President Trump's Trip to the Middle East: Potential Positive and Negative Outcomes

President Trump's trip to the Middle East, starting in Saudi Arabia and ending in Israel and Palestine, produced mixed results. The trip's main events, which reflected at least a partial shift by the President toward a more centrist, traditional, yet problematic US Middle East policy, may surprise and confuse Trump's most dogged defenders and his most determined detractors which, in our highly charged partisan political atmosphere, may actually be a good thing. READ MORE

Appreciating the potential positive results first, as Senator George Mitchell commented, in the course of embracing his Saudi and Gulf Arab Muslim hosts, President Trump abandoned his volatile and provocative anti-Muslim rhetoric, which has included promoting a ban on Muslims entering the United States, and the idea of establishing a "Muslim Registry" for Muslim American citizens. The President's support for these hateful Islamophobic programs powerfully feeds ISIS' extremist ideology and strategies. ISIS very likely is using Trump's campaign rhetoric in its recruiting campaigns. In contrast, addressing the Arab-Muslim American summit and the inauguration of the Global Center to Combat Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, the President allied the United States with Arab Muslim efforts to combat Islamist extremism and terrorism. He called Islam "one of the world's great faiths," and exclaimed, "This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people who seek to protect it."

In relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, by a combination of his making peace an urgent priority and the force of his personality, President Trump applied real pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas to resume negotiations and reach a peace deal. One specific positive result of this pressure on Israel is that previously denied Palestinian construction projects in "Area C" of the West Bank will be allowed to be built. President Trump's Special Envoy, Jason Greenblatt, has impressed both Israelis and Palestinians with his capacity to listen to the fears and essential interests of both peoples. Apparently, despite his position during the campaign, the President has shelved the idea of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is achieved.

If only these developments were the "whole story" of President Trump's Mideast trip, but clearly they are not. Potential negative effects from his trip loom large and threaten to complicate and intensify already very dangerous violent conflicts in the region.

The President seemed enthusiastically to embrace the Saudi Arabian government's vision for the Middle East, despite the indisputable evidence that Saudi society has provided the seedbed for Islamist extremism. In doing so, the President abandoned US concerns for human rights, complicated US support for the Iran nuclear deal and, by concluding a ten year $110 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia and very likely more than a billion dollar a year arms deal with Egypt, reinforced the dangerous illusion that autocratic rule and military power are the answers to the region's problems.

In fairness, giving priority to corporate arms sales over tougher concern for human rights has been typical of US  Middle East policy under both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades.What's new is the threat posed by ISIS and the promise and failure of the Arab Spring, all three of which point to the desperate need for radical democratic and economic reform in sclerotic Arab Muslim countries. See Arab Human Development Report 2016  Youth 2009, Human Security 2004, and Gender 2004.

It was ironic that on the day President Trump was royally welcomed by the King of Saudi Arabia, Iran held democratic elections, in which 70% of eligible voters participated and 57% of them voted to give the moderate candidate, Hasan Rouhani a second term as President. President Rouhani's leadership in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal with the P5+1, seeking to reduce economic sanctions on Iran, and working to open-up Iranian society offer an extraordinary opportunity to ease conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between Shiite and Sunni Muslims across the region. The United States has a vital national security interest to help, not hinder this potential process. President Trump's trip, especially his appearing to tightly tie US interests with Saudi hostility toward Iran, tragically takes us in the opposite direction and could intensify violent conflict in Yemen and elsewhere in the region. At the same time, President Trump's effort to involve Saudi Arabia and other Arab states more directly in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process could have promising positive effects.

In addition to obvious benefits to both peoples, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could possibly provide a key to unlocking prospects for wider peace in the region. That possibility may offer the most positive potential result of President Trump's trip. It may sound idealistic and unrealistic to say that Israeli-Palestinian peace could affect chances for wider regional peace, so let me explain why I think this may be true.

Involving Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process based on the Arab Peace Initiative provides both pressure and support for the Palestinian Authority to make necessary compromises, and provides parallel incentive for Israel since achieving peace with the Arab states, not just with the Palestinians, is a surer guarantee for Israel's security.

Currently, Iran continues its fundamentally hostile stance toward Israel and provides support to Hamas and Hezbollah which have launched violent attacks against Israel. Achieving an Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement could cause Iran to change its policy. In 1998, then Iran's President Mohammed Khatami wrote that if the Palestinians reached a peace agreement with Israel, Iran would support it. Khatami publicly endorsed Hasan Rouhani in Iran's recent elections. President Rouhani would very likely follow Khatami's example in responding to a comprehensive peace agreement.

If the United States can play a positive role in bringing this peace process to completion, it would mark an historic achievement by resolving the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also by renewing people's hopes for peace across the region and around the world.

Hopes for Peace on the Korean Peninsula

Most news stores I’ve read recently about Korea fail to mention that nuclear weapons were first introduced into South Korea by the United States in 1958. While North Korea had no nuclear weapons until 2006, the US continued to base nuclear-armed forces in South Korea until 1991. Today, the US “guarantees” South Korea’s security with thousands of US troops stationed at the DMZ, the US nuclear umbrella and the THAAD missile-defense system. These guarantees, along with US-led joint military exercises and public debate among US policymakers about the goal of regime-change in Pyongyang, are perceived by North Korea as threats. Averting war and achieving peace will require both sides taking responsibility for reducing or eliminating what threatens the other.

When fears control our perceptions and politics, people forget or ignore history.. Rather than reminding us of often complicated historical and current facts, mass media sometimes simplistically reinforces our fears. In some crises like this one, scary news stories and photos published on both sides actually could contribute to provoking a war.  As President Trump warned when he committed the US to diplomacy first, war in Korea might mean nuclear war, involving the deaths of millions, with the potential of escalating into World War III.

There have been two Koreas since the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, with a government in the North backed by Russia and China and a government in the South backed principally by the United States. With encouragement from their superpower backers, for many years both North and South Korea viewed winning at war as the way to achieve reunification. They continuously threatened each other and frequently carried out armed attacks on each other. The Korean War began in June 1950 when the North invaded the South. In response, a UN Joint Command, with the US providing 80-90% of the forces, was formed to defend the South. Coincidentally, at the time, Russia was boycotting the UN so it was not present In the UN Security Council to exercise a veto. The war swept up and down the Korean peninsula, caused the deaths of 5 million people and resulted in a military stalemate and Armistice Agreement in 1953.  As a companion to his acclaimed books on Vietnam, read David Halberstam’s book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (2008).

The July 1953 Armistice Agreement stipulated that three months after it went into effect a higher level political conference of all parties concerned would be convened to negotiate the withdrawal of all foreign forces and a peaceful settlement of the Korea question. Sixty-four years later that still has not happened. Paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice Agreement stipulated that neither side would introduce new weapons, but only do piece for piece replacement of existing weapons. In 1956, despite the concerns of its UN allies, the US unilaterally abrogated this provision when it decided to introduce nuclear weapons into South Korea. Predictably, North Korea responded by seeking to acquire its own nuclear weapons which it finally accomplished fifty years later.

Negotiations between South Korea and North Korea and their superpower backers over the years have sometimes been on and sometimes off again, but they’ve always been complex and difficult. Since the 1990s negotiations have focused mainly on issues related to nuclear weapons with the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula or, in the more partisan US version of the goal, getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. US policymakers often make no reference to the issue of the US “nuclear umbrella” over South Korea. The “neither confirm, nor deny” posturing by US officials about the nuclear component of the umbrella is read in North Korea as an implicit admission that some US ships and planes carry nuclear weapons.

Two agreements that were achieved - one in 1994 between the United States and North Korea, and a six-party agreement in 2005, involving China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States - offered aid in exchange for North Korea agreeing to abandon its nuclear program. While this suggests that negotiations can produce positive results, these two agreements arguably broke down because North Korea did not fully carry out its commitments. The road to peace between the two Koreas is not an easy road.

Given the dangers of escalating confrontation currently, restarting serious negotiations should be the priority. The negotiations must address responsibilities and steps necessary by both Koreas and their superpower backers to reach an agreement. Steps the US may need to take to help reach a negotiated agreement relate to the US nuclear umbrella, joint military exercises in the area, and the THAAD missile defense system.  In addition to obvious reasons why North Korea opposes the US nuclear umbrella and THAAD, China and Russia oppose them because they involve the US positioning weapons systems with a range that can target their territories as well as North Korea.

It’s encouraging that the Trump Administration is committed to reviving negotiations, and very encouraging that the winner of South Korea’s election is committed to dialogue with the North and questions the accelerated deployment of THAAD. It is also incredibly inspiring that women leaders from over forty countries, notably including the Women’s Unions of both South Korea and North Korea, wrote  to President Trump on April 26, advocating principles “to avert war in Korea and bring about a long-desired peace on the peninsula:

1.    Negotiate a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear and long range ballistic missile program in exchange for a US security guarantee that would include suspending US-South Korea military exercises.

2.    Initiate a peace process with North Korea, South Korea and China to replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a binding peace treaty to end the Korean War. Women must be significantly represented in the peace process in accordance with the spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

3.    Support citizen diplomacy to heal the legacies of the Korean War by establishing a liaison office in Washington and Pyongyang to facilitate retrieval of US Korean War servicemen’s remains and Korean-American family reunions.

That the official, national Women’s Unions of both North Korea and South Korea are united on these principles makes this peace initiative uniquely important and hopeful. President Trump and members of Congress should support taking steps to explore implementing the initiative. I urge you to send this Post, along with your own personal note, to your two Senators and Representative.