“Things must change in order to stay the same,” the young aristocrat Tancredi tells his nostalgic uncle Don Fabrizio in The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s 1958 novel of an old family weathering the power struggles of the new Italy in the late 19th century. Lushly adapted by Luchino Visconti in 1963 with Burt Lancaster as Don Fabrizio, The Leopard has lately demonstrated Tancredi’s principle in a bright but shallow refurbishment by Netflix. Still, the plot remains the same. The Leopard cannot change its spots.
President Donald Trump’s address at the Riyadh Development Summit is the most significant statement of American purpose in the Middle East since Barack Obama’s Cairo speech of 2009. In Cairo, Obama proposed a “new beginning” between “America and Islam,” based on “mutual interest and “mutual respect,” and sharing “common principles” such as “mutual tolerance” and the “legitimate workings of the political process.” In Riyadh, Trump dropped the airy abstractions and renounced the cult of democracy promotion. He reduced the mutual interests of America and the Arab monarchies to the mutual language and mutual realities of money and power.
The new Middle East, Trump said, was not built by “lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.” The nongovernmental organizations and nation-builders wrecked more nations than they built. The neoconservatives and interventionists “were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” While the United States wasted trillions of dollars in Kabul and Baghdad, the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf built Dubai and Riyadh. They changed to remain the same. For the same reason, the U.S. must now change, and accept, Trump said, that its undemocratic Gulf clients have achieved “a modern miracle, the Arabian way.”
The American way is no longer the only way in politics, but it remains the best way to do business. Trump’s visit to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar was a business trip, part of an effort to draw foreign investment into strategically critical sectors of the American economy. In March, the UAE committed to a 10-year, $1.4-trillion plan for investment in American businesses, focusing on artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy, and manufacturing. Qatar’s $96 billion order for up to 210 Boeing jets is the largest in Boeing’s history, and part of a package of “economic deals” that the White House announced during Trump’s trip and valued at $240 billion. In Riyadh, Trump sealed a $142 million arms deal with the Saudis, as part of a range of investments whose ultimate value Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed at $1 trillion.
The Trump administration is using other people’s money to build up America’s domestic capacity and strategic position at the same time. While the investments boost the American economy, create good jobs, and stimulate further creativity, the UAE and Saudi deals counter Chinese investment in the Gulf while integrating the Gulf’s tech sector with America’s flagship tech companies. Qatar’s Boeing order ends its European rival Airbus’s winning streak. Big Tech, the most creative sector of the American economy, is aligning with the national purpose in the age of multipolar rivalry, just as the heavy industries of the 20th century aligned with the national purpose in the world wars and the Cold War.
These are big changes. If they work, things might just stay the same. America can remain the first among equals when it comes to creating value, attracting investment, and leading a broad alliance to contain China. Using tariffs to force renegotiation of trade terms and using the threat of withdrawal to press NATO allies to keep their word on defense spending makes sense within this strategy to revive America’s domestic economy while sharpening its global edge. The Middle East will remain central to energy politics and, as the Houthis have shown, the global seaways. It will remain an American interest.
What else changes and remains the same? Saudi Arabia has replaced Egypt as the Arab state that manages the Arabs for its own ends and those of its foreign patron and continues bin Salman’s bold play for a better, though not democratic, future. Terrorist-sponsoring Qatar continues to corrupt everyone it touches as it buys its way into influence and past censure at the highest levels of American life. The Israelis have defanged Iran’s terrorist armies since Oct. 7, 2023, but the Iranian regime remains the “biggest and most destructive” of the “agents of terror and chaos” that seek to overthrow Israel, the Sunni Arabs, and American influence. The Palestinians destroyed their chances of dividing the land with Israel on Oct. 7, but they retain the terrorists’ veto over the mutual American-Arab interest in settling the Arab-Israeli conflict and forming a united front against Iran.
What might now change? As in his first term, Trump will seek to draw Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords. Lifting sanctions on Syria does not offer Syrians a shot at “greatness.” It invites Turkey and Saudi Arabia the chance to fight a proxy war over the corpse of a failed state. If the winner is Turkey’s man, the career terrorist Ahmed al Sharaa, the result will be a jihadist state in the heart of the region, leading to more chaos and destruction. The Arabian leopard does not change its spots.
Dominic Green is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Find him on X @drdominicgreen.