In a remarkable speech before a friendly audience in Riyadh on Tuesday, President Trump assailed the long history of “Western intervention” in the Middle East. He lambasted the neocons, hawks and “nation builders” who had traditionally anointed themselves arbiters of who should lead the region, all while administering democracy and human rights through occupations and shock-and-awe-style displays of spectacular violence. “The so-called nation builders,” he said, “wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” Trump also marvelled at the “gleaming skyscrapers of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi” — emphasising that the achievements of the “modern Middle East” had been entirely their own.
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