Analysis: Trump diverts from 'America First' as he seeks to end wars, snag foreign dollars

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has pivoted from his “America First” philosophy in recent weeks with his pursuit of trillions in foreign investment dollars and his prolonged efforts to end two foreign wars, as congressional Democrats raise new concerns.

Trump has been using the powers of his office to conduct foreign policy mostly without much input from the legislative branch. But he could soon find that walking a lavender carpet in Saudi Arabia and being feted in a trio of Gulf Arab countries before returning home for an Oval Office confrontation with South Africa’s president was the easy part.

Trump and his team now face crucial phases in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts, which he has not found a way to end despite bold campaign talk. Candidate Trump routinely predicted that, if elected, he could end both wars in a matter of hours and after a few phone calls.

Yet, four months into his second term, indications suggest both conflicts are trending away from peace talks and toward more violent phases. And Trump has been letting his frustrations show.

“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” he wrote on social media Tuesday, referring to the Russian president. “He’s playing with fire!”

That came after Trump told reporters on Sunday that while he’s “always gotten along” with the Russian leader, he was “not happy with what Putin’s doing. He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.”

“We’re in the middle of talking, and he’s shooting rockets into Kiev and other cities,” he said. “I don’t like it at all.”

Trump spent much of the first three months of his second term either at the White House, his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida or one of his golf resorts, focused on domestic matters with a flurry of executive orders and talking with congressional Republican members about a budget reconciliation package. (An initial version of the measure passed the House last week, though it still has a long way to go before hitting his desk.)

Then came May.

The month started with a number of foreign leaders cycling through the White House seeking to improve relations and flatter Trump as they sought new trade and tariff arrangements with his administration. Trump also jetted off to the Middle East, where three Arab leaders used Arabian horses, camels and elaborate ceremonies and state dinners to woo the American president with a little business diplomacy.

What Trump and his team announced during the swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were mostly commitments from companies and countries to invest big dollars in America.

What the president and his aides left out during remarks on Arab soil was that it would take time for those big promises to become shovels breaking ground on the long list of data centers and factories that Trump contends will be erected stateside.

Still, Transactional Trump was on full display during his Gulf tour as he laid out his underlying philosophy for much of the region. It’s one built around a lot of cash changing hands — and Arab political and business leaders making good on promises to deliver jobs for his vision of America as, in his words, “a manufacturing superpower.”

“Before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos,” Trump said during May 13 remarks in Riyadh. “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.”

Trump’s remarks signaled that, even in the volatile Middle East, he’s betting that cash is still king — and can overcome most tensions and distrust, no matter the centuries of lingering bad blood.

‘Not thinking’

But some congressional Democrats have warned that Trump’s Middle East dealings amount to corruption and pose security risks.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer last week criticized Trump’s Middle East policy, including accepting a $400 million luxury 747-8 airliner from Qatar that he contends could be used as Air Force One while Boeing struggles to deliver new versions of the executive plane. Schumer, in the same May 19 floor speech, also dinged Trump over a potential deal to send U.S.-designed artificial intelligence chips to a technology firm in the United Arab Emirates and its potential security risks.

“He’s so desperate to tout these deals that he’s not thinking and protecting the long-term security and jobs implications to our country,” the New York Democrat said.

During a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing last week, Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., accused the Trump administration of being “nowhere to be found,” even as two of the countries he visited — Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., among other nations — have turned fighting in Sudan “into a regional proxy war by supporting and arming either side, risking further regional destabilization.”

What’s more, a Senate measure pushed by Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a Trump ally, would slap new sanctions on Russia over its brutal handling of the Ukraine conflict. It has 80 co-sponsors, including 39 Republicans. Trump, despite floating new sanctions on Moscow earlier this month, has since backtracked on the threat.

But as Trump has been reminded since returning from his Middle East trip, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

“We want to see if we can stop that,” Trump told reporters Sunday about the fighting in Gaza, which has intensified in recent days with new Israeli military strikes. “And Israel, we’ve been talking to them, and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible.”

Yet, fighting has continued to rage in both conflicts.

Trump remains insistent that his personal relationships and deal-making prowess will lock in trillions in Arab investment dollars and end the Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars. But one analyst recently questioned the president’s approach.

“(Postwar) presidents and most members of Congress have generally recognized the value of international institutions and the importance of shared rules of the road to manage global interdependence,” Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a recent post for the think tank.

“Multilateralism certainly requires give and take, but as the most powerful nation, the United States exerts greater sway over outcomes than other countries,” the former State Department policy planning official added. “This general commitment to cooperation also helps legitimate U.S. power, whereas a blustering, my-way-or-the-highway orientation never could.”

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