http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-chavez-and-what-the-future-might-look-like

Several realistic potential future scenarios for the new US administration of Donald Trump are already discernible.

First, he could simply govern as an essentially traditional Republican conservative. A Rust Belt troika already embedded in the administration, representing areas that gave him the presidency – Mike Pence, the vice president elect; Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff; and Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives, – may ensure that the Trump agenda is practically indistinguishable from this, perhaps with an atypical infrastructure stimulus package.

Second, his administration could be an utter failure and end in chaos, resignation or impeachment.

Third, Mr Trump could play out, at the national level, the kind of “lovable rogue” leader persona of lesser past American politicians who shared his populist, demagogic style such as Louisiana’s Huey Long or Boston Mayor James Curley.

But a fourth prospect is that, if and when he faces extreme difficulties, Mr Trump has the personality and the instincts for an unprecedented American presidential authoritarian gambit.

This has been obvious since the early stages of the campaign, and only got worse as the election approached. Mr Trump has a deeply patriarchal, authoritative and authoritarian attitude towards how things ought to be run. In his family, his business, and now the country at-large, he casts himself as the pater familias, big daddy, whose word by natural right should be law.

Should Mr Trump’s presidency start failing, or for some other reason he takes a distinctly authoritarian turn, the standard expectation is that he would seek inspiration from the international strongman he has most frequently and greatly admired, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

This is wholly mistaken. Not only is this approach totally unworkable in the US, with its strong institutions and deep democratic traditions, Mr Putin’s version of contemporary authoritarianism is totally unsuited to Mr Trump’s potential political conundrum.

Mr Putin’s basic appeal to Russians, like that of many other international right-wing authoritarians, has been national unity and order. He promised to unite Russians and give them a sense of national purpose, security and unity.

Instead, the model more suited to an American authoritarian gambit by Mr Trump is, ironically, one that emerges, at least theoretically, from the far left: the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Chavez never sought or promised to unify Venezuela. On the contrary, he ruled through chaos and division, openly and literally dividing Venezuelan society into classes A, B, C and D, according to descending levels of wealth and urbanity. Having done this, Chavez always and only spoke to and for categories C, the urban proletariat, and, even more, D, the peasants.

Mr Trump is preaching American unity now, but his road to power was more divisive, and the election results of 2016 more divided along class, education and geographical lines, then anything in recent, and perhaps all of, US history.

Were he to attempt an authoritarian gambit, Mr Trump would have no choice but to return to the divisions that brought him to office and champion the rural and exurban white working-class against all other Americans, just as Chavez did in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s weak but extant democratic institutions were generally no match for Chavismo during his rule. This won’t be true for most American institutions, but there is one low hanging fruit Mr Trump has already identified and which he could effectively pursue first if he decides to combine his demagoguery with authoritarian tactics to try to salvage his power or position. The free press in the US is protected partly by the first amendment to the Constitution, and partly by landmark Supreme Court rulings such as the 1964 New York Times Co versus Sullivan case. These are relatively secure and supported by conservatives and liberals alike.

But the media relates to the presidency through convention and tradition rather than anything formal or requisite.

Mr Trump demonstrated his antipathy towards the media throughout the campaign, and has continued it since, with additional bizarre, angry tweets.

The surest sign that Mr Trump is taking an authoritarian turn – and the red flags and warning signals for this potential are, alas, completely unmistakable – would be an all-out attack on press freedom. He could abolish the White House press pool, revoke credentials for critical media and insist on trading even minimal access for positive coverage. He could try to weaken libel law protections, as he has vowed, and otherwise harass and intimidate reporters.

The media is the canary in the coal mine.

If Mr Trump begins effectively attacking the core institutions of press freedom in the name of the rural, white and working-class “American people”, and pitting them against the multicultural urban and educated “elites,” the United States will surely be headed towards its greatest constitutional crisis in 150 years

http://www.agsiw.org/legacy-muhammad-sorour-key-figure-rise-sunni-extremism/

The death of Muhammad Sorour at age 80 in Qatar has gone almost entirely unremarked upon in the West, but arguably signals the end of an era for Sunni Muslim religious extremism. Sorour – a former member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood who broke with the group because, in effect, it wasn’t extreme enough for him – was a seminal figure in the transition from traditional, and essentially apolitical, traditions of Salafism and heralding the emergence of the Salafist-jihadist movement, most notoriously embodied in the rival groups al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. An article by Hassan Hassan in The National, which expertly unpacked the complicated and contested legacy of this hinge figure, may be the only noteworthy appreciation of his passing thus far in English. However, the death of Sorour bears greater scrutiny and recognition than it has received outside of the Arabic-speaking world.

Sorour’s greatest claim to fame, and notoriety, is that he may have been the most important individual in helping to import the activist and revolutionary ethos developed by the Muslim Brothers of the Arab republics like Egypt and Syria into the then largely politically quietist Gulf-based Salafist and Wahhabist movements that had lacked them before that transformative cross-pollination. Born in the Hauran Plateau in southwestern Syria, near the border with Jordan, in 1938, Sorour joined the Muslim Brotherhood at a fairly young age. But by the mid-1960s, he was already denouncing the group for a variety of alleged transgressions, including the toleration of Sufis and other “heretics.” His radical break with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and incompatibility with any of the Syrian regimes from independence onward, caused Sorour to relocate temporarily to Saudi Arabia, where he developed his signature movement of “Sorourism.” He arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1965, but by 1974 he was forced to leave the country for Kuwait because his political activities were being increasingly regarded as dangerous and subversive.

The essence of his movement was, as Bernard Haykel has aptly described it in his essay “Al-Qa’ida and Shiism,” to combine “the organizational methods and political worldview of the Muslim Brotherhood with the theological puritanism of Salafism.” The Sorourist critique of the Muslim Brotherhood was not, in fact, the group’s revolutionary agenda or its politicization of Islam, which were the standard critiques aimed at the Brotherhood by most of its detractors, both religious and secular, in the Arab world in the 1960s and 70s. Sorour, instead, argued that the Brotherhood was, in effect, too “soft” on deviations from supposedly strictly orthodox, or at least literalistic and reductionist, alleged ultraconservative Sunni traditions. His critique, on the other hand, of the Salafists and Wahhabists in the Gulf was, to the contrary, that they were sufficiently puritanical but insufficiently political. The idea, then, was to marry the political and revolutionary zeal of post-Sayyid Qutb iterations of Muslim Brotherhood ideology with the rigorous puritanical zeal of the Salafist traditions in the Gulf.

This intervention was crucial for setting the stage, and providing the intellectual, theological, and political framework, for the emergence of the Salafist-jihadist movement that began to take shape after 1979. A series of events that year proved a crucial turning point: the Iranian Revolution, which inspired Islamists everywhere with the sudden and unexpected prospects of success, even if Sunni Muslims could not embrace Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s distinctly Shia political model of the rule of jurisprudential scholars, and fueled a renewed Sunni-Shia and Arab-Persian set of rivalries; the war against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan in which jihad was defined, for a widespread audience for the first time, as both an individual calling and a global anticolonial insurgency; and the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by puritanical fanatics led by a charismatic, messianic, and anti-royal family religious demagogue preaching violence and right-wing religious revolution. In this context, Sorourism played a crucial role in the Muslim fundamentalist sahwa (awakening) of the 1970s that eventually provided the intellectual and political framework for Salafists to turn political, revolutionary, and, ultimately, extremely violent.

Sorour himself did not particularly advocate terrorist violence, especially not the indiscriminate kind that came to characterize al-Qaeda, and even worse perhaps, ISIL (although he did support the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and was certainly not a pacifist). But he did prepare a thorough rationale, as well as a programmatic, moral, and intellectual basis for the current maelstrom of Salafist-jihadist violence in the Middle East and around the world. Moreover, he was profoundly influential in helping to stoke the sectarian tensions that are racking the Middle East under the current circumstances. His extremely popular 1984 anti-Iranian book, “Now Comes the Era of the Magi,” was hardly unique in its anti-Shia and anti-Iranian rhetoric, but it was undoubtedly among the most influential texts in Arabic to promote the calumnies that the Iranian Shia Muslim majority, and “Islamic Revolution,” were not in fact Muslim at all, but were seeking to restore and spread the influence far and wide of the pre-Islamic, Zoroastrian (and hence “heretical”) Persian Empire.

The nefarious influence of this book, and Sorour’s deeply inflammatory anti-Shia rhetoric more generally, was seldom more vividly demonstrated than the frequent citation of it for anti-Shia propaganda by the founder of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the immediate precursor to ISIL, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Even when the titular head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, chided Zarqawi in a widely circulated letter for excessive violence, particularly against Shias, and above all against Shia mosques, Zarqawi’s responses to these critiques of his group’s excesses were frequently couched in rhetoric that had been formulated and popularized by Sorour.

After leaving Saudi Arabia in 1975, Sorour made his way to Kuwait, then the United Kingdom, onto Jordan and he finally passed away in Qatar. Because he never specifically advocated a systematic program of terrorist violence, and primarily provided the intellectual framework and political rationalization for the brutal terrorism of groups like al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and ISIL, he was able to reside in these various countries that would have rejected or arrested someone who had actually promoted direct acts of terrorism. Nonetheless, this “in-between,” hinge-like role he played made him a controversial figure among fundamentalist and radical Muslims. Indeed, as Hassan Hassan notes, both nonviolent Salafists and violent Salafist-jihadists use the accusation of “Sorourism” against each other as epithets in their endless arguments, particularly online.

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who may be the most influential of the living Salafist-jihadist ideologues (although he is bitterly reviled and despised by ISIL, because he has criticized their excesses), was initially drawn to Sorour’s approach, though Maqdisi later found Sorour too compromising with existing Arab and Muslim regimes. Perhaps Maqdisi’s experience is widely representative of the reaction of the next generation of radicals. He was first drawn to Sorour as an inspiring source of revolutionary ethics. But he was later disappointed with his lack of programmatic revolutionary commitment and unwillingness to endorse specific political measures, and particularly a generalized reliance on violent means (again, with the exception of the Syrian uprising). This indicates exactly where much of contemporary Salafist-jihadism has both been drawn toward, and pulled away from, Sorour and his approach.

Perhaps Sorour’s last grasp for major direct political and regional relevance and engagement was at the early stages of the Syrian uprising, where he played a major role in inspiring much of the leadership of the Turkey and Qatar-backed Syrian Islamic Council. That group, like all others that do not have major armed militias on the ground, has receded greatly in relevance in the Syrian political context as the conflict has become increasingly militarized, regionalized, and sectarian. Yet the Syrian National Council, a broad-based and widely respected Syrian political opposition umbrella organization, did eulogize him at his passing. This is yet another unfortunate indication of the ongoing, if not increasing, prevalence of religious extremism among the armed Syrian opposition as well as pro-government forces.

The Syrian National Council statement memorializes him as an important religious and even political figure, and “a great symbol of moderation.” Indeed, virtually all of the eulogies and obituaries for him found from Arab sources elide, or at least significantly downplay, his role in establishing the intellectual and theological basis for the Sunni side of the religious and sectarian extremism that has been increasingly tearing the Middle East apart in recent decades. Yet any honest evaluation must conclude that this malign contribution to the rise of religious extremism, and laying the groundwork of the theological and political rationale for Sunni Muslim terrorist violence, in the contemporary Middle East is easily his most significant and lasting legacy.

http://www.agsiw.org/trumps-election-mean-gulf-arab-countries/

Like most of the rest of the world, including the U.S. political class (leading Republicans no exception), the Gulf Arab states awoke this morning to find that the American people have elected Donald J. Trump to be the next president of the United States. All indications leading up to the vote had been for a narrow but clear Hillary Clinton victory. But as the night unfolded it increasingly became evident that polling and other forecasting models, virtually across the board (reportedly including within the winning campaign itself), had failed to predict the uprising against the Washington establishment that Trump campaigned to represent. Like other major U.S. allies around the world, the Gulf Arab countries now face a period of relative uncertainty, given the difficulties of predicting the outlines of a Trump foreign policy. Yet some of the most obvious factors that will help shape the nature of this vital relationship over the next four years can be gleaned even at this early stage.

A Blank Slate

The first problem confronting any analysis is the paucity of evidence upon which to speculate about where a Trump foreign policy would potentially converge or diverge with traditional and consensus U.S. policies. Trump has no track record in office, elected or appointed. During his campaign he did not evince any particular knowledge of, or interest in, foreign policy, beyond his hostility to economic globalization and trade agreements. He did not lay out any detailed or coherent programs regarding foreign policy, let alone toward the Middle East. And it is unclear who his main advisors on Middle East-related matters will be, not least because most of the Republican foreign policy establishment and Trump avoided each other (at best) during the campaign. Indeed, it is precisely among Republican national security and foreign policy experts that Trump may have enjoyed some of the most meager support within his own party, and, despite his noted penchant for valuing subordinates’ “loyalty,” the small group of advisors he did assemble may not be the ones actually entrusted with crafting and implementing his administration’s policies after his inauguration.

For the Gulf states, the biggest challenge in dealing with a Trump presidency and foreign policy will not be his anti-Muslim comments or Islamophobia-tinged rhetoric from the campaign. It certainly won’t win him much affection among their leadership or in public opinion, but such issues are essentially a domestic challenge facing Muslim and Arab Americans and not other countries. Instead, the biggest challenge will be how a President Trump will approach some of the issues closest to Gulf states’ national security agendas given the jarring foreign policy contradictions that emerged from the handful of themes repeated throughout his campaign, including his sympathy for aspects of Russian foreign policy combined with his evident hostility toward Iran.

The Syria Conflict and Iran’s Relationship with Russia

From a Middle Eastern strategic perspective, this combination makes no sense, because Moscow and Tehran are increasingly finding themselves on the same page on many of the most pressing regional strategic issues, especially those that are paramount in the security files of the Gulf states, such as the regionalized civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Trump’s enthusiasm for building bridges with Moscow, and apparent sympathy for the Russian intervention in Syria (which he has, like the Kremlin, falsely characterized as being essentially an international counterterrorism operation aimed at the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), must surely be alarming. If that dominates strategic thinking in his White House, it would be an enormous boon to Iran and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On the other hand, Trump’s hostility toward Tehran might seem to offer interesting prospects for improved strategic cooperation with Gulf countries in regional confrontations with Iran, including via proxies in theaters such as Syria and Yemen. U.S. priorities, as defined by a Trump administration, will determine how this plays out.

Would a Trump administration regard the survival and empowerment of the Assad regime in Syria – currently a mutual Russian and Iranian goal being pursued through profound military and diplomatic cooperation – as a legitimate, if not laudable, Russian goal, and a counterterrorism project, to be tolerated and possibly even encouraged? Much of his campaign rhetoric about the Syrian conflict and the struggle against ISIL suggests it might. Or, might he, upon greater reflection, come to view the joint intervention on behalf of the Syrian regime more as an Iranian and Hizballah project, to be countered in a more aggressive manner than President Barack Obama has attempted?

Could a Trump White House try to split Moscow from Tehran on Syrian issues in some artful diplomatic manner? A subtle and engaged foreign policy might find opportunities for exploiting genuine divergences between Moscow and Tehran regarding their long-term goals in Syria, which are not absolutely synonymous. Or might a Trump foreign policy fall back on a neo-isolationist attitude and regard the Syrian imbroglio as simply no concern of the United States, in effect perpetuating the essence of the Obama approach, albeit perhaps motivated by a different set of priorities?
These are some of the key questions that the Gulf Arab countries will seek to evaluate as soon as possible. Since these states view their national security primarily, although not exclusively, through their rivalry with Tehran, the U.S. attitude towards Iran’s regional ambitions and policies will go a long way to determining their relationship to U.S. policy. Under Obama, they viewed Washington as increasingly unresponsive to their anxieties vis-à-vis Iran. They worried that the nuclear agreement might herald a broader rapprochement with Tehran, although that didn’t happen. They were dismayed at the lack of U.S. engagement regarding Syria. And they decided to take action on their own in Yemen, when they believed the Houthi rebels and their Iranian supporters posed an intolerable threat to their vulnerable underbelly.

The Gulf states will be hoping that Trump’s voluble antipathy toward Iran on the campaign trail will, once he is in office, prompt him to reevaluate his attitude toward some of Russia’s current policies and strategies in the Middle East, particularly Moscow’s intervention in Syria. He is going to have to reconcile these two positions, and the Gulf states have every incentive to advocate at an early stage that a Trump White House view Syria and other regional conflicts primarily through the lens of Iran’s expanding influence in the Middle East, and not see them as aspects of “legitimate” Russian international relations and counterterrorism initiatives. And they will certainly hope that, given his strong statements condemning Iran’s regional role, Trump’s new brand of “nationalism” will not simply be nativism but can be translated into a substantive international agenda.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement

Trump has been strongly critical of the nuclear agreement with Iran, calling it “catastrophic,” and one of the worst deals ever made. Yet he is unlikely to simply abrogate the agreement. However, insofar as the Gulf Arab states continue to view the agreement with suspicion, they will find a much more sympathetic ear in a Trump White House. The Gulf states may have somewhat reconsidered their strong initial objections to the agreement, given that it has apparently succeeded in mothballing Iran’s nuclear program for at least the next decade, and has not led to a broader rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. But if they still yearn to see the agreement collapse, there is renewed hope. At a minimum, Trump is likely to greatly intensify U.S. demands regarding implementation and hold back on rewards for Iranian compliance when possible.

It’s actually hard to imagine that the implementation phase can continue to go relatively smoothly unless Trump’s foreign policy bears no resemblance whatsoever to his campaign rhetoric. That’s possible, but it’s more likely that Tehran will find itself dealing with a completely different attitude on the part of its U.S. interlocutors within a few weeks. The lifespan of the agreement may be in serious jeopardy because of bitter disputes over the rights and responsibilities of both sides during the forthcoming, and more difficult, parts of the implementation phase. In the long run, Iran’s regional adversaries might regret the downfall of the agreement; though in the short run they might welcome it. And, of course, that would only end up empowering the most hard-line forces in the Iranian government.

Financial and Military “Burden-Sharing”

The two clearest themes in Trump’s campaign rhetoric on foreign policy have been at the heart of his populist vision: a neo-isolationist, “America-first” set of priorities that effectively devalues long-standing formal alliances such as NATO, and anti-trade and anti-globalization imperatives that would introduce new levels of economic protectionism into U.S. trade relations with the whole world. Regarding trade, the Gulf states have little to fear. Their relationship with the United States has always been based, first and foremost, on their role as energy suppliers to the global marketplace, not just to the United States, but especially to Washington’s crucial trading partners in East and South Asia. Trump’s apparently mercantile, instrumental, and ledger-sheet approach to relations should allow the Gulf states to present a good case as important U.S. allies.

During the campaign Trump frequently cited Saudi Arabia, along with Germany and Japan, as countries that he implied were not paying their fair share for their own defense and, implicitly, owed the United States more money. Unless he drastically alters his values and priorities, a President Trump is likely to be pleased by the actual balance of payments with the Gulf states. In 2010, Saudi Arabia, for example, agreed to purchase $60 billion in U.S. military aircraft, as well as countless other military and nonmilitary purchases. In 2015, the United States sold an estimated $33 billion in weapons to the Gulf states. Added to that are the myriad in-kind, value-added, facilities, services, and other arrangements that typically characterize U.S. basing in the Gulf region, especially the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain. If campaign priorities about burden sharing and financial contributions to defense are imported into the next White House’s foreign policy, the Gulf states are well-positioned to present themselves as key allies in very good standing.

If a Trump administration deprioritizes U.S. engagement, and possibly even military presence, in the Middle East, that would be a double-edged sword from a Gulf perspective. On the one hand, the Gulf states want the assurance of fundamental U.S. protection, particularly in the case of a direct confrontation with, and even more specifically an attack on them by, Iran. The prospect of the United States turning even more deeply inward could be alarming in that context. However, a more attenuated application of the principle of neo-isolationism could extend significant leeway to the Gulf states to continue to chart an independent national security, and even military, agenda for dealing with regional crises, with the expectation of U.S. weapons supplies and logistical support.

By the time of their intervention in Yemen in March 2015, the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, had long since reconciled themselves to the need for greater “burden sharing” on their part and, when need be, taking unilateral military action to secure their own interests independent of U.S. participation or guidance. As long as they can continue to pursue and expand this agenda without risking the basis of their relationship with the United States, and the fundamental guarantees of U.S. protection and access to U.S. weapons and technology, a more hands-off approach by a Trump administration could have some positive consequences for independent Gulf national security decision-making.

Islam and Terrorism

Finally, while Muslim-bashing and the Islamophobic nature of some of Trump’s campaign rhetoric is primarily a domestic political issue, President Trump and Arab leaders will need to find mutually respectful language, something they had already developed, for the most part, with Hillary Clinton. In short, overt Muslim-bashing rhetoric, entry bans based on national origin (let alone religious orientation), and words and deeds that seem to equate Islam in general with terrorism could cause serious harm to both sides of the U.S.-Gulf relationship in a Trump era. Having already secured victory, there is no longer a need for the new president to pander in such a manner, and his new responsibilities could and should put an end to any such talk.

Trump has emphasized his determination to destroy ISIL in vivid language. As long as he is not perceived as effectively playing into Iran’s regional agenda with such a focus, he will find enthusiastic partners in that campaign among the Gulf states. It is very much in the interests of both sides to forge a strong anti-terrorism and counter-extremist agenda. Such a relationship should also serve as the ultimate guarantee against additional loose talk that seems to promote anti-Muslim bigotry. Such a partnership would also have to avoid some of Trump’s wilder campaign comments about introducing forms of torture for terrorism suspects including “waterboarding and much worse,” the killing of terrorists’ families, and other extreme and extraordinary measures that not only violate international norms, but probably U.S. law as well. Yet even during the course of the campaign he distanced himself from some of the more extreme of these earlier remarks. That process is likely to continue. Such growth will be crucial for the development of an effective anti-terrorism and counter-extremism partnership with the Gulf states and many others around the world.

JASTA

The outgoing Obama administration can help by working with Gulf countries even before the Trump inauguration to find a legislative “fix” for the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which would allow Americans to sue Saudi Arabia and its officials, among others, for alleged complicity in deadly terrorist attacks in the United States. The veto override that allowed JASTA to become law immediately after the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and right before the election was the source of a great deal of regret in Congress on the very day it passed. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are concerned about the potential impact of the law on bilateral relations with the United States. But informed and serious Americans are also concerned about the potential impact on U.S. diplomacy and military actions if the U.S. government and its officials could be sued around the world in turn.

It remains to be seen whether Trump’s new brand of “nationalism” and populist rhetoric would allow him to openly be party to correcting this mistake, so it is preferable that the law is corrected in some mutually satisfactory manner in the coming weeks with the explicit cooperation of the Obama administration and congressional leaders, and, hopefully, the implicit support of the incoming Trump administration (which can overtly hold the matter at some arm’s length until the inauguration). For all those who value both the efficacy of U.S. diplomacy and military strategy, and the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia, a JASTA “fix” is an important step, and the Trump team should at least step back and allow for such a vital correction.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/why-a-clinton-presidency-could-be-good-for-the-gulf

In these pages last month, I outlined a number of reasons why the Gulf states should be cautiously optimistic about US foreign policy in a Hillary Clinton administration, given that the Democratic nominee is still likely to become the next president. But there are several additional factors, both positive and negative from a Gulf perspective, worth elucidating.

In addition to reaffirming shaken American alliances in Europe and the Middle East, Mrs Clinton is likely to move quickly to bolster America’s global economic stature. Her foreign policy team views domestic economic initiatives, for example on infrastructure and investment stimulus, as crucial to restoring confidence in American leadership, particularly in Europe.

Gulf investment in the United States is significant and growing. Mrs Clinton’s team is likely to work with Congressional leaders, possibly in coordination with Barack Obama before he leaves office, to create a legislative “fix” for the recently passed Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (Jasta). The law is designed to allow the families of Americans killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia and its officials for alleged complicity (for which there is no evidence) in the attacks.

Correcting Jasta is important to protect American interests and to prevent an exodus of Saudi and other Gulf investments in the United States. It’s also crucial to restoring confidence and trust to this vital relationship.

Rectifying the Jasta blunder by Congress will be a crucial early test for a president-elect Clinton and a late test for the outgoing Mr Obama.

Mrs Clinton will also seek to demonstrate that she will be more assertive, and in the phrase being promoted by her campaign, “muscular,” in defending American interests than Mr Obama, including through a greater willingness to use military force if need be.

This means she will probably look for an early opportunity to confront Russian president Vladimir Putin, take a tougher line with Iran while continuing to implement the nuclear agreement, and strengthen American engagement in Syria.

Less to the liking of Washington’s Gulf allies will be Mrs Clinton’s probable greater emphasis on human, and especially women’s, rights around the world, including in the Middle East. She has long positioned herself as an international champion of women, and this could be a source of tension, particularly in Washington’s relationship with Riyadh, given that Saudi women still face numerous social restrictions including “guardianship” laws and the prohibition on women driving.

Hacked emails reveal that when she was secretary of state, Mrs Clinton held back from promoting the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia for fear that “public comments by me would hurt [this] … cause.” Yet she reportedly raised the question repeatedly in private conversations with senior Saudi officials.

Mrs Clinton is surely pragmatic enough to ensure that disagreements on women’s rights don’t seriously harm US relations with Saudi Arabia. As secretary of state, she pursued what her aides called “quiet diplomacy” on this issue. That may continue to be the fundamental approach she brings to the White House, but it’s hard to imagine that she won’t place a greater emphasis on these concerns than any other recent American president.

Mrs Clinton has long favoured personalised diplomacy based on building a strong rapport with foreign leaders. With his more cerebral and aloof style, Mr Obama has relied on the formal channels and mechanisms of diplomacy, and eschewed close personal relationships.

He has also largely avoided negative ones, even effectively shrugging when Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte publicly called him a “son of a whore”. Only Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to get under Mr Obama’s skin by repeatedly misleading him regarding Israel’s intentions on settlements and blatantly interfering to support Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.

But this is the exception that proves the overall rule that Mr Obama has studiously avoided making personalities a factor in his diplomatic approach.

Mrs Clinton is unlikely to reprise George W Bush’s overemphasis on interpersonal relations and gut reactions. But her tenure as secretary of state suggests she will reintroduce personal relationships as an important element of American diplomacy. The visceral mutual animosity with Mr Putin is already well-established.

Gulf leaders have traditionally also favoured intimate personal relationships as a foundation, along with the core realities of national interest, of international cooperation. Mrs Clinton will almost certainly give them an opportunity to utilise these skills, following eight years of chilly unresponsiveness from Mr Obama.

Such strong personal relationships – along with an improved policy environment on issues regarding Iran, Syria and Russia – can help ensure that if and when Mrs Clinton voices criticism about human and women’s rights, Gulf leaders know they are listening to a trustworthy friend and not an unreliable or unfair critic.