( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The Trump administration is transforming U.S. policy toward the Middle East by promoting monarchy as the ideal form of government.
While the president toys with the idea of turning the United States into a monarchy, presenting himself as the country’s king, his administration is praising the repressive monarchs who rule the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.
Just this week, President Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to the White House, where he sat down with the brutal tyrant to praise him for his leadership, defend him against his critics, and present him to the American people as one of the greatest leaders of the world.
“I’m very proud of the job he’s done,” Trump said.
Trump’s praise of the crown prince, whom Secretary of State Marco Rubio once condemned for being a reckless and ruthless gangster, reflected not only disdain for democracy but a new way of approaching monarchy in the Middle East. Abandoning the longstanding policy of democracy promotion, which has created friction with the region’s royals, the Trump administration is shifting toward an open and unapologetic policy of monarchy promotion.
“What has worked has been benevolent monarchies,” Thomas Barrack, one of Trump’s top diplomats in the Middle East, said earlier this month. “They have worked.”
Background
Since World War II, the United States has supported the ruling monarchs of the Middle East. Although U.S. officials have claimed that they aspire to create a more democratic world, they have maintained an exception for the Middle East, where they have worked closely with the region’s royals for the purpose of controlling the production and distribution of the area’s oil.
U.S. policies have entrenched ruling monarchs in numerous countries, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. By providing them with economic and military support, U.S. officials have enabled the region’s royals to withstand challenges to their rule and maintain control over their countries.
Well aware of the contradiction between their stated commitment to democracy and their backing of the region’s monarchs, officials in Washington have deployed numerous rationalizations to justify their approach.
One of their central claims is that they have no choice but to work with the region’s monarchs. In 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry presented one version of the logic when he said that “we can’t just say, ‘wow, you’re a monarchy,’” and “therefore we’re not going to talk to you.” Career diplomat Ryan Crocker expressed similar logic the following year, telling Congress that “we don’t have a choice between democracy and autocracy.”
Another position in Washington is the region’s monarchs are benevolent, just as Barrack claimed when he was promoting monarchy earlier this month. When U.S. officials meet with the region’s leaders, they often characterize them as good people and dear friends, praising them for their leadership and cooperation.
“The fact of the matter is that the friendship and cooperation that exist between the United States and the Gulf countries has been consistent for decades,” President Barack Obama stated in 2016.
All along, however, U.S. officials have been well aware of the repressive nature of the region’s monarchs. Going all the way back to the post-World War II period, when the United States began to replace Europe as the region’s most dominant power, officials in Washington have known that they are empowering some of the most ruthless and repressive regimes in the world.
“Some of the Middle East countries, in my judgment, are totalitarian, about as totalitarian as countries come,” Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) remarked in 1957, when the Eisenhower administration was moving to transform the Middle East into a U.S. protectorate.
In more recent years, officials in Washington have continued to recognize the repressive nature of the region’s monarchs. Citing reports by Freedom House, which tracks freedom around the world, they have acknowledged that no other region in the world is less free than the Middle East.
The Middle East and North Africa region “stands out as the least free in the world, with 85 percent of its population living in ‘not free’ countries as categorized by Freedom House’s World Freedom Report,” Andrew Plitt told Congress in 2022, when he was working for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Criticisms
Even as the leaders of the United States have knowingly empowered repressive regimes across the Middle East, they have made criticisms, particularly over the manner in which the region’s monarchs have exercised power and influence.
Since the terrorist attacks against the United States on 9/11, one of the major concerns in Washington has been that the region’s monarchs employ terrorism to destabilize rivals and exert regional influence. Long before he became president, Donald Trump made an especially strong criticism of Saudi Arabia, accusing the country of being the center of a terrorist network.
“Look at Saudi Arabia,” Trump wrote in his 2011 book Time to Get Tough. “It is the world’s biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petro dollars—our very own money—to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people, while the Saudis rely on us to protect them!”
Another concern in Washington has been that the region’s monarchs rule with such tremendous violence and repression that they create instability. After people across the Middle East rose up in rebellion in the Arab Spring, some of the most influential people in Washington began identifying monarchy as a problem.
A strongman system is “itself at the root of so much of the violence we see in the Middle East today,” Samantha Power said in 2016, when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “Autocratic rule is bad for the future of the region, and it is bad for the interests of the United States.”
Despite these criticisms, however, the leaders of the United States have continued to support the region’s monarchs, providing them with the economic and military assistance that they need to survive. Instead of embracing a true and authentic policy of democracy promotion, U.S. officials have prioritized their alliances with the region’s monarchs, convinced that they remain critical to the task of keeping the region’s oil flowing to the United States and the world.
“America’s deal with regional despots, particularly in the Gulf, has long been a pretty straightforward one, providing security in exchange for the steady provision of oil to the global economy,” Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) acknowledged in 2022.
Dangers
Although U.S. leaders have long supported the region’s monarchs, President Donald Trump has directed a notable shift in U.S. policy. No longer willing to make periodic critiques while quietly extending U.S. support, just as he did at the start of his first administration, Trump has openly embraced the region’s monarchs, enthusiastically celebrating their wealth and power.
Trump gestured at the new approach in a speech in Saudi Arabia earlier this year in which he criticized his predecessors for lecturing the Middle East about democracy and human rights. It was wrong, Trump indicated, to criticize the region’s monarchs for the manner in which they ruled their countries.
“You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way,” Trump said, showering praise upon the region’s monarchs and their leadership. “That’s a good way.”
Trump displayed particular affection for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the tyrannical prince who rules Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that U.S. intelligence has concluded that the Saudi prince ordered the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump set aside all criticisms, going so far as to suggest that the prince’s leadership is enabling Saudi Arabia to outperform the United States.
President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman during Donald Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia, 13 May 2023; White House in X; Author: White House.This file is a work of an employee of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
“Right now you have the best friend you’ve ever had,” Trump told that crown prince at the White House on Tuesday.
The highest-level officials in the Trump administration have supported the president’s approach. At the Manama Dialogue, a forum held in Bahrain from late October to early November, several officials in the Trump administration spoke of the region’s monarchs in glowing terms.
On October 31, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard gave a speech in which she indicated that it was perfectly fine for the region’s countries to be ruled by monarchs who are not committed to democracy or human rights. “President Trump understands that not everyone shares our exact values or our system of governance,” Gabbard said. “And that is okay.”
The following day, Barrack then gave his speech in which he brought the administration’s policy of monarchy promotion into the open. Claiming that previous efforts at democracy promotion had failed, he told the region’s leaders that it was time to embrace monarchies, which he insisted are benevolent.
“Let us try something new,” Barrack said. After all, “you have all the power” and “you have all the money.”
What is perhaps most striking, however, is how the Trump administration is openly defending monarchy. Rather than sidestepping the fact that it is deterring democracy and supporting repressive regimes, as previous administrations have done, the Trump administration is defending monarchy as the ideal form of government for the Middle East.
Indeed, the Trump administration is undertaking a new approach that now poses one of the greatest threats to the Middle East. Abandoning all pretense of concern for democracy and human rights, the Trump administration is openly implementing a dangerous new policy of monarchy promotion.
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