In his inaugural speech, President Trump pledged to “eradicate” radical Islamic terrorism “completely from the face of the Earth.” This suggests a redoubling of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and greater pressure on U.S. partners in the Middle East to step up to a campaign that the Gulf States, in particular, largely abandoned in 2015 in favor of their war in Yemen. Freed from the strain of their difficult relationship with the Obama administration, regional leaders may indeed see a recommitment to the anti-ISIL coalition as a means to build ties to the Trump presidency. Ruling elites may also view Trump as a man they can do business with on a case-by-case basis shorn of normative concerns for issues such as human rights, political reform or the condition of migrant labor.
Over the decade and a half since the September 11, 2001, atrocities, successive U.S. presidents have engaged with the Middle East through a range of hard and soft power tools but without ever finding an optimal combination. President George W. Bush’s application of direct military force in Iraq gave way to a more indirect use of American power by President Obama through the expansion of drone warfare and special operations in multiple theaters. Meanwhile, the national security response to the Arab Spring upheaval of 2011 complicated the projection of softer forms of U.S. influence as states across the Middle East clamped down on support for civil society and nongovernmental organizations and closed regional branches of groups such as the National Democratic Institute.
However, the challenge for the Trump administration and for the presumed secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is that they face a Middle East that is more unpredictable and volatile than has faced any other U.S. president in modern times. The speed and scale of the protest movements that toppled longstanding rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen in 2011 and 2012 exposed the fragility of the social contract between states and their peoples and the disruptive effect of economic distress fused with political anger. With the only partial exception of Tunisia, none of the new leaderships have succeeded in addressing the deep-rooted economic and political inequalities that triggered the initial uprisings, and dangerous security vacuums have opened up in Libya, Yemen and parts of Egypt such as the Sinai Peninsula. These lawless zones have provided space for the regional expansion of ISIS and also Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most operationally dangerous of Al Qaeda’s regional “franchises.”
In many regional capitals a parallel sense of drift in U.S. policy emerged as leaders from Jerusalem to Riyadh took phrases such as “leading from behind” and the “pivot to Asia” to signify that the Obama administration was disengaged from and disinterested in the Middle East—a perception sealed by the furious reactions to the president’s comments on free riders to Jeffrey Goldberg in March 2016. The administration’s agonized deliberations on whether and how to intervene in Syria and its eventual decision not to do so in August 2013 inflicted additional damage on its relationships with longstanding political and security partners, not least Saudi Arabia. To fill the perceived vacuum of leadership in the turbulent post-Arab Spring landscape, the Gulf States intervened to shape the direction of political transition in states that underwent regime change in 2011, but have overextended militarily in Yemen and been outmaneuvered comprehensively by Iran and Russia in Syria.
Developments during the two months between Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election on November 8 and his inauguration on January 20 illustrate how little leverage the U.S. currently has in the Middle East, as other states have moved quickly to prioritize and secure their own objectives and interests in the region. The recapture of Aleppo in mid-December by Syrian regime forces backed by Iran and Russia was a resounding setback to the longstanding U.S., Saudi and Qatari policy of supporting and arming elements of the Syrian opposition to President Assad, and was followed by a ceasefire negotiated by Russia and Turkey with government forces. Moscow and Ankara kept up the initiative on Syria by working with Iran and organizing indirect peace talks that commenced on January 23 in the Kazakh capital, Astana, notably without any formal participation by the U.S. or its partners in the Gulf which are, for the moment, marginal to decisions that may settle the nearly six-year civil war in Syria. Russia and Turkey also carried out joint airstrikes on January 18 against ISIS targets in northern Syria six days after the two countries signed a memorandum of cooperation on joint action in Syria.
Russia also has been active in recent weeks in the Palestinian issue after Moscow hosted three days of reconciliation talks between Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions in an attempt to resolve the decade-long division between the West Bank and Gaza and restore Palestinian unity. The talks resulted in a shaky agreement on January 18 to create a national unity government, the details of which are still unclear and may yet fail. However, Russia’s direct involvement came at the request of Palestinian advocates of a decisively new approach after years of stasis under the Quartet. Russian willingness to engage directly with Hamas and Islamic Jihad – deemed terrorist organizations in the U.S. and the European Union – contrasts sharply with the U.S. – and Israeli – positions toward these groups. Trump’s declared intent to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is likely to increase still further Russia’s attractiveness as an emergent counterweight in Middle East diplomacy, with Palestinian leaders already having requested Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, to intercede with the U.S. to block such a move, which would break with decades of diplomatic consensus.
The final indication that U.S. influence in the Middle East has been ebbing, among friends as well as foes, is the waning deterrent effect of U.S. sanctions both on Russia and on Iran. Whereas the U.S. joined with European partners after Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014 to impose several rounds of sanctions on select Russian individuals and businesses, they were routinely ignored by key U.S. partners in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain all announced major collaborative ventures with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a sovereign wealth fund closely linked to President Putin, in 2014 and 2015. In December 2016, in the wake of the allegations of Russian involvement in the hacking of U.S. entities in the run-up to the presidential election and shortly before Obama announced a fresh wave of retaliatory sanctions on Russia, the Qatar Investment Authority partnered with commodities trader Glencore to take a US$11.8 billion, 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft, a majority state-owned Russian oil company that was one of the sanctioned entities in 2014, and followed up with a US$3 billion five-year oil supply agreement in January 2017. Meanwhile, Iranian oil sales to European partners have reached 700,000 barrels per day and now exceed their level of 2012 when the tightening of international sanctions on Iran compelled Tehran to begin negotiations over its nuclear program. Trump’s bellicose language toward Iran is unlikely to find a sympathetic hearing in most European capitals apart from London, and any U.S. attempt to either revise the Iran nuclear deal or snapback sanctions may only isolate the U.S. rather than Iran.
The Trump administration therefore inherits a highly challenging Middle East portfolio that will require careful and nuanced engagement, particularly in rebuilding bilateral relationships strained by the Obama years and reasserting U.S. interests into key regional issues. Whether the administration has the focus and the finesse to do so remains to be seen, and pushing too far and too fast on the Jerusalem embassy transfer risks getting relations with Arab political and security partners off on the wrong foot. U.S. engagement with Middle Eastern states will nevertheless be integral to the broader strategic imperative of rolling back the threat of jihadist terrorism and defeating ISIL, and on this critical issue both Trump and Tillerson will need to balance between competing domestic, regional and international interests that do not always or neatly align.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is a fellow for the Middle East. His research examines the changing position of Persian Gulf states in the global order, as well as the emergence of longer-term, nonmilitary challenges to regional security.