By Li Wanmei

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Saudi Crown Price Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on January 14, 2019.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just finished a visit to nine Middle East countries a few days ago. In addition to pacifying allies on US troop withdrawal from Syria, Pompeo also promoted the Middle East Strategic Alliance that the United States is building. However, it did not go smoothly, and the Donald Trump administration’s “new thinking” on the Middle East (Trump's Middle East policy) may not achieve many new results.

Before Pompeo visited the Middle East, President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton took the lead with his own trip to the Middle East, planning to visit countries such as Israel and Turkey. Bolton said during his tour that "One of the preconditions for US withdrawal from Syria is to ensure that the Kurdish forces are protected." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected his scheduled visit as a result. Bolton was only able to speak with the Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, in what was surely a disappointing turn of events for the United States.

It's hard to shake Turkey’s will to fight against Kurdish forces, and other issues in the Middle East are also intertwined.

Iran is a tough nut to crack, and the full restoration of sanctions by the United States has failed to get it yield. In addition, during Pompeo's visit to Qatar, the United States and Qatar signed a memorandum on the expansion of a US military base.

According to reports from Qatar media, the memorandum is aimed at the US Air Force Base in Al Udeid, its largest air force base in the Middle East, more than 30 km from Qatar’s capital of Doha. Although this is not the first expansion of the base, the expansion brings to mind Iran since the United States and Iran are currently at loggerheads.

Considering that the Al Udeid Air Base is located only a short distance across the Persian Gulf from Iran, it remains to be seen whether Iran will resign itself to the move or take desperate risks under conditions of military containment with the base expansion, as well as economic sanctions.

What has also hindered the United States is the crisis brought about by the breaking off of relations between Qatar and its neighboring countries. Although Qatar said it would pay most of the expenditure related to the base expansion, and promised to increase its investment in the United States from the originally planned US$30 billion to US$45 billion in the next two years, it will not help settle the break-off crisis and will only comfort the US side.

During his visit to Saudi Arabia and other countries, Pompeo once again tried to mediate the severing of ties between Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well as other neighboring countries, which occurred over a year and a half ago. He hoped to bring unity to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries but he had little effect. In this regard, Pompeo said that "The hopes of the parties to bridge the rift are not necessarily greater than ever."

Qatar’s break-off crisis with its neighboring countries continues and cracks in the GCC can’t be bridged. This are not only problems within the GCC, but also related to another important reason for Pompeo's trip, that is, to promote the Middle East Strategic Alliance among Middle East allies and create an "Arab NATO".

At present, the prospect of establishing an "Arab NATO" is not very optimistic. A large part of the alliance's envisioned members are GCC countries, and the ongoing crisis of disconnection has already made the GCC faux-friendly. The estrangement can’t be bridged in a short time. Moreover, the diverse attitudes toward Iran and the vast differences in respective political and military strength make it difficult for GCC states to unite and pull together.

In addition, the Trump administration’s previous policy changes and unpredictability, as well as the current political party disputes in the United States and disagreements within the US government, presently undermine the credibility of Trump’s commitment. Therefore it is difficult to establishing a strategic alliance in the Middle East.

Furthermore, even if an "Arab NATO" is established, it would still remain to be seen whether it can play its role, considering the military operations of the United States in the Middle East.

When Pompeo talked about Trump's "new thinking" on the Middle East during his visit to Cairo, he also refuted former President Barack Obama's speech on US Middle East policy delivered in the Egyptian capital a decade ago. But people are not sure whether Trump’s “new thinking” for the Middle East mess is better than that of his predecessor, and whether it can be effective.

(The author is Li Wanmei. The article was published on the PLA Daily newspaper on January 21. It is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online.)