President outlines the Trump Doctrine: Prosperity equals peace for the entire world
President Donald Trump gave an important speech in Riyadh that may come as close to outlining a “Trump doctrine” for his second term as we’ll probably see.It was a direct counterpoint to George W.Bush’s second inaugural address.The simplistic way to put it is that what liberty was for Bush, money is to Donald Trump.That’s not quite right, though.
The speech had values, they just weren’t typical values — accountable government, human dignity — but rather prosperity and peace.These are universally regarded as goods, but Trump is elevating them over other goods — especially democracy — and putting his own distinctive gloss on them.If Bush wanted to spread freedom, Trump wants to spread gleaming high-rise buildings.He spoke glowingly of the new towers in Saudi Arabia and hailed Riyadh as “becoming not just a seat of government, but a major business, cultural and high-tech capital of the entire world.”He continued, “Before our eyes a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce not chaos, where it exports technology not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together not bombing each other out of existence.”Notably, there is no liberty in this affirming sentence — it’s all economic activity.
Likewise, near the end of the speech, when he sketched out his vision of where the region could be headed: “It is within our grasp to reach the future that generations before us could only dream about, a land of peace, safety, harmony, opportunity, innovation and achievement right here in the Middle East.”The speech was very critical of Iran.His critique wasn’t that it’s a theocracy but that it isn’t constructing anything.
Its landmarks “are collapsing into rubble and dust,” and its buildings put up long ago “are largely falling apart, falling down while you’re build...