Trump, in Saudi Arabia, Takes Aim at “Neocons”—and Misses

Saudi Arabia is the Harvard of the Middle East—so well-endowed that, absent external pressure, change frequently seems not particularly urgent.

President Trump and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.

One of the highlights the White House put out from President Trump’s speech today in Saudi Arabia featured the president saying, “Before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together—not bombing each other out of existence, we don’t want that.”

Trump went on: “It’s crucial for the wider world to note, this great transformation has not come from Western intervention or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marbles of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead the birth of a modern middle east has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way….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.”

Set aside the tastelessness of Trump showing up on foreign soil to attack American neocons. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it’s not even really accurate to deny the neocons some of the credit for the changes that are under way. Does Trump really believe that, left entirely to their own devices, without any external pressure or assistance, the Saudis would have modernized as rapidly as they are doing?

Let’s review the record.