SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Washington: While Donald Trump was shaking hands in the Gulf states – “more hands than any human being is capable of doing”, he said – back home in Washington, the US Department of Agriculture was marking its 163rd birthday.
Straddling the great neoclassical columns of the Jamie L. Whitten building are two giant banners: one of president Abraham Lincoln, who created the agency in 1862, and another of – no prize for guessing – Trump.
Banners showing the faces of Trump and Abraham Lincoln have been installed at the US Department of Agriculture in Washington.Credit: Leigh Vogel
It’s difficult to get away from the US president these days. Whether it’s the front page of the newspaper, the board of the Kennedy Centre or the facade of downtown buildings, he is everywhere. (Portraying Trump on Saturday Night Live last weekend, James Austin Johnson entered the stage and said: “Hello, it’s me again, invading all aspects of your life”.)
The banner, which appeared on Wednesday morning, would not have been out of place in one of the Middle East monarchies the president was visiting – nor, as some commentators noted, in the dictatorship of North Korea.
No one should be surprised by Trump’s Gulf love-in. From the disdain for democratic checks to a fondness for ostentatious wealth and the mixing of business with politics – not to mention public and private benefit – they are his people, through and through.
Indeed, international affairs professor Gregory Gause says when Trump began sending his son-in-law Jared Kushner to handle Middle East peace talks during his first term, Gulf states thought: “Finally, an American government we can understand.”
Donald Trump and meets UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in Abu Dhabi.Credit: AP
This trip took the president to Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi. At each stop, the ceremonies were lavish, the pleasantries superlative and the “deals” eye-watering: $US600 billion ($937 billion) from Saudi Arabia, an “economic exchange” with Qatar supposedly worth $US1.2 trillion and another $US200 billion squeezed from the United Arab Emirates.
Of course, these are not deals – they are memoranda of understanding which may one day yield a deal.
But the pledges and promises were somewhat overshadowed by a much more imminent gift: the Qatari royal family’s plan to give Trump a $US400 million Boeing 747 to be used as Air Force One, and then transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation at the end of his term in office.
Trump’s eagerness to accept the gift rattled even some of his strongest supporters, such as far-right activist Laura Loomer, who called the Qataris “jihadists in suits”, and American News Corp columnist Miranda Devine. “This stinks,” she posted on X. “There’s no such thing as a free jet.”
Which raises the question: what does Qatar want?
Portrait of power: Was Donald Trump secretly impressed by Kim Jong-un’s grip over North Korea?Credit: KCNA
Gause, a Middle East expert and emeritus professor at Texas A&M University, says it’s about establishing “top cover” ahead of potential congressional probes into Qatar, its deep ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and its financing of terrorist group Hamas (historically tolerated by the US and Israel).
“The airplane, the pomp and circumstance, the deals, the golf resort, the very public ‘we’re helping you by mediating with Hamas’ – it’s all about top cover when Congress starts coming after Qatar,” Gause told an event hosted by the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington on Thursday (Friday AEST).
But will they come after Qatar? According to an investigation published this week by The Free Press, the state has spent nearly $US100 billion in the past 20 years “to establish its legitimacy in Congress, American colleges and universities, US newsrooms, think tanks and corporations”.
That includes weapons purchases and investments in real estate and energy, as well as $US225 million reportedly spent on lobbying and public relations in Washington. Indeed, one of several swanky events on the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner just a few weeks ago was the Qatari embassy party, hosted by Qatar’s ambassador, at the Four Seasons ballroom.
In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Qatari lobbyists targeted up to 250 friends and associates of Trump during his first term in a bid to change policy, including Steve Witkoff, who is now the president’s Middle East envoy.
Obscene wealth
The massive spending highlights a raw truth of Middle East politics in the time of Trump. Gulf oil states, with their obscene, concentrated wealth, have a lot more to offer to a president obsessed with major financial deals compared to a country like Israel.
This visit – the first proper international trip of Trump’s second term – and its events have been interpreted by some as sidelining Israel.
Trump is not visiting the Jewish state this time; he is pursuing a nuclear deal with Israel’s chief adversary Iran; he left Israel out of negotiations with Hamas for the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander; and there he was this week shaking hands with Syria’s Islamist interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda terrorist.
“Very good. Young, attractive guy. Tough guy,” Trump said of the man previously known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani afterwards. “Strong past, very strong past. Fighter. But he’s got a real shot at pulling it [Syria] together.”
Gause says the visit has implications for the US-Israel relationship under Trump. For one, it shows he is unlikely to receive too much pressure from the Gulf states on the Israel-Hamas conflict. He believes that rather than Trump putting any real pressure on Israel to change course, he is more likely to wash his hands of it and tell Israel to “do what you want”.
“I don’t think that would be seen by the current Israeli government as such a bad situation,” Gause said.
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