Saudi Happy News: Republican Trump is a President
The news of Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election was one of the happiest news for the Saudis, after years of democratic governance and undeclared leftist tendencies for former US President Barack Obama.
Only a few weeks after he became president of the most important country in the world, he showed the world the reason for the Saudi optimism, which manifested itself in the harmonious bilateral relations between the two countries on most of the region’s issues, and we witnessed a political bilateral similar to Fahd - Regan.
Trump's arrival was necessary to erase Obama's traces from Saudi memory and restore relations between the two countries. They both have the same political agenda and are very important to each other. He also entrenched Saudi political certainty that Republican governments are safer for them than Democrats.
When I make a historic trip on Saudi-American relations as a researcher in international relations, I must remember all the recent crises caused by the democratic governments for the Kingdom. I remember that the red lights were lit at the Saudi royal palace after the statements of the US Secretary of State and the important cornerstone of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, about the entry of the Island Shield forces into Bahrain, which she described as a "wrong route," and which she tried to soften after the allies' anger Headed by King Abdullah.
Clinton's hesitant remarks about the Saudi-Gulf intervention in the Bahrain crisis echoed the minds of the Saudis from their old decade of democratic governments, which handle the White House Affairs, in Washington, DC, a boring city named after the military commander of the American Revolution and America's first president: George Washington.
The royal palace was angered by Clinton's remarks, which stirred the concerns of Washington's old policymakers, prompting King Abdullah to declare maximum alert, especially as the smoke of political fires began to form over the Arabian Gulf.
After Franklin Roosevelt, the Saudis did not find a close alliance with democratic governments that amounted to a relationship with their Republican counterpart.
The Saudis have historical stances with the Democrats, building a mountain of uncertainty and deepening a sense of mistrust in the royal and princely circles; In the era of Harry Truman, Roosevelt's first successor, his first decision was to recognize Israel, although the Saudis had a pledge not to recognize the nascent Zionist state without coordination with them.
After him , a bevy of followers who did nothing more than deepen the Saudi’s sense of bitterness, and anxiety have passed.
For example, John Kennedy hastened to recognize the "religious coup" of Abdullah Sallal who was ordered by the late Egyptian Nasser, despite the dissatisfaction of Saudis who saw the fall of the imamate as a direct threat to their besieged kingdom. His relations with Nasser in a romantic way until then.
His successor, Lyndon Johnson, had an alliance with Israel crudely, which was clear in 1967 war.
After Johnson, Carter, whose reign was a failure, in which the American Policy reached the most softness limit, causing the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the close peacock ally, as a "humiliating fallout," In the words of a Saudi politician who spoke with me.
The era of Clinton was marked in the first two years coldly clear in the relations between Riyadh and Washington, without King Fahd to correct the situation through a trade deal between the two countries, contributed to temper the atmosphere.
Perhaps that coldness in the Clinton era was due to the missing chemistry between him and the famous Saudi ambassador, Bandar bin Sultan, who refused to receive Clinton several times when he was a candidate for Arkansas rule. Clinton did not forget that, especially because he left the Saudi embassy in a humiliating manner, When Bandar refused to meet him.
In the era of Obama, the differences reached their peak in a difficult time that could not tolerate this kind of differences. It was during the days of the Arab revolutions, during which the White House seemed to be working against the Kingdom and the interests of its allies in the Middle East.
It was not Bahrain's events first or last friction between the Saudis and Obama, but the most dangerous, and then comes the political situation in Egypt, King Abdullah tried during an angry call, to persuade the US administration not to intervene in Egypt, and leave it to the Egyptian people to decide, but Obama's remarks on the need for the departure of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak caused his departure.
In the Syrian events, King Abdullah wanted to rid Syria of the Iranian control represented by Bashar al-Assad. When he cut off his leave and returned to the Kingdom to prepare for an international military action to cleanse Damascus, he was surprised by the US administration's retreat and deliberate interference on Syrian soil by Turkey and Qatar.
Those difficult moments have passed and a new president has come who knows the vital importance the kingdom has represented in the world for more than half a century, with its long history of being a "positive force" that works to maintain security and stability.
I think that since his first visit to the Kingdom, Trump knew the secret of the Middle East, and his big key: It is the country that mobilized more than fifty countries to meet him in one day ... It is Saudi Arabia.
