As the United States marks 100 days since President Donald Trump assumed office, analysts say his sporadic policies in the Middle East have only made the region a more volatile place.
During his election campaign, Trump systematically sold himself as an isolationist, vowing to invest US resources domestically rather than in the Middle East. But his actions in his first 100 days as president have proved otherwise.
His policies on immigration from the region to the US, the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), and peace efforts between Palestine and Israel, have only mired the US deeper into Middle East conflicts.
“Far from an isolationist, as many of his supporters believed him to be, Trump has quickly proven that he remains intent to continue long-standing US military engagement in the Middle East,” Abdullah Al-Arian, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
On one of the major conflicts plaguing the Middle East – Syria – Trump promised to become less militarily involved and instead focus on the fight against ISIL. Instead, he sent 59 missiles to a Syrian airbase following a suspected chemical attack in the country.
His lack of consistency, analysts say, renders his foreign policy in the region ambiguous and unpredictable. “Trump appears to have an even lower threshold for the use of force than the Obama administration did, much of it reflecting domestic pressures rather than strategic considerations,” said Al-Arian.
Mahjoob Zweiri, a Doha-based professor of contemporary Arab politics, said the US attack on the Syrian airbase “shows that the US is more proactive. But then again, it was not followed up by any action, politically or militarily.”
And while Trump hinted he would cut funding to the armed opposition fighters in Syria battling President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, he has not taken steps to do so.
ISIL
Although Trump did not offer a clear plan for defeating ISIL during his campaign period, statements advocating to “bomb the sh*t” out of the group’s oil operations have underscored his pledge to eradicate the group.
Back in 2016, Trump said that it would take 30,000 US troops to defeat ISIL in the Middle East. Last month, the US announced it would send an additional several hundred armed marines to Syria.
Recently, Trump granted the Pentagon more flexibility to make troop-level decisions in Syria and Iraq.
Still, it is challenging to predict Trump’s moves in these two countries, said Al-Arian, as decisions are made on a “rash and impulsive basis”.
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