This isn’t the way George W. Bush did it.
According to former President Bush, the way to bring stability to the Middle East was to invade countries and drag our allies into a coalition to join us there. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make,” Bush told Congress in 2001.
He also said, in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on Feb. 26, 2003, two weeks before invading Iraq: “America has made and kept this kind of commitment before — in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom.”
But Bush didn’t leave constitutions and parliaments behind in Afghanistan or Iraq, and last week in Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump had a few choice words for the people he called “Western interventionists,” “nation-builders” and “neo-cons,” as well as for the “liberal nonprofits, like those who spent trillions failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad, so many other cities.”
“In the end,” Trump said, “the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
President Trump is doing things differently. He’s not trying to bring democracy to the Arab world. He’s bringing capitalism. Could capitalism bring lasting peace to the Middle East?
Addressing the 2025 Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, Trump spoke respectfully of “a new generation of leaders” that is “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.”
The White House said Trump secured a $600 billion investment commitment from the Saudis. Deals were made for the Saudi company DataVolt to invest $20 billion in data centers and energy infrastructure in the U.S., for Silicon Valley companies to invest $80 billion in new technologies in both countries and for U.S. companies to build an airport and other infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia. GE and Boeing signed billions of dollars in deals, as did health care and investment firms. More multi-billion-dollar deals were announced during Trump’s visits to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
There was also a nearly $142 billion military equipment sales agreement with the Saudis that will benefit more than a dozen U.S. defense firms.
So maybe peace is not quite at hand.
Still, the “commerce, not chaos” trip was remarkable not only for the more than $2 trillion in deals the White House announced, but for the over-the-top royal welcome for the president and all the Americans traveling with him. The mutual respect and friendship effusively expressed by the leaders bordered on gushing.
Trump announced that at the request of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, he is dropping sanctions against Syria to give that country “a chance at greatness.” He even shook hands with Syria’s president, a former al-Qaeda terrorist. And he urged Iran to take “a new and better path” by agreeing to a new nuclear deal, instead of facing “massive maximum pressure” if Iran’s leadership “rejects this olive branch.” Special envoy Steve Witkoff was in Tehran conducting a fourth round of talks.
“As I have shown repeatedly, I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be profound,” Trump said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have previously explained that one purpose of the deal with Ukraine for rare earth minerals is to draw the two countries closer through commercial ties, which also serve to deter military aggression.
Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be to establish close ties that deter dangerous alliances with U.S. adversaries. But there’s no nation-building, no new U.S. military bases on Arab soil. Trump is doing it his way, with exuberant capitalism.
In April 2016, Trump told a USA Today reporter that he was a fan of author Ayn Rand and identified with the hero of her 1943 novel, “The Fountainhead.” The character, Howard Roark, is an architect and builder who thinks independently in a world of “second-handers,” people who decide what they think based on what other people think.
In the mid-1960s, Rand was writing essays that were later collected into books, including “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.” In a piece titled “The Roots of War,” Rand wrote, “Men who are free to produce have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose.”
In the introduction, Rand wrote, “This book is addressed to the young – in years or in spirit – who are not afraid to know and are not ready to give up.”
“Never, ever give up,” Trump told the graduating class of the University of Alabama in a commencement speech on May 1.
Trump told the graduates that in government, “it is the task of your generation to replace bureaucracy, graft and waste with a new system that defends American freedom.”
“Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind,” Rand wrote, “A rational mind does not work under compulsion.”
“If you want to change the world, you have to have the courage to be an outsider,” Trump advised the graduates. “Progress never comes from those satisfied with the failures of a broken system. It comes from those who want to fix the broken system.”
But he warned them, “Change is never easy. And the closer you get to success, the more ferociously those with a vested interest in the past will resist you.”
On May 8, the White House held a ceremony to unveil a postage stamp honoring former first lady Barbara Bush. Her son, former President Bush, chose not to accept the Trumps’ invitation to attend.
Oh, well. As trade deals go, Trump for Bush is looking like a pretty good one.
Write [email protected] and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley
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