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Why the US could not shake off the Middle East
Lessons from a pivot to Asia that never comes.
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US President Donald Trump taking centre stage at the summit on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Oct 13.
PHOTO: EPA
Janan Ganesh
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It is 80 years old now but still one of the more arresting images of the photographic age. On board the USS Quincy, an ailing Franklin Roosevelt meets King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia (or Ibn Saud, as the Anglo-American world knew him). And so begins, or at least deepens, the US role in the Middle East. Consider it FDR’s parting gift.
“You shouldn’t have,” some would say, including men as dissimilar as Mr Barack Obama and Mr Donald Trump.
