President Trump’s Visit to the Middle East

President Trump’s visit to the Middle East coincides with a bitter political crisis underway in Washington revolving around alleged contacts between close Trump associates and Russia during the election campaign. Accusations are under investigation by the FBI and committees in both houses of Congress; the US Justice Department has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the matter; and voices are heard, including among Republican lawmakers, regarding the possibility of impeachment proceedings against the President. These developments have forced the President, only four months into his tenure, into a defensive position that has already left its mark on his conduct in the US domestic arena and that has the potential to influence his foreign policy as well. The meetings scheduled for Trump in Riyadh, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Vatican, like his participation in meetings of NATO and the G-7 in Sicily later in the month, will provide the President with something of an opportunity to divert domestic attention from the events underway in the American domestic arena. They also offer an opportunity to generate an alternative and more positive discourse focusing on the rapid and auspicious change that, as he sees it, his administration has succeeding in effecting in the Middle East and, as a result, in the status of the United States in the international arena.

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