Visiting Column #50 -- Trump and the Middle East Grand Plan

Within the past couple three weeks, something most of us thought impossible has had its first steps, and not only do those steps seem productive, but for once the process seems inexorable, in the good way.

It started -- well, it actually started in 2017, as we will see, but for those among you who only read headlines, it seems to have started with the surprising step of the United Arab Emirates recognizing the nation of Israel and exchanging ambassadors, which constitutes full diplomatic relations.

Now, the UAE is one of those oil countries of the Middle East with a large concentration of power shared among the emirs who give the nation its name, as you know.  More importantly, they are capitalists who know which side their bread is buttered, or which side their oil ... OK, oil doesn't have sides, but you get my point.  They act in their own self-interest.

Last week, Bahrain followed suit, also recognizing Israel and actually having a ceremony to celebrate the two nations' new ties right there in good old Washington, DC, in the People's House, where resides one Donald J. Trump.  As Bahrain was taking that step, words of support for the new relationship with the once-upon-a-time enemy came from other Middle East petrocracies like Morocco and Saudi Arabia, meaning that they, too, were on the verge of swapping ambassadors with Israel.  Dominoes were falling all over.

A bit surprised?  Of course you are.  Peace in the Middle East, at least peace between Israel and the Arab world, was that long-sought but frustrating goal, failed at by pretty much every president for decades, save for Barack Obama, who didn't so much "fail" at trying to pacify the region, as "ignore" the region, never seeming to care if there were peace there.

Donald Trump is a different president.  We knew that when we elected him.  He was the guy who built the ice rink in Manhattan privately when the city government couldn't get it done.  One thing we know about him is that when he looks at government and sees it doing something stupid, or doing something stupidly, he tries to figure put how to do it cheaper and better, like the ice rink.  It's in his DNA.

When Trump looked at the Middle East, he saw countries like the UAE, which only hated Israel on paper, since Israel did not in any way threaten the emirs, but they had to go along with their fellow Arab nations.  All the UAE wanted was to be able to drill and sell oil, and stay rich.  Israel was not a barrier to that.

But, interestingly, the USA was a potential problem.  Under our lands and off our shores is a vast resource in oil and natural gas, to the point that if it were allowed to be tapped with far less restrictions than the Obama and Biden types had imposed, the USA could become energy-independent and, in fact, a next exporter of fossil fuels.  Adding a net exporter to the market would drive down prices, and that would hit the emirs right in the wallet.  That was a threat indeed.

President Trump could see that, and he could also see that playing nice with the Arab world had not settled the Israel peace issue.  Plus, he could see -- and here is the important point -- that if the USA were in a position to export gas and oil, and thus threaten energy prices, not only would he gain leverage in the Middle East for peace purposes, but it would also cause economic problems for Russia, which was peddling gas to Europe without competition.  Nice bonus there.

So look at all the factors.  Most of the Arab world didn't really hate Israel; like the UAE, they mostly just wanted to sell oil and stay rich.  Israel was not a threat to that.  The Palestinians were showing that they simply wanted to play the victim card, walking away from every previous peace deal.  Since the Palestinians and their terrorist buddies were no asset to the Arab world, their actions were getting tiresome to the Arab nations, who were asking themselves why they should even care, if the Palestinians didn't.

And one other factor, perhaps the biggest -- Iran.  Iran has been the biggest source of instability in the region, funding terrorists (including with the $150 billion that Obama and Biden gave them) and fomenting wars.  The Arab world truly hates and fears the Iranian mullahs, since not only are they Shiites (where the Arab oil nations are mostly Sunni) they represent an unnegotiating, wartime threat to their oil business.  And the mullahs are kind of nuts.  Trump's energy policy is a threat to the Arab oil types, too, but they knew that, unlike the Iranians, they could negotiate with Trump and did not see the USA as a military threat.

One of the first things that President Trump did in 2017 was to start lessening the barriers to becoming energy-independent.  Silly, Obama-era drilling restrictions were lifted, and steps were taken toward becoming energy-independent and a net exporter, which we now are.

I hope you are following, because if you are, you see the grand plan.  Where prior presidents failed in achieving Middle East stability, because they tried to do it just diplomatically, Trump understood their self-interest.  He knew that the Arab world didn't really care about the whining Palestinians, that they didn't have a gripe with Israel, and that their real fear was (A) Iran, and (B) getting euchred out of their oil profits.

So President Trump quickly put the USA in a position to influence the world's oil producers, by becoming the biggest one -- and we not only can now influence the world market, we are also the biggest consumer and can thus manage both the supply and demand side.  With his plan, we could get what we want.

And what we wanted, along with stymieing Russia and handcuffing Iran, was peace.  Peace between the Arab nations and Israel, a very achievable goal, given the bigger threats out there.  Trump sends a team including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, over to Dubai.  "We are the big dog in the energy world now", Kushner might have said.  "You know what we'd like to see?  We'd like you to recognize Israel and institute diplomatic relations.  It's no skin off your back to do that, right?  And then we're going to ask your friends to do the same, but we need you to go first.  And if you do, perhaps we'll be a bit more conservative in how much energy we dump on the world and compete with you."

The Wuhan virus has been an almost unmitigated disaster for the entire world, but there has been one helpful aspect.  When the world shutdown crushed demand for fossil fuels, oil prices tanked, getting the attention of the OPEC types fast.  Whatever Kushner told the emirs in Dubai, it surely resonated with them that the oil demand curve was a lot more fragile than they could handle, and maybe those Israelis weren't so bad after all.

If I had to guess, I'd think that when Trump loosened the constraints on energy production in the USA, his primary goal was to boost our own economy and, secondarily, to damage the hold that OPEC had on the rest of the world.  But I will bet that early on, it occurred to him that the Arab oil sheiks, capitalists and realists all, saw that their real threat was Iran, and that their best ally was going to be the USA, providing Trump made sure they knew that they could work together.

I can't say that was the original plan.  But diplomacy based on UN-style diplomats sure hadn't worked, but diplomacy based on mutual understanding of what side of the bread had the butter, now that was something that could work.

And let's face it, it worked here.  The Nobel Peace Prize would be well-earned.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton