A few more thoughts based on @NYTimes interesting and detailed assessment of the Trump Administration’s Middle East policies.

These policies have been characterized by two main approaches, often used in tandem: Coercive Diplomacy and Transactional Diplomacy. 1/ https://twitter.com/halbfinger/status/1315573200747728896

Coercive diplomacy has been advanced mostly through economic sanctions and so far failed delivering the intended policy changes virtually across the board: consider Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the PLO. 2/

What explains this systematic failure in diplomatic coercion given the US's obvious advantages in power?

Because two of the necessary conditions for successful coercive diplomacy were repeatedly absent: a comprehensive international coalition and a face-saving exit. 3/

A comprehensive international coalition requires multi-lateral approaches which President Trump disdains.

Absent China, Russia or India, can Iran or Syria be truly isolated? 4/

Providing a face-saving exit requires understanding, acknowledging and respecting the coerced party’s primary beliefs and values, a vital facet of international relations which President Trump often seems to have omitted by focusing all but exclusively on economic interests. 5/

A face saving exit isn’t provided simply by characterizing a purported deal as “beautiful” or "great". It requires designing transactions which respect and affirm the parties’ values rather than forcing the engaged leaders to appear to be commodifying the nations’ values. 6/

Leaders engaging in such controversial transactions appear morally compromised to their constituencies and risk a major drop in their popularity. The habitually short or medium term fruits of transactional diplomacy can be eclipsed and overtaken by such long term costs. 7/

Failure in these cases has been worse than not succeeding. These failed coercive diplomacy efforts, which did significantly succeed across the board in increasing material costs, nourished radicalization and hardening of positions among virtually all the coerced parties. 8/

Transactional diplomacy has had both successes and failures. Successes, like US-KSA arms deals or UAE-Israel treaty, occurred when transactions pertained solely to material interests – or involved leaders mistakenly perceiving reality to be essentially about such interests. 9/

Failures occurred when the the deals the Trump administration attempted to broker affected deeply held values. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations seem even more distant. And it is unclear how UAE-Israel relations would weather severe crises at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. 10/

Transactional and coercive policies are not bound to fail. If Trump is re-elected, his administration's Mid East policies would be more effective if they were braced by multi-lateral diplomacy and greater attention to the deeply held values of Middle Eastern stakeholders. 11/11