So how has it worked? It has proved a mistake to rush to quickly to judgment. For a while, our saber rattling with North Korea looked truly disastrous and like a possible precursor to war. Now Korean relations are in an unprecedented thaw and member of the Trump administration are already popping the cork to celebrate North Korea's imminent surrender of its entire nuclear arsenal. How things will end up -- let's wait and see.
The same applies to Saudi Arabia. How is the end to funding of radical mosques and madrassahs going? As a mere Enlightened Layperson, I have no idea. But it seems improbable that such support can be cut off overnight, and even if such support does end, it will some time to get rid of all the radical Islamists who have risen up. But if such a cutoff has occurred (or even started) it is a major step in the right direction.
How about the "no daylight" policy? Well, it makes the Saudis happy. And the Saudis are apparently pressuring the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. And certainly the anti-Iran alliance is well underway.
But at the same time, "no daylight" with Saudi Arabia is causing problems because the Saudis keep doing things we wish they wouldn't.
The Saudis have an ongoing war in Yemen, which they are blockading in an attempt to starve the pro-Iranian government into submission, accompanied by bombing on civilian targets. We have been supporting the attempt since the Obama and stepping up support under Trump. The blockade has led to malnutrition and disease on a massive scale and over 10,000 civilian casualties from air strikes. No doubt we would condemn these as war crimes if Iran were doing them, but the good guys are doing them, so no problem.
Since Trump pledged "no daylight," Saudi Arabia has engaged in two other foreign policy adventures, less ruinous from a humanitarian standpoint, but clearly inexcusable and not successful. It placed neighboring Qatar under blockade, with possible plans to invade, unless Qatar closed down Al-Jazeera and started toeing the Saudi line on foreign policy. Trump supported the Saudi plans, not knowing that the US has an important military base on Qatar. Is it necessary to point out that this is an example of why it is not a good idea to make foreign policy on blind impulse and dismiss knowledge as "elitist"? Qatar responded by seeking protection from Turkey and trying to ingratiate itself with us. All parties are now trying to back down from this awkward situation.
In Lebanon, the Saudis have long been worried about the power and influence of the Shiite militia Hezbollah -- reasonable. They regard Hezbollah as a puppet of Iran and threat to Lebanese sovereignty -- true. So how did they seek to alert the Lebanese people to the danger and counter the threat? Why, by summoning Lebanon's pro-Saudi Prime Minister (a dual citizen) to Saudi Arabia, putting him under house arrest, and forcing him to step down as Prime Minister and replacing him with a more pliant substitute who would remove Hezbollah from the cabinet. Unsurprisingly, this action did nothing at all to convince the Lebanese people of the threat that Iran posed to their sovereignty, and mostly served to anger them at Saudi Arabia. The US quickly brokered the release of the Prime Minister, but Hezbollah gained seats in the next election. Hezbollah is, indeed, an Iranian puppet, but the Iranians at least have the sense not to pull the strings so publicly.
And now the Saudis want the US to maintain a troop presence in Syria indefinitely but are not willing to send any troops of their own.
There is evidence that Trump is becoming disillusioned with the "no daylight" approach to Saudi Arabia. Trump is now demanding that the Saudis pay for any troops we leave in Syria and attempting to persuade Arab countries to step in. And in his latest visit to Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly told the Saudis to stop these feuds and focus on opposing Iran.
My overall grade here would be a C -- nothing disastrous, but some lessons learned the hard way.
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