ABSTRACT
The Trump administration has devoted considerable attention to the Middle East, where the administration's policies have generated waves of consternation. Carl Dahlman and Nathan French examine how the region became a laboratory for Trump's dismissal of conventional norms and policies, kowtowing to Israel, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and dismissal of human rights. They look at his speeches and tweets to decipher if the administration truly has the policy of principled realism that it claims, i.e., whether there is such a thing as the Trump Doctrine. They point out how Trumpian geopolitics in the region mirrors assaults on Muslims and others in the U.S. (e.g., with the proposed ban on Muslim immigrants). Trump's use of extrajudicial suspension of international legal norms creates a space of exception in the region in which the normal rules of international diplomacy and law fail to have their intended effects. The repercussions of this strategy are felt in the multiple tragedies underway in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, and among refugees in Turkey.
