Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, Saudi King Salman Bin Abdelaziz Al Saud, US First Lady Melania Trump, and US president Donald Trump. Picture by Balkis Press/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.The foreign policy milestones of the first months of the Trump administration are chalked up in the terms of successive reversals of positions taken by Donald Trump during his campaign. Trump used to say NATO was obsolete; now he does not. He was a cheerleader for Brexit; German Chancellor Angela Merkel persuaded him that the European Union was here to stay.
For a man who claimed on the campaign trail last year that “Islam hates us” and who twice attempted to introduce a ban on certain Muslim visitors to the United States, having three Islamic summits organised for him — with the Saudi royals, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the leaders of more than 40 Muslim-majority countries — was a triumph against the odds. In Riyadh, he stayed on script, sparing his hosts the daily flip-flops that have been his hallmark in foreign policy.
Urging those who listened to him to drive out the scourge of Islamic extremism is the easy part. Calling on a putative Sunni coalition to unite against Shia Iran is quite another matter. Choosing one side in a spiral of sectarian warfare is, of course, the exact opposite of Barack Obama’s policy.
