Trump's Legacy in the Middle East: Strategic Shift and the Geopolitics of American Foreign Policy in the Region

Abstract

The last six months of the Trump administration witnessed interesting developments regarding its legacy in the Middle East. The normalization of ties between four Arab states and Israel constituted major breakthroughs not only in the regional inter-state relations but also for the American foreign policy in the region. In this context, this thesis offers insights into how to understand and evaluate the administration's approach towards these developments. Based on systematic and empirical research, I analyze a corpus comprised of Trump-era foreign policy documents regarding the Iranian and Israeli-Palestinian questions. I find, firstly, that the Trump administration pursued a strategic shift in the American foreign policy in the Middle East. This shift marked the confrontational "Maximum Pressure" campaign towards Iran and the top-down approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict embodied in the "Peace to Prosperity" plan. Secondly, I find that the Trump administration engineered a geopolitical transformation by pushing the Arab regimes towards a multi-faceted security alignment with Israel. As a theoretical framework, I apply Ryan's 'regime security' theory to Trump's approaches towards Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, I conclude that the Trump administration set the stage for a more favorable containment of Iran as the US continues to disengage from the region. It may have even facilitated a return to a strategy of 'Offshore Balancing' in the Middle East in the long run.