Trump’s Middle East Policy: Pull Troops Out of Syria To Put Them in Gaza?
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has finally found a war he doesn’t like. During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump said that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip” and send troops “if it’s necessary.” Graham, who’s been a consistent advocate of U.S. military intervention overseas, told CNN that “most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza.”
A few hours later, NBC News reported that the U.S. Department of Defense was drawing up plans to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, where the United States has around 2,000 troops deployed to fight the Islamic State group. Trump told reporters last month, “We’re not involved in Syria. Syria is in its own mess. They’ve got enough messes over there. They don’t need us involved.”
It’s a strange, confusing beginning to the second Trump administration. While planning to get out of one conflict in the Middle East, the president is talking about sending American forces into a much larger adventure next door. Trump, who won his first election by crushing the architects of the Iraq War within the Republican Party, would be launching the first hostile U.S. occupation of an Arab country since then. Even pro-Israel hawks have been taken aback.
“Obviously it’s not going to happen. I don’t know under what circumstance it would make sense even, even for Israel,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R–N.C.) told reporters. “Now, if Israel is asking for the United States to come in and provide some assistance to ensure that Hamas can never do again what they did, I’m in. But us taking over seems like a bit of a stretch.”
Although he began his term by securing an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire that the Biden administration could not or would not broker, Trump inherits the same dilemmas that former President Joe Biden faced. The U.S. presence in the Middle East is still oriented—to crib from the famous saying about NATO—to keep the Iranians out, the Israelis in, and the Arabs down.
The ultimate vision, which Democrats and Republicans share, is a U.S.-backed grand alliance between Israel and Arab monarchies, with Saudi Arabia as the centerpiece. However, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is demanding a solution to the Palestinian issue before tying his fate to an Israeli alliance. And Iran, feeling cornered, is reportedly exploring its options for building a nuclear weapon.
Within the Trump administration itself, there’s a strange mix of doves and restrainers who want to draw down from the Middle East and ultrahawks who want to come back with a vengeance to the wars of the past two decades. And American voters want less U.S. involvement in the world, but they don’t like feeling like they retreated in weakness, as the political aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan shows.
Trump is a master of being all things to all people. He’s good at theatrics and spinning compromise as total victory. Earlier this week, he threatened Canada with annexation, then backed down after the Canadian government announced a border security plan it had already decided on last year.
On Tuesday, an anonymous Trump administration official briefed Reuters that Trump was going to order a new “maximum economic pressure” campaign aimed at rollin
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