You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible.
— President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to President Donald Trump, New York Times, May 21, 2017
The business of making money on property, badly, has shifted to the business of making money, greatly, for the US industrial arms complex. This is the technique of President Donald Trump, who has been making various gestures, sword and wallet in hand, to various selected allies in the Middle East.
Besieged domestically, Trump did what other predecessors have done: find solace in the turmoil of Middle Eastern politics. On Saturday, he sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, one that will include Lockheed Martin missile defence systems, BAE combat vehicles and Raytheon bombs. With characteristic hyperbole, he mentioned the “hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs. So I would like to thank all of the people of Saudi Arabia.”
Admirably, Trump never lets political awareness of a theocracy, or any state system, however brutal, get in the way of the cash heavy deal. Whether such an ally deals in punitive amputation, state sanctioned misogyny or the funding of devastating, destabilising wars, a US ally will be well treated.
On Sunday, Trump moved to soften the stance he had taken as an electoral war horse. Having deemed Islam the threatening bugbear of Western values in the lead-up to his nomination as the GOP Presidential candidate, he…