There’s something almost quaintly anachronistic about trying to pin down Donald Trump’s foreign policy in formal strategy documents. It’s like attempting to capture lightning in a bureaucratic bottle—the very exercise contradicts the subject. Yet here we are, with two substantial texts laying bare the administration’s worldview: the National Security Strategy from December and the National Defence Strategy from January. What they reveal isn’t merely a shift in American policy toward the Middle East. It’s a wholesale rejection of seventy years of post-war orthodoxy, dressed up in the language of “peace through strength” but revealing something far more primal underneath.

The documents matter precisely because Trump will ignore them when convenient. That’s not a bug; it’s the entire operating system.

But taken seriously (which we must) these strategies illuminate a fundamental transformation in how Washington conceives of its role in the world, and particularly in that perennial theater of American ambition and frustration, the Middle East. What emerges is a vision both boldly transactional and deeply traditional, echoing not the multilateralism of the post-1945 order but the muscular realism of an earlier American century. Think Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick” rather than Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Think spheres of influence rather than universal values. Think nineteenth-century statecraft in twenty-first-century packaging.

The first pillar of this new doctrine is refreshingly honest in its cynicism: America is stepping away from the pretense of upholding a “rules-based international order” and embracing instead a world of sovereign competitors where might make it right. Or rather, where Americans might preserve American rights. The Monroe Doctrine gets a revival tour in the Western Hemisphere—just ask Venezuela. Europe gets lectured into doubling its defense spending. China gets “managed competition” rather than confrontation. Russia becomes a regional nuisance rather than an existential threat.

And the Middle East? It remains what it has always been in American strategic thinking: too important to ignore, too complex to master, too rich in resources to abandon.

Consider the clarity of interest here. Among five “core vital national interests” outlined in the National Security Strategy, three connect directly to the region. Preventing any adversarial power from dominating Middle Eastern oil, gas, and maritime chokepoints. Preserving freedom of navigation and supply chains. Maintaining technological leadership in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—increasingly dependent on Gulf partnerships in digital infrastructure and critical minerals. This isn’t abstract geopolitics. This is about money, energy, and technological supremacy in an age when all three are inseparable.

History teaches us that great powers rarely abandon regions they deem vital; they merely change their methods of control. Britain didn’t leave the Middle East after Suez because it lost interest—it left because it lost capacity. America under Trump isn’t leaving either. It’s recalibrating, outsourcing the ground game while retaining the ultimate veto.

The second pillar reveals the administration’s theory of peace, which is really a theory of coercion. Peace, in Trump’s framework, doesn’t emerge from patient institution-building or mutual restraint. It comes from hard bargaining backed by the credible threat of overwhelming force. The celebrated Operation Midnight Hammer—which devastated Iran’s nuclear program—isn’t treated as an unfortunate necessity but as a model of effective statecraft. Israel gets praised not for its willingness to negotiate but for its capacity to fight its own wars with American backing. The Gulf states earn plaudits for buying American weapons systems and integrating them into their defense postures.

This is Bismarckian diplomacy: blood and iron, with a dash of Trumpian showmanship.

The documents tout eight wars supposedly ended by this president. Three are in the Middle East: Gaza, the Israel-Iran confrontation, the Egypt-Ethiopia dispute. Whether these conflicts are genuinely resolved or merely paused is a question the strategy papers don’t linger on. The point is the claim itself—the cultivation of an image as a peacemaker achieved through projection of strength rather than accommodation of adversaries.

Which brings us to Iran, the organizing antagonist in this regional drama. Listed alongside China, Russia, and North Korea as a top-four national defense concern, Tehran nonetheless appears diminished in these documents compared to earlier assessments. Strikes on nuclear facilities, sustained sanctions, the degradation of Hamas and Hezbollah, attacks on the Houthis—all have supposedly weakened the Islamic Republic to the point where it poses a manageable rather than imminent threat. Notably absent is any urgency about negotiating a new nuclear deal or any explicit call for regime change.

This represents a subtle but significant evolution. The first Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal with maximum fanfare and imposed maximum pressure. This second iteration seems content with maximum degradation. The bottom line remains unchanged—no Iranian nuclear weapon—but the path to that objective now runs through continuous low-grade conflict and periodic devastating strikes rather than grand diplomatic breakthroughs or all-out war.

The third pillar envisions a Middle East anchored by Israel and the Gulf states, economically integrated with America, strategically aligned against Iran, and gradually moving beyond endemic warfare toward something resembling normalcy. The Abraham Accords provide the template: transactional agreements that bypass Palestinian aspirations while creating profitable partnerships. Turkey earns favorable mention as a key player shaping post-Assad Syria. Regional integration is encouraged, but American primacy remains non-negotiable.

Here’s where the strategy reveals an internal tension that may prove consequential. Trump’s commitment to American “energy dominance”—keeping global oil prices low to serve US strategic and economic interests—directly conflicts with the fiscal needs of Gulf partners whose budgets depend on higher energy revenues. The administration has already demonstrated this priority in Venezuela. For Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others, this creates an uncomfortable asymmetry in an otherwise robust partnership. You can align with Washington’s regional security architecture while simultaneously watching American policy undercut your economic development plans.

This isn’t a fatal flaw, but it’s a point of friction that could widen. Partnerships built purely on transactional foundations tend to last exactly as long as the transaction remains mutually beneficial.

What we’re witnessing, ultimately, is the formalization of an instinct that has always lurked beneath America’s post-war internationalism: the belief that American power, American interests, and American prosperity matter more than abstract principles or institutional commitments. Trump didn’t invent this instinct—read your Kennan, your Kissinger—but he’s made it explicit in ways that previous administrations carefully avoided.

The Middle East becomes, in this framework, what it arguably always was: a region where America exercises power not to spread democracy or build institutions but to secure tangible interests through alliances with whoever can deliver stability and partnership, regardless of their domestic politics.

The documents offer structure and clarity. They won’t constrain the president, who prides himself on unpredictability and treats written strategies the way a jazz musician treats sheet music—as a starting point for improvisation. But they do reveal the underlying logic: a world of sovereign competitors, American strength as the ultimate arbiter, and the Middle East as a vital theater where that strength must be maintained, displayed, and occasionally unleashed.

It’s a vision both ancient and modern. Whether it produces the peace Trump promises or merely a different kind of conflict remains to be seen. But the direction is unmistakable: away from the liberal internationalist dream and toward something older, harder, and far more comfortable with the exercise of raw power in pursuit of national interest.

Please follow Blitz on Google News Channel

The post Trump’s Middle East strategy and the return of great power realism appeared first on BLiTZ.

[Read More]

—–
Source: Weekly Blitz :: Writings