Trump

The Return of the Showman

Donald Trump’s recent tour of the Middle East wasn’t a diplomatic visit in the traditional sense. It was a spectacle. The former U.S. president landed in the Gulf with the charisma of a headliner returning for a sold-out encore, welcomed not with cautious protocol but with fighter jet escorts, camel parades, Cybertruck motorcades, and viral hair-flipping dances. The imagery was unmistakable: this was diplomacy not as negotiation, but as performance.

Trump wasn’t there as a statesman; he was the main act in a traveling production of power. The hosts: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and even Syria, curated a red carpet of opulence and pageantry. Trump, never one to shy away from aesthetic affirmation, embraced every camera flash and ceremonial flourish.

Beneath the glitz, however, were concrete deliverables, though of a different nature than typical statecraft. The tour produced over $2 trillion in agreements, heavily weighted toward private American enterprise. At the center of many of these deals was Elon Musk, who accompanied Trump through the region like a favored envoy of techno-capitalism. Saudi Arabia expanded Starlink's satellite coverage, while the UAE agreed to host the first international human trials for Neuralink’s brain implants.

This wasn’t mere commercial diplomacy, it was a case study in what Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman describe as “weaponized interdependence”: a condition in which states exploit the nodes of global economic networks to project power. Only now, those nodes are not run by governments, but by individuals like Musk. Trump’s alliances, formal or informal, bypassed traditional institutions and instead tethered American influence to private actors with sovereign-scale ambition. It was diplomacy via bandwidth, not bureaucracy.

Syria

Perhaps the most geopolitically audacious move came in Damascus, where Trump met Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadist commander once listed on the FBI’s most wanted roster. Without blinking, Trump announced the lifting of U.S. sanctions and urged Syria to consider joining the Abraham Accords, the normalization framework originally crafted to bring Arab states into formal relations with Israel.

This was less about peace and more about reframing the terms of engagement. The Abraham Accords, under Trump’s recalibration, no longer appeared as a reward for peacemaking but as a transactional access point into the global economic order. Even more telling was Trump’s decision to skip a visit to Israel altogether. In a symbolic reversal of decades of U.S. Middle East policy, Trump sidelined America’s traditional ally in favor of Gulf pragmatists and post-conflict opportunists.

His pitch to Syria was audacious but clear: if you’re ready to play ball economically, your past can be airbrushed. It echoes realist theories of international relations, particularly Hans Morgenthau’s view that national interest, defined in terms of power, trumps ideology or morality. In this view, Syria is not a pariah but a potential partner, provided the right incentives are in place.

Iran

Iran, for its part, emerged as an unlikely subplot. Its foreign minister took the opportunity to reiterate Tehran’s sovereign right, enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Trump, notably less hawkish than in previous years, refrained from condemnation. There was no fiery rhetoric, no threats. Just the implication that, perhaps, a deal could be made.

This moment exposed Trump’s underlying diplomatic philosophy: transactionalism over transcendence. Grand strategy, ideology, alliances, all are secondary to the deal at hand. The concern among traditional policymakers is not just what he said, but what he didn’t say: no reaffirmation of U.S. commitment to nonproliferation norms, no solidarity with Israeli fears, no linkage to human rights. Instead, ambiguity; flexible, deniable, monetizable.

The Jet

Then came the most headline-grabbing flourish: a $400 million Boeing 747-8 gifted to Trump by Qatar. The plane, set to be used for post-presidency travel and later housed at his library, raised alarm bells about violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. But within the ecosystem of Trumpian politics, the gift was less a scandal and more a trophy, an airborne monument to influence, power, and unapologetic grandeur.

Yet no moment better encapsulated the spirit of the trip than the viral Khaleegy dance performed in the UAE. Women in flowing gowns flipped their hair in elegant unison, welcoming Trump in a traditional Gulf ceremony. What might be seen as a cultural expression of honor took on new meaning in the Trumpian optic: a carefully choreographed performance for the camera, simultaneously ornamental and deferential.

Here, we see the echoes of post-modern diplomacy, as theorized by scholars like James Der Derian, where symbolism, media spectacle, and aesthetics supplant substance. In this world, soft power is not projected through policy but through performance. Trump didn’t just tour the Middle East, he curated it.

So what does it all mean?

Trump’s Middle East tour was less a campaign of foreign policy than a demonstration of what political theorist Colin Crouch calls “post-democracy”: a condition where democratic institutions remain, but real decisions are made behind closed doors, often by elites with overlapping business and political interests.

We are witnessing a shift from state-to-state diplomacy to person-to-person patronage, where loyalty, leverage, and legacy-building outweigh the long game of institutional cooperation. Trump’s model is not based on treaties or norms, but on access, adoration, and asset flows.

In skipping Israel, warming to Syria, flirting with Iran, and aligning with tech oligarchs, Trump is reimagining the Middle East as a marketplace of strategic suitors, where brand is power, and power is for sale.

Not a chessboard of allies and enemies.

The big question is whether the world will buy in.

Gem Musings is a seasoned International Relations and Public Affairs Strategist with extensive experience in global diplomacy, communication, and policy analysis.