- Speaking at a Bahrain security summit, Gabbard said past U.S. interventions wasted money and created more enemies than allies
Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. national intelligence director, said on Oct. 31 that America’s former strategy of “regime change or nation building” had ended under President Donald Trump, with Gabbard describing the previous practice as counterproductive and wasteful of taxpayer resources.
Gabbard made the remarks at the Manama Dialogue, an annual security summit in Bahrain organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, where she addressed an audience of diplomats, analysts, and defense officials.
“For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building,” Gabbard said. “It was a one-size-fits-all approach, of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervene in conflicts that were barely understood and walk away with more enemies than allies.”
“The results: Trillions spent, countless lives lost and in many cases, the creation of greater security threats,” said Gabbard, a former congresswoman from Hawaii and U.S. Army National Guard veteran.
Gabbard’s comments echoed Trump’s message earlier this year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he declared that the era of U.S. “nation-building” was over and that America would no longer impose its system of governance abroad.
“In the end the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump said. “Peace, prosperity, and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions. … You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way.”
Trump praised the Gulf states as “forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos,” contrasting their success with failed U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, criticizing “so-called nation-builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spend trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities.”
Gabbard’s remarks in Bahrain further cemented what is shaping up to be a hallmark of Trump’s second-term foreign policy—a break from the interventionism of prior administrations in favor of economic cooperation, regional partnerships, and selective use of force.
In a recent assessment for the Hoover Institution, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey James Jeffrey wrote that Trump’s Middle East policy “is not isolationist focused on resolving major international problems.” The administration, he said, considers the Middle East a continuing priority, seeking to expand the Abraham Accords of Trump’s first administration and entrench regional stability amid Iran’s diminished leverage.
“Together, these trends aim at aligning Israel with Arab states and creating regional stability that will still require American engagement but not major resources or the risk of war,” Jeffrey wrote.
Jeffrey wrote that Trump’s speech in Riyadh represented “a dramatic shift” in U.S. policy, that he sees as resting on three principles: rejection of American interference in other nations’ internal affairs; reliance on local actors to advance stability; and focus on business opportunities that serve both U.S. and regional interests.
In Trump’s second term, those principles appear to have guided Washington’s approach to securing a cease-fire that halted the Israel–Hamas war in Gaza and to ending Israel’s 12-day conflict with Iran after U.S. bombers struck Iranian nuclear sites.
During her speech in Bahrain, Gabbard said that the Gaza cease-fire remains “fragile” and that Iran’s nuclear activity is again drawing scrutiny from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The road ahead will not be simple or easy,” Gabbard said. “But the president is very committed down this road.”
@The Epoch Times, Associated Press
