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The initial two and a half years of President Trump’s national security policy have departed sharply from those of President Obama, his predecessor at the White House.
The nature of Trump’s national security policy may be assessed through the worldview of Vice President Mike Pence and the two most crucial appointments:Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was a “Tea Party” leader in the US House of Representatives, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has been a consistent advocate of a bolstered US posture of deterrence – in the face of rogue regimes and organizations – by flexing political, economic and military muscle. In 1991, it was Bolton who led the successful US campaign to revoke “Zionism is Racism” from UN records. Both Pompeo and Bolton have been consistent critics of Obama’s national security policy.
The worldview of President Obama (and his Secretary of State, John Kerry) was shaped by the following principles:
1. No US moral, political, economic exceptionalism;
2. Preference of multinational – over unilateral – initiatives;
3. Considering the UN as a key factor in shaping the global arena;
4. Viewing non-assertive Western Europe as a role model;
5. Embracing the worldview of the State Department establishment, which has been persistently divorced from Middle East complexity (e.g., the “Arab Spring” illusion);
6. Adopting negotiation, reconciliation and containment as key tactics when dealing with rogue regimes (e.g., the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement);
7. Approaching rogue Islamic entities as potential allies rather than lethal opponents and enemies (e.g., “Islam has always been a part of the American Story,” Cairo, June 4, 2009);
8. Playing down Islamic terrorism by designating the murder of 13 Fort Hood, TX, US soldiers by radical Muslim Major Nidal Hasan, as “workplace violence” (and later on, as “combat related casualties”), prohibiting the use of the term “Islamic terrorism;”
9. Defining the Palestinian issue as the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a core cause of Middle East turbulence and a crown-jewel of Arab policy-makers;
10. Assuming that a resolution – not management – of conflicts is a realistic option in the unpredictable, violent, intolerant, volcanic Middle East, which has never experienced long-term intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence.
