The Californians

The New US Ambassador to Turkey. Humble Beginnings. Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Benign Orientalisms. Damascene Brocades. A Marshall Plan for the Middle East.

This week, I received good news. My application to stay in Turkey as a member of the international press was approved. Turkey has gained a new Californian, but I’m not the only one: Trump’s new ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, also just arrived. Though he’s been in his new post less than a month, he has already become the talk of the town over his tweets, which suggest a different approach to the Middle East than that of the neocons and liberal internationalists before him. How continuing to issue blank cheques to Israel in perpetuity factors into this supposedly new approach remains to be seen. Still, Barrack’s rhetoric on US foreign policy has inspired interest just because it’s so different; indeed, it builds on Trump’s speech in Riyadh last month wherein he castigated the “nation builders” who “destroyed more than they built”. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth echoed the sentiment this week, when he said “President Trump made it clear that the United States is not interested in the moralistic, preachy approach of foreign policy of the past.” Again, this would all be promising if the change in rhetoric was matched with a commensurate change in policy. Indeed, the Trump administration appears to have reserved its “moralism” for anyone who dares question Israel, something it apparently regards as secular heresy.