By
Bill Van Auken
Riddled
with hypocrisy, clichés and absurdities, President Donald Trump’s
speech Sunday before an assembly of monarchs and despots in Saudi
Arabia spelled out an agenda of escalating US militarism throughout
the Middle East and a buildup in particular toward war with Iran.
Hailed
by a fawning American media as “presidential”--supposedly
eclipsing for the moment the crises and factional struggles engulfing
the administration--the speech was reportedly drafted by Stephen
Miller, the extreme right-wing ideologue credited with being the
chief architect of Trump’s abortive executive order banning people
from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the US.
Much
in Trump’s half-hour address echoed the speech delivered by Barack
Obama in Cairo eight years earlier. Both presidents declared their
desire to reset US relations with the Middle East, while absurdly
posturing as leaders of a pacifist nation seeking only good for the
region and offering to head up a united struggle against “violent
extremism.”
In
what was meant as a rhetorical invocation to action against
terrorism, Trump told his audience, “Drive them out. Drive them out
of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive
them out of your holy land. And drive them out of this earth.”
Like
Obama before him, Trump had no interest in dealing with who brought
Al Qaeda and similar forces in, as the historical trail leads
directly to the CIA in Afghanistan and US imperialism’s
longstanding support for right-wing Islamist organizations and
terrorist groups as a counterweight to left nationalist and socialist
influence in the Arab and Islamic world. Jointly, the US and Saudi
Arabia continue to fund and arm such forces in their drive for
regime-change in Syria.
Both
speeches were laced with flowery tributes to Islamic culture. Trump
noted in particular how impressed he was with the “splendor” of
Saudi Arabia and the “grandeur” of the palace in which the
so-called Arab Islamic American Summit had been convened.
What
separated the two addresses were the different shifts in strategy by
Washington. While Obama sought to repair the damage done by the Bush
administration’s criminal war in Iraq by offering a new face for US
imperialism, Trump traveled to Saudi Arabia to make clear his
administration’s break with his predecessor’s policy of seeking a
rapprochement with Iran based on the 2015 nuclear deal. He adopted an
openly confrontational stance toward Tehran.
“Above
all, America seeks peace--not war,” Trump proclaimed, in what stood
out as the most blatant of the many lies in his brief address. The
reality is that US wars in the region have killed millions over the
past decade-and-a-half. And the thrust of the US president’s visit
to Saudi Arabia, his first stop in a nine-day foreign tour, is the
preparation for new and even bloodier conflicts.
This
was made plain by the principal agreements forged between Trump and
the Saudi monarchy, which included a $110 billion arms deal that
incorporates the option to purchase $350 billion worth of weapons
over the next 10 years.
The
arms agreement “supports the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and
the entire Gulf region,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the
former ExxonMobil CEO, told reporters in Riyadh, “in particular in
the face of the malign Iranian influence and Iranian-related threats
which exist on Saudi Arabia’s borders on all sides.”
In
his speech, Trump painted Iran as the principal state sponsor of
terrorism, accusing Tehran of providing terrorists with “safe
harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for
recruitment,” and fueling “the fires of sectarian conflict and
terror,” all charges that could be leveled, with justification,
against his Saudi hosts.
He
portrayed the US cruise missile attack on Syria last month--followed
just last week by the US bombing of a pro-government militia in the
southeastern part of the country--as part of a wider struggle against
Iranian influence. He went on to call upon “all nations of
conscience” to “isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism and
pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous
government they deserve.” That he was speaking in Saudi Arabia, a
brutally repressive absolute monarchy, just two days after more than
70 percent of Iranian voters participated in a sharply contested
election, did nothing to blunt Trump’s call for regime-change.
He
specifically praised Saudi Arabia and its allies for having “taken
strong action against Houthi militants in Yemen.” The
near-genocidal Saudi war has killed some 12,000 Yemenis, while
destroying basic infrastructure in the Arab world’s poorest
country, leaving over 7 million people on the brink of starvation and
unleashing a cholera epidemic that threatens a massive death toll.
In
March, US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis issued a memo
calling for stepped-up US support for this criminal war, in which the
Pentagon is already supplying intelligence and logistical backing to
the Saudi bombing campaign.
Part
of the weapons deal signed by Trump involves the shipment of
precision-guided munitions that had been cut off in a highly limited
gesture of disapproval of Saudi tactics in Yemen by the Obama
administration, which itself concluded over $100 billion worth of
weapons deals with Riyadh. Also included in the new deal are tanks,
artillery, helicopters and other weaponry that can be directly
funneled into the slaughter in Yemen.
In
addition to his speech and the signing of arms and investment deals,
Trump participated in a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the
Saudi-led coalition of Gulf oil sheikdoms. Trump administration
officials have raised the objective of using the GCC as the
foundation of a Sunni Arab version of NATO directed at military
confrontation with Iran.
Beyond
the drive to militarily confront Iran, a principal regional rival of
US imperialism in the Middle East, and the huge profits that Saudi
arms purchases reap for the US military industrial complex, there are
broader strategic considerations in the US turn toward a closer
alliance with Riyadh.
Some
of these issues were outlined on the eve of Trump’s trip in a piece
published by the influential Washington think tank the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and authored by Anthony
Cordesman, a longtime Pentagon adviser. First among them is,
according to Cordesman, “the continued level of US dependence on
Saudi help in securing the stable flow of Gulf oil.”
While
US imports from the Gulf have fallen sharply over the past
quarter-century, Cordesman cites “indirect dependence” in terms
of the impact a disruption in oil exports would have on global energy
prices and the world capitalist economy. In particular, he points to
the dependence of Asian economies on Gulf petroleum exports.
If
the United States failed in “providing power projection forces and
arms” to the region, he writes, its principal global rival, China,
might fill the void. “China may not yet be ready to try to assume
the role, but the entire South China Sea crisis would pale to near
insignificance if China became the de facto guarantor of Gulf
stability.”
Cordesman
continues: “The real-world nature of US influence and power in the
Pacific would be cut massively, China’s leverage over other major
Asian economies like Japan and South Korea would be sharply
increased, and the potential rise in tension between China and
India--and cut in India’s relative position--would have a massive
impact on the balance of power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.”
In
other words, the turn toward closer relations with Saudi Arabia and
the related Gulf oil sheikdoms is bound up with US imperialism’s
mounting conflict with China, which it has identified as the
principal challenge to the drive for American global hegemony.
Washington is determined to dominate Asia, including China, by
maintaining the military power to choke off the region’s energy
imports.
The
fact that the sclerotic House of Saud, one of the world’s last
absolute monarchies, has become a lynchpin of Washington’s
imperialist strategy, not only in the Middle East but globally, is a
measure of the crisis of American and world capitalism.
Oil
revenues, which account for fully 90 percent of the kingdom’s
export earnings, have been cut nearly in half since 2014. Last month,
the government was forced to reverse itself on austerity measures
that hit the military and public employees over fear that declining
living standards and rising unemployment are creating the conditions
for social revolt.
In
the predominantly Shia Eastern Province, the center of the kingdom’s
oil production, security forces laid siege to the town of Awamiyah, a
center of resistance to the regime, during the week preceding Trump’s
visit. Combined with the failure of the Saudi bid to topple the Assad
regime in Syria by supporting Al Qaeda-linked militias and the
regime’s inability to retake Yemen from the Houthi rebels, the
deepening domestic crisis is creating the conditions for
revolutionary upheavals against Washington’s principal ally in the
Arab world.
This
article first appeared on World
Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
on 22
May 2017,
and was republished with permission.
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