Behind the compliments lies a colder regional design

There are betrayals announced by trumpet, and betrayals performed with a smile, a handshake, a press conference and a few vulgar compliments about “strength”. The latter are more dangerous, because by the time the victim understands the performance, the stage has already been rearranged. Donald Trump’s Middle East policy, if it may be dignified with the word ‘policy’, now appears to be drifting towards a ceremony of managed humiliation: Israel praised in public, constrained in practice, and left to contemplate a future war with its enemies intact and its allies curiously affectionate towards its adversaries.

The most revealing object in this arrangement is Turkey. Trump speaks of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with the admiration he reserves for men who project command and resent restraint. Erdoğan is “highly respected”; he has built a “tremendous military”; he is the sort of leader Trump’s political imagination respects. Turkey is a NATO member, a regional power, and impossible to ignore. But geography is not absolution. Nor is NATO membership a moral certificate suitable for framing.

Turkey’s........

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