial, tentative effort to revive the Cold War condominium with Russia over the MENA, which is unlikely to go far; downgrading cooperation with the EU and its member states, which may as a response increase their regional presence, if only to sell more arms and deter asylum seekers; bolstering authoritarian Arab regimes, especially through securitization; and combatting Islamism in all its forms, probably also including the Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots.

Trump is a tactician, not a strategist, so to the extent there is strategy, it will emerge from bottom up tactics, rather than from a top down formulation. Key tactical choices are likely to include selective pressure on Iran, further security support for GCC states, initial efforts to negotiate with Moscow and Asad over Syria, an effort to use the Arab Peace Initiative to substitute for bi-lateral relations in solving the Israeli-Arab conflict, reconciliation with the presidents of Turkey and Egypt, backing for Haftar in Libya, and increasing distance from the Kurds, especially in Syria. In the remainder of this paper we shall examine in somewhat greater detail some of these tactical options.

Iran

At the top of the list of challenges is managing the fragile relationship with Iran. The Obama approach of seeking to build broader reconciliation on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached in July 2015 has visibly faltered. President-elect Trump initially called for this nuclear agreement to be abrogated, but then moderated his position to imply active countering of Iranian non-nuclear threats throughout the region. Assuming he begins to act on his and his key advisers’ beliefs that Iran should be contained, he will be driven into a closer embrace of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, something which Obama was keen to avoid. Cooperation to contain Iran could help repair the much damaged U.S.—Saudi relationship, which itself is likely to be a high priority for the new Administration. When and if that relationship improves, the one with Iran will almost inevitably deteriorate unless the U.S. seeks actively and successfully to mediate between Riyadh and Tehran. Since the former is unlikely to agree to such mediation until Iran’s wings are clipped, and since Trump and his team seem to be unlikely mediators, that prospect looks slim.

Dealing with Iran shapes up as being the initial, vital test of President-elect Trump’s MENA policy. If he chooses to get tough he will support anti-Iranian forces and those backing them in Syria and Yemen and possibly even Iraq. Iran would be declared as the principal culprit behind those conflicts. Its possible violations of JCPOA that the Obama Administration has chosen to overlook would be highlighted and even used to threaten abrogation. American support for reintegration of Iran into the world economy would cease, possibly be thrown into reverse.

Getting tough carries immediate risks. Iran has the capacity to push back in various theatres, even against U.S. assets themselves, as was demonstrated by the missile attack on a U.S. naval vessel off the Yemeni coast in October. Breakdown of the JCPOA is certainly not desired by Iran, but it is a card Tehran could play against the new Administration in order to undermine its international and even domestic standing, as the agreement is globally popular and does enjoy wide support in the U.S. Intensification of conflict in Yemen, which Iran could easily engineer, might convert it into a second Syria in terms of flows of refugees, ultimately possibly to Europe, further straining EU-U.S. relations. Whether Trump would view intensification of conflict with Iran to be in his and his country’s interest is an open question. He might, which is precisely what gives him some leverage over Tehran. An opening victory in the form of some successful pushback would certainly be appealing to a new President Trump. But so too would a deal with Moscow that had the effect of containing Iranian regional ambitions. It may in fact be the case that these are the two alternatives that Trump will present to Tehran.

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

No new US administration since Nixon’s in 1969 has failed to declare as a or the primary objective in the MENA the settlement of the Israeli–Arab conflict, it being renamed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the wake of the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords. The renaming may indeed reflect how Trump will approach this thorny, seemingly irresolvable issue. Obama commenced his administration much like Jimmy Carter did his, intending to pressure Israel to reach a bilateral agreement with the Palestinians. When newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu successfully resisted Obama and the Palestinians failed to coalesce around a viable negotiating position, Obama reluctantly pushed the issue to the back-burner, protecting his legacy from attack by Israel and its supporters in the U.S. by committing America to provide $38 billion in military assistance in the decade commencing in 2018.

Over the last year or so, however, the broader Arab–Israeli issue has been moved closer to the front not by his hand, but by virtue of Israel and key Arab states, most notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia, perceiving common strategic interests. To act more effectively on those shared interests, key of which are containing Sunni jihadists and Iran, requires them to finesse the Palestinian problem, to which the solution from their view is some version of the old Arab Peace Initiative, first launched by Saudi King (then Crown Prince) Abdullah and then endorsed by the Arab League in 2002. So a potential deal is already on the table. Trump is unlikely to want to try to turn the clock back to the bilateral negotiating framework of yore within which President Bill Clinton failed so abysmally and Obama could not restart. The multilateral framework offers the additional benefit to him of cementing ties with various Arab states while further isolating Iran. Saudi Arabia in particular could easily be tempted to be more accommodating with Israel in order to gain US support for its anti-Iran posture, to cover its unpleasant tracks in Yemen and to highlight the leadership role of Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. So one can assume that Trump will push harder on this issue than Obama has. It may even be proclaimed, after some preliminary spadework, as a central objective of his policy for the MENA.

Turkey

Trump is likely to follow Obama’s lead in seeking to prevent Ankara’s further drift towards Iran and Russia. He is likely to make a major effort to reconcile with Erdogan, who has welcomed his electoral victory. The challenge will be to finesse Erdogan’s Islamism, but because his authoritarian rule is of greater importance to him, that should be doable. One test of that would be for Trump to try to foster reconciliation between Presidents Erdogan and al Sisi. Concessions to Erdogan would place pressure on US–European relations if Turkish–EU ties are further strained, and certainly on US–Kurdish ones. But Turkey is too central to the American geo-strategic position in the region to be easily let go, regardless of Erdogan’s provocations or resulting complications for U.S. relations with the EU and the Kurds.

Libya and Yemen

Trump like Obama will burnish his counter terrorism (CT) and counter insurgency (COIN) credentials more or less as a political insurance policy against charges of doing too little to protect Americans, especially as the probability of terrorist incidents will go up steeply once Trump is in office. Libya and Yemen are potential theatres in which such presidential resolve can be demonstrated. The Department of Defence has been trialling revised CT and COIN strategies in Iraq, Somalia and more marginally already in Libya and Yemen. It will likely advise that these methods can achieve results where more traditional ones involving most especially large numbers of boots on the ground have failed. The temptation to engage more heavily will be stronger in Libya, possibly in support of Khalifa Haftar and his so-called National Army. This would offer the additional benefit of working with Egypt and the UAE, thereby reducing current tensions in those relationships. Yemen is more problematical, but also more strategically vital. Already it has been a major testing ground for U.S. drone backed CT and COIN warfare. That warfare is likely to be intensified if efforts to mediate a solution continue to fail. If additional attacks are made on U.S. assets, then Trump will be forced to respond, initially with stepped up CT and COIN in support of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s shaky government, subsequently if necessary with more direct U.S. military engagement.

Strategic implications of likely tactics

If these tactics do indeed coalesce into strategy, it might best be summarized as a leaner version of “off shore balancing” as the US has done in Asia during and after the Cold War. It would include greater reliance on CT and COIN, more direct confrontation with Islamism and support for conservative Arab states and Israel. Managing Moscow will be a central issue, with the likelihood of an initial attempt to enlist as a fellow member of a condominium over the MENA failing, as it would be resisted by too many actors, whether in Russia, the U.S., or the region. How far the fall-back position would go in the direction of opposition remains an open question. Other key questions/issues raised by these potential tactics and emerging strategy include Iranian responses and Trump’s willingness to confront them; whether it is possible to found US policy on weakening Arab states; and whether those states can be reconciled with Turkey and maintained against potential “wreckers,” including their own populations, Russia, Iran and maybe China. Finally it must be queried whether the US has the capacity and will to manage a demanding, even if less ambitious “off shore balancing” strategy for the MENA and if it does not, might Trump simply cut and run from that region?

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is difficult to predict what Trump’s policies will be. Consistency and endurance should not necessarily be expected. The most coherent semi-strategy that seems possible is a scaled down version of off-shore balancing, but as much for the purpose of material gain for the U.S. as for averting consolidation of regional power by a hegemon. How those possibly contradictory objectives might be reconciled is unclear. Since the President-elect has a track record of walking away from failure, and since he has already characterized the MENA as a quagmire, it should be anticipated that his patience in implementing a complex strategy for the region would be limited. If things begin to go bad, more likely he would look for the exit.