The former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, famously stated that politicians ‘campaign in poetry but govern in prose.’ For the Trump administration, the tension between the rhetoric the Trump campaign deployed to win the election and the discipline of running the United States could not be more profound.

In this lecture, Toby Dodge examines the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East, specifically its policy towards Iraq, the fight against the Islamic State, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. He also looks at the ideological and organisational divisions within the White House that have exacerbated President Trump’s own very distinctive style of leadership to deliver a set of contradictory and destabilising policies in one of the world’s most unstable regions.

Toby Dodge (@ProfTobyDodge) is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor in the International Relations Department at LSE.

The LSE Middle East Centre (@LSEMiddleEast) builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.

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