President Trump’s Three Steps to the Abraham Accords

American Thinker.com ^ | September 19, 2020 | Gregory Winkeleer

[Kaslin]

President Trump announced the Abraham Accords earlier this week, marking the beginning of an historic and lasting peace to the Middle East. This was a result of years of effort on his part, planning a comprehensive strategy and carefully putting it into effect. To that end, he was able to use three tactics to bring about his desired result.

Play the Energy Card

In the Middle East, he who controls the energy makes the rules. Not so long ago, it was Arabic countries of the Middle East, mainly in the Persian Gulf (including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain) that controlled the world’s crude oil. Then came an American, one George P. Mitchell, who back in the 1980s spent 10 years and $6 million of his own money to improve the technology of hydraulic fracturing -- known today as fracking -- to unlock the vast oil reserves beneath the U.S. President Trump has been a proponent of increased energy production, including fracking, from day one of his administration. Today, the U.S. is the number one producer of crude oil in the world, with 19% of the world’s total production, and thanks to fracking it is growing by 9% every year. So even though the U.S. is the number one consumer of oil, we are virtually energy independent. It was telling that President Trump has mentioned that he is aiming for Saudi Arabia -- the number two producer of crude in the world -- to be next in signing on to the Abraham Accords. Rule #1 in negotiation: if you want to strengthen your hand in negotiations with someone, make sure that you don’t depend on them for anything. Apparently, Trump knows this rule well.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

After his inauguration, President Trump saw the largest obstacle to implementing his foreign policy to be resistance at the State Department. So, he devised the following strategy:

We ought to pray continually in faith for Trump to be given, recognize, and implement wise strategies.

[FreedomNotSafety]

American Thinker is an overstatement most of the time. Oil? How does that play? Trump’s dedication to more US energy production is not a card. He cannot put it on the table or take it off. So long as the US has a free market in oil (yeah I know free markets are controversial here on Free Republic) there is not much of a card to play. Even Obama who wanted to cozy up to Iran could not help them out by throttling fracking. Heaven knows he tried.

Trump’s genius in the ME goes way behind this superficial article.

[bitt]

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