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President Donald Trump gave an important speech in Riyadh that may come as close to outlining a "Trump doctrine" as we'll probably see. It was a direct counterpoint to George W. Bush's second inaugural address. The simplistic way to put it is that what liberty was for Bush, money is to Donald Trump.

That's not quite right, though. The speech had values, they just weren't typical values -- accountable government, human dignity -- but simply prosperity and peace. If Bush wanted to spread freedom, Trump wants to spread gleaming high-rise buildings.

He hailed the rise in the Gulf of a Middle East "defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together."

Notably, there is no liberty in this affirming sentence -- it's all economic activity.

The speech was very critical of Iran, but his critique was that it isn't constructing anything. Instead, it's landmarks "are collapsing into rubble and dust."

Trump's speech wasn't isolationist, or alien to American traditions. The address ran in the slipstream of the Hamiltonian tradition as famously outlined by Walter Russell Mead, with its emphasis on the role of commerce in foreign affairs. And there was, as always, a Jacksonian element, as Trump spoke of smiting America's enemies.

There was, however, no Wilsonianism. In a passage that got attention, Trump rapped neocons and liberal nonprofits for trying, but failing, to develop the Middle East because they didn't know or respect the culture of the region.

There is merit in this charge. We had no idea what we were getting into in Iraq and Afghanistan, while George W. Bush's vision for the spread of democracy systematically failed to account for the influence of culture, and for the centrality of order to liberty and other social goods.

That said, both Afghanistan and Iraq were originally conceived as wars of self-defense in the wake of a terror attack that shook America to its core. It's also unpersuasive to hold up the Gulf states as a counterexample of development -- anyone can run an emirate sitting atop gobs of oil and living under the U.S. security umbrella.

Trump's vision is actually as universalist as Bush's; Bush believed every country could become a democracy, and Trump believes that every country can prosper.

Iran can be "a wonderful, safe, great country, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon." Lebanon, too, can embrace "a future of economic development and peace."

He'll reach out to anyone and bring them into this charmed circle of commerce and comity. "As I've shown repeatedly," he said, "I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships."

For Trump, it's the results that matter -- the prosperity and peace -- not how a given government achieves them. That's none of our business. "I believe it is God's job to sit in judgment," he pronounced. Trump's job is to promote "stability, prosperity and peace."

In sum, the speech was a deal-maker's realpolitik, or a doctrine that we won't really have a doctrine except for trying to get everyone rich and to get along with as many people as possible.

The address was certainly bracing. But values do matter. Liberal societies are, as a general matter, more reliably our friends, and more reliably achieve prosperity.

If Bush's vision advanced an unrealistic view of what motivates mankind -- all yearning for liberty, no yearning for power or revenge -- Trump drastically simplifies human motivation in his own way. As history has shown, people will fight and die for faiths and ideologies when these have nothing to do with prosperity, or actively destroy it.

Also, it should be said that standing for democratic ideals is an enormous part of America's appeal around the world, and if we get into a competition with China purely over who is richer and can cut more deals, we are kicking away a major advantage.

That's likely an insight for another president, though. Trump has his doctrine.

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(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)

(c) 2025 by King Features Syndicate