Trump in Riyadh: A Rejection of the Globalist Gospel Trump’s Riyadh speech rejected nation-building and globalist dogma, marking him as a bold champion of sovereignty over interventionism. By Roger Kimball
https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/18/trump-in-riyadh-a-rejection-of-the-globalist-gospel/
I want to begin this column by paying homage to the two most extraordinary passages in Donald Trump’s extraordinary speech in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last week.
Here’s the first:
In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins . . . I believe it is God’s job to sit in judgment—my job [is] to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity, and peace.
And here’s the second: Speaking of the “great transformation” that has come to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries in recent decades, Trump noted that
This great transformation has not come from Western interventionists . . . giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called “nation-builders,” “neo-cons,” or “liberal non-profits,” like those who spent trillions failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought about by the people of the region themselves . . . developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies . . . In the end, the so-called “nation-builders” wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.
Both points are coruscatingly true. They were clearly pleasing to Trump’s audience. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was overcome with admiration for Trump’s words. He kept smiling, putting his hand on his heart in benediction, and later personally escorted Trump around the city and then to the airport to say farewell.
The globalist neo-cons of whom Trump spoke still form a powerful lobby in Washington, in those NGOs he mentioned, and in academia. Indeed, they might be said to represent the default or consensus Weltanschauung of the foreign policy establishment.
Donald Trump represents the antithesis of that establishment. It would take a very long post, or, indeed, a book, to detail all the ways that Trump is the antithesis of the Washington consensus on . . . well, on just about everything. I have long been a supporter of Donald Trump, though not always. When he first ran, in 2016, I thought the idea of a Trump presidency was a sort of joke and said so.
Two things changed my mind. First, when it became clear that his opponent would be Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most corrupt serious contender for the presidency in U.S. history (granted, she may have been outdone by Joe Biden), I decided to cast my lot in with Donald Trump faute de mieux.
But it was not long into Trump’s first term that I realized that I could zip the faute de mieux stuff. Although he did a poor job with many key appointments early on, he was himself a transformational president. He did things that other presidents only talked about. He was bold, innovative, and creative—and yes, he was wholly committed to making America great again.
It is often said that the fact that Trump was not seen to have won in 2020 was a blessing in disguise. Why? Because had he been allowed to take office in January 2021, he would have still been surrounded by swamp creatures. His great liability when he first took office was that he did not understand how Washington worked. Among other things, he did not understand how deeply embedded into the bureaucratic tissues of what James Piereson has called the “Washington Octopus” the self-serving, globalist, neo-con mentality really was.
It took his rustication in 2020 and the unhinged, unremitting tsunami of lawfare that washed over him for four years to school him in the ways of official Washington. Remember, the establishment devoted itself to destroying Donald Trump. Impeachments, indictments, subpoenas, trials, convictions, and fines all came at him in fast and furious succession. When none of that worked and he was on course to seal the GOP nomination, they tried to kill him—literally, as the events in Butler, PA, and that Trump golf course last summer reminded us. Somehow, he survived. Indeed, like some science-fiction creature, he emerged stronger from the ordeal.
He also took mental notes. He learned how the octopus moved. He got to know what made the swamp habitable. He mastered its strategies, its tactics, and its weapons.
And he devised a set of responses designed to evade and ultimately to crush its assault.
We are now about 120 days into Trump’s second term. He has amazed his friends and foes alike with the speed, depth, and energy of his efforts to transform America. He deployed Elon Musk and his team at the “Department of Government Efficiency” to expose and root out waste and fraud in the way Washington and its clients conduct their business. The results have been, and continue to be, mind-boggling.
He has challenged the institutionalized anti-white, anti-Semitic, and anti-American habits that have infiltrated and perverted the operation of our most exalted colleges and universities. He upended elements of the long-established but injurious consensus about trade policy and what was best for America. And, as he has shown again and again, most recently in his love tour in the Middle East, he has committed himself to work for peace, prosperity, and the sort of respect for national sovereignty that was supposed to be a natural coefficient of international relations in the post-Westphalian world order.
My main question at this point is when a large-scale Gestalt shift will take place among the beautiful people who presume to make up our minds for us about whom we are allowed to approve of and whom we must despise.
At the moment, Donald Trump is still on the “despise unreservedly” list. But that could change on a dime. Trump will require a certain modicum of luck—or call it the connivance of Providence—but if he enjoys that, then I predict he will end his days as one of the most celebrated presidents in American history.
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