Gimme Shelter (May 16, 2025)

Welcome to Home & Away. I have spent much of the week in the UK, in Oxford and London to be precise, where, among other things, I delivered a lecture, gave a talk, and co-taught a class as the inaugural Margaret MacMillan North American Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. St. Antony’s is where I did my master’s and doctorate, and where Margaret, one of the leading historians of our—or any—time, served as warden for a decade. It was a treat to spend time with her and the impressive students. The only thing that did not echo my memories was the brilliant sunny weather.

Gift vs. Grift

It seems I was not the only one traveling this past week. Just as during his first term, Donald Trump decided to travel to the Middle East for his first planned foreign trip. Once again, he visited Saudi Arabia, and, on this occasion, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well.

For good reasons, the trip generated a good deal of both controversy and interest. I will start with the former. In advance of the visit, Trump announced plans to accept the Qatari government’s “gift” of a luxury Boeing 747, appraised at some $400 million, to serve as Air Force One. (The fact that there is still no replacement for the aging aircraft that ferries the POTUS around the world is yet another chapter in the sad tale of Boeing’s fall—but that is a corporate tale for another day.)

Understandably, many saw this gift as grift, as the aircraft will become the exclusive property of the Trump Presidential Library after he leaves office and therefore will potentially be available to Mr. Trump for the rest of his life. Before then, the plane will belong to the Department of Defense, although whether it will ever serve as Air Force One is uncertain given all the security checks and modifications required. Once the Department of Defense finishes disassembling the jet to check for spyware and other security vulnerabilities and refitting the jet with new systems for secure communications and defensive measures, the total costs are projected to exceed a billion dollars.

The president, nonetheless, has dismissed any criticism of his plan to accept the jet, saying it would be stupid not to agree to a free plane, likening it to “a gimme,” what often happens in a friendly game of golf, when a golfer is conceded a short and normally makeable putt by his opponent or playing partner. As Trump stated, “When they give you a putt, you say, ‘Thank you very much.’ You pick up your ball, and you walk to the next hole.”

For those of you who are not avid golfers, granting a gimme is an act of some generosity, of sportsmanship if you will, that also speeds things along in a game that tends to take too long. It gets complicated though. You cannot declare a short putt of your own to be a gimme; it must be offered. And there is no precise rule as to what constitutes short. Gimmes get increasingly questionable as putts move beyond two- or two-and-a-half feet, especially as in nearly every competition golfers are required to sink the putt, no matter how short. And as we have seen even among the best professionals, no putt, no matter how short, is certain to be made.

All of which is to say that a $400 million airplane is something more than a gimme. To continue the golf analogy, it would be closer to standing on the tee and granting a hole in one. What is more, it is not up to the president to declare the gift acceptable. Indeed, the Constitution explicitly states, “And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” For Trump’s attorney general, who was previously a FARA-registered lobbyist for the Qatari government, to determine that the gift is acceptable because nothing explicit was asked for or given also ignores the reality that nothing comes free. Qatar will presumably expect and receive special consideration from this administration. Indeed, this may have already happened, as during his trip to Qatar Trump pledged, “we are going to protect you.”

There is one more thing to be said about this before I move on. This gift by Qatar and its acceptance by the president is not a one-off. Since his first term, Trump and his family have been involved in a range of questionable real estate and investment deals, and now cryptocurrency schemes, enabling foreign governments to funnel money to the Trumps if they so choose. If the Democrats are smart, they will focus on it all, as corruption is something you don’t have to be a policy expert to understand. Like pornography, we know it when we see it, and many Americans will see it here.

43 vs. 47

In terms of policy, what may have been the most significant aspect of President Trump’s trip was what he had to say in Saudi Arabia.

“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves...In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves…In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it is our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins.”

Contrast this with what President George W. Bush said twenty years ago in his second inaugural address:

“America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world…We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right…We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people.”

I actually think Trump gets it more right than Bush. There is nothing more difficult in the realm of foreign policy than trying to influence the internal workings of another country. And we often do not have the luxury of holding other interests and objectives hostage to bringing about such changes, no matter how desirable they might be. There is, however, a sensible middle ground, one occupied by most of the modern presidents and traditionally supported by a majority of Americans, who understandably do not want their government to turn a blind eye to tyranny or to turn foreign policy into a costly crusade. That said, it should not come as a great surprise that the over-reach of one president (and the wars associated with it) paved the way for the equally stark under-reach of a successor. We are witnessing the foreign policy demonstration of Newton’s third law of motion, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The shift is breathtaking. In a generation, U.S. foreign policy has swerved from hyper-morality to amorality.

Trump vs. Bibi

The focus of Trump’s trip to the Persian (or, as some would have it, Arabian) Gulf has been business, on weapons and investment deals of all sorts. This too is a hallmark of the Trump presidency, in that he is the first modern occupant of the Oval Office to place economic interests (as opposed to strategic or diplomatic considerations) at the heart of U.S. foreign policy.

Still, quite a lot of attention was given to diplomacy in the Middle East, something that cannot be said about Ukraine given Russian President Putin’s manifest lack of interest in a ceasefire—his refusal to attend peace talks in Turkey that he proposed earlier in the week being but the latest example. Trump appears to want a nuclear deal with Iran similar to, but reportedly of longer duration than, the 2015 JCPOA that President Obama negotiated and Trump withdrew from in his first term. This aim is shared by the Arab countries who want to avoid a military attack on Iran lest they become the targets of Iranian retaliation and/or be forced to redirect resources away from their ongoing ambitious development plans. Such a deal would likely require the United States signing onto a pact that allowed Iran to produce a small amount of low-enriched uranium for civilian nuclear power generation. But anything short of the full elimination of Iran’s nuclear program is likely to be too much for many in Israel and some in the United States. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

The trip is noteworthy too for Trump’s decision to skip Israel. My guess is that the president and his team wanted to avoid getting further embroiled in the situation in Gaza, where there is no end in sight to the war nor reason to be optimistic about the return of the remaining Israeli hostages. Meanwhile, the prospect of long-term Israeli occupation and possibly annexation is growing, and there is mounting evidence, from even Israel’s own military officials, that Gaza’s two million residents are on the brink of famine as a result of Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid.

But the Trump administration’s reluctance to get involved comes at a diplomatic cost. The president made clear this week that he would like to see Saudi normalization with Israel, but no such breakthrough will be forthcoming so long as the situation in Gaza continues unabated. Even authoritarian rulers such as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman must pay attention to public opinion, and public opinion in Saudi Arabia, and in the Arab world more broadly, has moved sharply against Israel.

I am struck by something else: how U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump has distanced itself from Israel and its prime minister. In a number of areas—Trump’s lifting of sanctions on Syria’s new government, despite Israel’s insistence that it still poses a serious threat to the country, the effort to directly negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran rather than greenlight Israel’s use of military force against it, not reducing tariffs on Israel even after Netanyahu’s Washington visit, and striking separate deals with both the Houthis and Hamas without alerting Israel first—Trump has demonstrated that America First is not Israel or Bibi First. Thus far, Trump has been willing to give Israel a free hand in Gaza and the West Bank, but as noted above, this frustrates Trump’s ability to bring Saudi Arabia into the peace camp. Here too it will be interesting to see if over time the free hand gives way to a tight grip that presses Israel’s prime minister to change course.

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