May 16: Will tactical wins lead to strategic success for President Trump?

In which, a string of diplomatic wins continue to give Trump momentum, but questions remain on their staying power.

Will tactical wins lead to strategic success for President Trump?

President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud

President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud

President Trump made his first trip abroad this week with a visit to the Gulf States, but before he left on that trip, here’s what went down on the diplomatic front between last Friday and this past Monday:

• The PKK, a Kurdish separatist/terrorist organization announced its disarmament and disbandment.

• US-China called a 90-day trade war truce.

• India and Pakistan agreed to an immediate ceasefire with an assist from US mediators.

• Hamas released the last American citizen being held hostage (probably some kind of goodwill measure ahead of Trump’s MidEast trip).

By the end of this week, Trump could add lifting sanctions on the new Syrian government (likely as a quid pro quo for normalizing relations with Israel), major tech, defense, and business deals with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

Observers of the trip noted that Trump rather pointedly ignored visiting Israel and longtime ally Benjamin Netanyahu, taking this as a sign that there’s growing daylight between the two leaders and their countries. That’s wrong. Though Trump is certainly concerned about the situation in Gaza, he’s clearly letting Israel “finish the job” as it pertains to Hamas (whatever that means), and is busy “working the room” of the region to get normalization back on track between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria. And this is all with an eye towards keeping the pressure on Iran.

My observation of Trump in foreign policy and diplomacy is that he doesn’t like getting distracted from the main goals, and his main goals in the Middle East are expanding the Abraham Accords and denuclearizing Iran, peaceably if possible, forcibly if he must. This is a significant shift from prior administrations that approached the region as being almost impossibly complex and requiring constant attention and rebalancing. The approach of prior administrations was to try to use the weight of US power to keep the lid on a pot always threatening to boil over. Trump’s approach seems to be directed at trying to turn down the heat. In that scenario, the boiling mess in the pot doesn’t go away, but it is contained. This week, Trump notched some significant tactical wins. Will they add up to a strategic victory? If Trump and his team can successfully expand the Abraham Accords and land the plan on a definitive Iran deal, those would be significant strategic wins. For all intents and purposes, this week seemed to move things definitively in the right direction as even critics of the Trump administration acknowledged.