The New Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan

Author:Peter Frankopan [Frankopan, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781526608062
Google: f1JAuQEACAAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2018-11-14T23:00:00+00:00

The Roads to the Future

The ability to prepare for the future looks questionable. In Europe, the energy, resources and focus of politicians, policy-makers and bureaucrats are almost exclusively committed to one question: Europe itself. There is no little irony in the extended period of introversion at a time when connections are being forged all over the rest of the world – in a classic case of fiddling while Rome burns.

In the course of 2017 alone, the Foreign Service officer corps at the State Department lost 60 per cent of its career ambassadors – its most experienced, knowledgeable and connected country experts.1 This gap extended right up to the very highest echelons. Before Tillerson’s sacking in early 2018, eight of the ten most senior positions in the State Department were formally vacant, as were thirty-eight ambassadorships.2 Of 626 top jobs in the executive branch of the US government as a whole, not only were some 40 per cent unfilled a year after Trump’s inauguration, but there was not even a candidate taking part in the appointment process.3

Perhaps, not surprisingly in the circumstances, the most natural path is to follow the course of least resistance. Thus, Saudi Arabia has become the pillar of US policy in the Middle East – despite the fact that the country’s goverment is currently being pursued through the courts by families of victims of the 9/11 atrocity.4 One reason for this is the oil wealth of Saudi, but another is the prodigious amount of money that the country spends on weapons, much of it bought from the United States. During President Obama’s time in office, the US sold an astonishing $112bn of armaments to Saudi alone over the course of eight years, including one deal for over $60bn in 2009.5

The depth of Saudi pockets for weapons-buying, but also the importance of Iran in American foreign-policy thinking explains why Trump’s first trip abroad as president was to Riyadh. This was a statement of intent and a sign of a major re-orientation in thinking of how to deal with Tehran.

So far, Trump’s success in emulating the arms-selling of his predecessor has proved illusory. Despite his much-heralded business background and eye for the deal, and despite announcing a package of $110 billion of weapons sales during his visit to Riyadh, the sales of hardware were not finalised. This was one reason why Trump upbraided the Saudi crown prince when the latter visited Washington in the spring of 2018, telling Mohammad bin Salman that he should have increased his spending and that sums of several hundred million dollars ‘are peanuts to you’.6

Saudi Arabia is ‘a very great friend’, Trump said when receiving the crown prince, because it is ‘a big purchaser of equipment and lots of other things’.7 This explains why Saudi had been singled out for special treatment, as is clear from the fact that when Mike Pompeo was appointed CIA director in 2017 he lost no time in telling his hosts in Riyadh that his first overseas trip was to Saudi Arabia, just as President Trump’s had been.

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