THE FIRST time was an honour. King Abdullah of Jordan was the first Arab leader invited to meet Donald Trump at the White House in 2017. The president hailed him as a “great warrior” and promised him more aid. There was rather less bonhomie the second time around. The king sat uncomfortably on February 11th while Mr Trump talked of his plan to expel 2m Gazans to Egypt and Jordan and made a veiled threat to cut America’s roughly $1.5bn in annual aid to the kingdom.
For decades, American officials described the rulers of Egypt and Jordan as linchpins of regional stability. They made peace with Israel (in 1979 and 1994, respectively). They mostly avoided wars, coups and revolutions. They kept their countries stable when their neighbours tipped into chaos. Even an earlier version of Mr Trump admired them: in 2019 he reportedly called Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president, “my favourite dictator”.
The abrupt u-turn is partly due to the style of Mr Trump—a transactional president who loves to pressure allies. When he says he will inflict tariffs on Canada, the latter can deploy incentives and threats to get him to back down. Egypt and Jordan have little such leverage. Bilateral trade is a paltry $9bn a year with Egypt and $5bn with Jordan. They are too poor to offer investment, too bereft of resources to help lower energy prices. Their role through 16 months of regional war has been largely to stand on the sidelines, yelling “Stop!”
The relationships are not entirely hollow. Egypt gives American warships preferential treatment when they need to transit the Suez canal. Jordan joined the American-led coalition that fought Islamic State. But mostly what they offer America is the promise that things would be worse without them: Après nous, le deluge.
Contrast that with Saudi Arabia. Like Egypt and Jordan, the kingdom finds itself saying no to Mr Trump. It was quick to denounce his talk of a Gaza riviera. Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, is no longer in a hurry to normalise ties with Israel, which might deny Mr Trump one of his most sought-after achievements (and perhaps the Nobel peace prize he covets).
Yet the Saudis have found ways to soften the blow. They are trying to help America with other aspects of its foreign policy, mediating its talks with Russia this month and maybe, in the future, with Iran. Last month Prince Muhammad offered Mr Trump $600bn in investment and trade over four years. The figure is fanciful: it is more money than the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund has invested abroad. But it emphasises the kingdom’s very real financial heft.
Egypt and Jordan are scrambling to find their own value. They are working with wealthy Gulf states to draft a plan for post-war reconstruction and governance in Gaza. It should be presented at Arab summits in Riyadh and Cairo over the next few weeks (although diplomats in the Saudi capital caution they may be delayed).
Drafting a plan is the easy part, though. Implementing it is hard. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has repeatedly postponed talks with Hamas on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, which would bring a permanent end to the war. On February 18th he decided that the heads of the Shin Bet and the Mossad, the domestic and foreign-security services, would not attend future talks. Many Israelis saw this as another ploy to sabotage the negotiations, as Mr Netanyahu has done for months. There will be no need for a post-war plan if the war resumes.
Because he represents such a rupture, Mr Trump has a way of obfuscating longer-term trends in American policy: his chaos can make the secular appear cyclical. It is worth remembering, then, that he was not the first American official to suggest shoving Gazans into Egypt. Antony Blinken, Joe Biden’s secretary of state, proposed something similar in the early weeks of the Gaza war, even though some diplomats warned it would be destabilising for Egypt.
After the Arab spring in 2011, a series of uprisings that eventually toppled five dictators (including Egypt’s), there was a debate in Washington about the merits of support for sclerotic regimes. But the debate stalled as revolutions morphed into civil wars: strongmen came back into fashion. A related critique has emerged since the October 7th massacre in Israel. It argues that America’s obsession with stability let problems fester: Iranian-backed militias grew powerful; Gaza seethed under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
The status quo has now been upended. That suggests a deeper change in American policy, one that will outlast Mr Trump. Arab states will have to adjust to a new reality in which being a force for inertia is no longer seen as a merit. ■
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