All We Arabs Ask, Mr. Trump, Is to Leave Us Alone
Just when the people of the Middle East thought things couldn’t get any worse, Donald J. Trump is elected president of the United States. Now, their apprehension about the president-elect dwarfs their disappointment with President Obama.
It could be a blessing in disguise.
America, in one magic moment, you’ve revealed how you’ve changed. For the worse. Poor you, you feel so insecure, vulnerable and fragile. Like the rest of us.
So, instead of reaching for your famed “can-do” spirit, lifting yourselves up by the bootstraps, you turned to a strident, bellicose type of nationalism. The kind usually associated with strutting generalissimos of Third World nations with their chests covered with made-up, self-awarded medals.
Maybe the people of the Middle East will look and realize that you are no longer the Great Democracy to emulate. That your modern style of empire and your role as keeper of the world order for the world’s own good are stumbling and failing, even in your own eyes; and that we in the Middle East should not be turning to you for rescue.
For as long as I can remember, you’ve been on a self-assigned mission to change the Middle East. Indeed, the world. Now, it seems as if the change has flowed the other way.
You’ve voted to reduce your liberties. To narrow the range of people entitled to justice and equality before the law. To live in a place where the police should not be criticized; where fighting political correctness is more important than fighting racism; where Muslims are suspected and people who appear Hispanic can be rounded up if they’re not carrying their papers.
In this election you’ve revealed that your people — like Russians, Hungarians, Iraqis, Iranians and others whose politics you normally look down on — will choose a narrow, nonsensical nationalist ethos when they feel threatened by uncertainty. Your imperial outreach allowed you to experience other cultures, but now you’ve chosen to shrink your outlook, with the expectation that the world will continue to revolve around you. It won’t.
Like the rest of us, you’re now divided between those who want to make their nation great again alone and those who want to make it great together.
O.K., enough about you; let’s talk about us. We in the Middle East can’t decipher what exactly your incoming president wants from us. I don’t think he knows, either.
Mr. Trump said he would bring back torture and ban Muslims from entering America, and he compared the threat of “radical Islam” to Soviet Communism. He wants less engagement in the region, and fewer “free riders” like the Saudis who don’t pay enough for American protection. And he wants the United States to abandon the costly nation-building in the Middle East.
What nation-building? In Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia, civil wars continue unabated. The Arab and Muslim worlds only hope the United States stops contributing to the destruction. Mr. Trump does not exactly seem concerned for the wishes of Middle Easterners and their right to live in peace. It sounds more like what he really wants to do is pal around with other strutting, authoritarian types. Expect him to cozy up to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and join him in supporting Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
Expect America’s new president to work closely with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Trump has embraced Mr. Netanyahu’s positions on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and on abandoning the two-state solution. Instead of Americanizing the Middle East, Mr. Trump seems set on “Israelizing” America, stirring fear of Muslims and trying to wall out “the other.”
Arabs, and Middle Easterners in general, should take one quick look and figure out how to be less dependent on the United States, and how to resolve their conflicts within their own, regional frameworks. Finally, some good news. President Obama has assured us that the sun will rise tomorrow, regardless. And if the Trump presidency is as bad as I expect it to be — though not so bad that it demolishes democracy entirely — he can be voted out in four years.
Meanwhile, fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.
Marwan Bishara is senior political analyst at Al Jazeera and the author of “The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolutions.”