Neil Hicks is the senior director for advocacy at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, currently based in Brussels. He has worked on human rights issues in the Middle East and North Africa for over 40 years, including at Human Rights First and Amnesty International.
United States President Donald Trump is in the Middle East on his first major planned foreign trip, traveling to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In the shadow of a drastically shifting foreign policy that has augmented what many described as his first term's unpredictability, regional leaders likely feel emboldened by Trump's instinctive taste for autocratic policies and governments. Indeed, it is clear from his first few months in office that he is emulating a well-developed playbook perfected by the authoritarian leaders he admires, chief among them Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the benefit of the region's autocracies.
Foreign policy serves multiple purposes in this often-replicated authoritarian playbook, but the overarching goal is to increase the ruler's grip on power at home. Trump admires this approach, where the strong leader is the essential protector of the people from the world's dangers. This leader can use permanent crises and external threats to identify and suppress internal enemies, consolidating their power in the process. By propagating the idea that the country and its people are in a castle under siege, the authoritarian creates a climate of fear and demands loyalty from the people.
Exemplary, harsh punishments against those who criticize the leader's policies from within deter further dissent and demonstrate that there are enemies of the people inside the country who must be silenced by exceptional measures beyond the rule of law. "He who saves his country does not violate any law," as Trump has said. Thus, a major priority for both Trump and autocrats generally is to erode the rule of law and other checks and balances that may constrain their power.
In Trump's case, an initial enemy within are people of color who protested Israel's genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza last year on U.S. college campuses. They are a convenient target because they are immigrants or foreign students who can be differentiated from white, Christian Americans, constituting the core of Trump's support base. Their alleged offense of antisemitism is chosen because uncritical support or sympathy for Israel, regardless of the conduct of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, remains widespread—even among many Democrats and other Trump critics.
Trump is "emulating a well-developed playbook perfected by the authoritarian leaders he admires, chief among them Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the benefit of the region's autocracies.
- Neil Hicks
The manufactured moral panic over last year's campus protests, which Democrats in Washington did little to push back against and sometimes shamefully joined at the expense of basic civil liberties, human rights and subsequent electoral success, has provided the perfect backdrop for demonizing a disfavored minority of purported extremist, terrorist sympathizers. The result is clear: arbitrary detention, cruel and inhumane treatment, dismissal from jobs and expulsion from the country—often to the rapturous applause of his followers and other would-be autocrats around the world.
If Trump's foreign policy is following this authoritarian playbook, what does it mean for his Middle East policies? At times, Trump has spoken ambitiously about bringing peace to the region, building on the Abraham Accords from his previous term in office. Yet, he has enabled Israel's genocidal assault on the people of Gaza to continue alongside an ongoing escalation of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Elsewhere in the region, the United States has been disengaged, even at a time when there are opportunities for Washington to support local moves towards a more stable future for Syria and Lebanon and when Iraq remains in need of stabilization support. Foreign aid cuts will only exacerbate tensions in these fragile, post-conflict societies.
There is continuity with the Biden administration's policy of supporting an authoritarian regional order, led by allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, as the best way of containing problems. To be sure, previous administrations long helped create the region's overlapping crises. The Trump administration inherited decades of severe structural problems stemming from poor policy decisions and neglect that have produced rising poverty, inequality, little to no economic opportunity, corruption and environmental degradation. Poor governance—one of the primary drivers of such issues—continues to facilitate and expand each of these deficiencies.
But unlike his predecessors, Trump refuses to pay lip service to such good governance, the rule of law or human rights concerns. Rather, he is removing U.S. support from multilateral institutions that seek to uphold such values. He is uninterested in imposing American laws prohibiting the sale or transfer of U.S. arms to countries that use them to violate international law. Thus, the UAE is enabled to fuel Sudan's brutal civil war, and Egypt receives unconditional U.S. support in its protracted suppression of its people's basic freedoms. For Trump, foreign policy is primarily a tool to highlight his grip on power, requiring the removal of obstacles to the free exercise of that power. Demonstrating American dominance by forcing other countries to bow to his will through threats or the use of military force is a favored tactic.
Trump has already shown his readiness to punish those who defy him abroad. His bombardment of the Houthis in Yemen is the type of demonstrative use of force, for no apparent strategic advantage, that is likely to be a feature of the next few years. Bombing is much easier than resolving conflicts, especially via nation-building and post-conflict reconstruction efforts. Trump has given carte blanche to Netanyahu to use American weapons, raining hell on Palestinians in Gaza until they submit. He has put Iran on notice, stating on multiple occasions that he will bomb them if they do not come up with a satisfactory response to his demands on its nuclear program.
Trump does not care if much of the region remains chronically unstable. In fact, this scenario is helpful to his political project, pointing to foreign dangers which justify, according to him, exceptional powers to protect America from threats that are a predictable product of his government's neglectful, destructive foreign policies. In this regard, he is the product of Washington's long-running, so-called "War on Terror," in which consecutive U.S. administrations have expanded security policies and the executive branch's unconstrained power to execute them at the expense of civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
Trump's governing approach serves as an example to the region—likely the most damaging aspect of Trump's presidency. His contempt for international law and the institutions and mechanisms designed to uphold it mirrors his hostility to domestic judges and law enforcement agencies that have tried, and so far failed, to bring him to account for his many infractions. Trump has learned from authoritarian leaders, and they are empowered by his actions in turn.
The message is clear and welcome to authoritarians everywhere: The rule of law and accountability do not apply to strong leaders. In his warm relationships with Putin, Netanyahu and the Middle East's autocrats, he unashamedly exhibits his affinity for war criminals. Meanwhile, Trump's favored authoritarian rulers across the region continue to enjoy impunity for their crimes, undermining what remains of the crumbling international human rights system—a boon for their harmful policies targeting the Middle East's human rights and democracy defenders over the next four years.
