MIDDLE EAST/MIKE POMPEO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “My former boss, Secretary of State George Shultz, used to say that when an administration didn’t have a policy on a certain issue, the temptation always grew to give a speech instead. Judging by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s sweeping Cairo speech on Thursday [1-7-19], clearly that’s not the case with the Trump administration and the Middle East—though whether that policy is workable and effective is, of course, another matter. If Secretary Pompeo’s marathon swing through the Arab world accomplished nothing else, it provided an unmistakable, if unrealistic, vision of U.S. policy in the Middle East under Trump: highly moralistic, muscular and far too black-and-white for a region better suited to gray. It created some new tropes (the U.S. is an undeniable ‘force for good’ in the Middle East, Pompeo said), and fell back on some old ones (Iran is Satan’s finger on Earth, and President Barack Obama’s policies in the region may well have reflected the same).”
–Aaron David Miller, “Pompeo’s Speech vs. Trump’s View of the World,” Politico, January 11, 2019