The White House announced Thursday that President Donald Trump would travel, starting May 19, to Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Rome, Brussels for a NATO meeting and Sicily for a Group of Seven gathering. It set off a round of speculation as to what he intends to try to achieve during the trip.
The first three stops, Riyadh, Jerusalem and Rome, could have a “peace through faith” theme. King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia is Islam’s “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” Jerusalem is sacred to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, as well as Israel’s professed capital. Rome is the seat of Pope Francis, who has just returned from a trip to Cairo to promote peace and cooperation between Muslims and Christians, particularly in the Middle East.
Mr. Trump can pursue the possibility of Israel-Palestine peace talks in all three of his first stops. He apparently plans to meet with leaders of the Sunni Muslim Gulf Cooperation Council, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in Riyadh. He will need to be careful not to get signed on too clearly to the Sunni side in the intra-Islamic Sunni-Shiite conflict in the region by the Saudis. One issue he should concentrate on is withdrawing U.S. involvement from the Saudi Arabia-Iran, Sunni-Shiite conflict in Yemen. The United States is engaged, providing military support to the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen itself is falling deeper into deadly famine, making U.S. involvement in that tragedy ever less appropriate.
If Mr. Trump wants to involve his administration in one more college try to get substantial talks going between Israelis and Palestinians, he can lean hard on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, currently bogged down in corruption charges. Mr. Trump just met and may meet again with acting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, probably pointless given Mr. Abbas’ lack of credibility among Palestinians. Pope Francis could be helpful if there were to be a credible push for Middle East peace. The pope is ever hopeful about peace, but not unrealistic in what he expects from leaders like Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s May 24 appearance at the NATO summit in Brussels will be important, for whom he meets and against the background of his contradictory statements about the utility of the organization and what they mean to the other 27 NATO members in terms of their own national spending and other strategic planning. The Group of Seven meeting in Sicily should give Mr. Trump a good snapshot of the current world economic situation.
The fact that it is “Seven,” rather than “Eight,” with Russia kicked out in 2014, raises another interesting question. Mr. Trump could be visiting Moscow and President Vladimir Putin, but he isn’t, probably feeling the heat of the continuing House, Senate and FBI investigations into ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign. He could also have chosen to visit Canada or Mexico first “overseas,” as many American presidents have done, but he didn’t, no doubt uncertain of his reception in the two neighboring countries, given his wall and the possible future of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which links the three countries.
All in all, however, Americans should be pleased to see their foreign affairs neophyte president coming face to face in five different settings with other world leaders, and the problems that beset them. He won’t be the first American president to undergo that education by contact and fire.
First Published: May 8, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
