Gregory Aftandilian

Pres­i­dent Trump’s State of the Union ad­dress re­vealed no clear for­eign pol­i­cy vi­sion or co­her­ent Mid­dle East strat­e­gy.

Now that Steve Ban­non is out, prag­ma­tists have the up­per hand over alt-right ide­o­logues in the White House.

Don­ald Trump and his chief ad­vis­er Stephen Ban­non sig­nalled a to­tal re­brand­ing of con­ser­v­a­tives at the CPAC.

Both can­di­dates came un­der fire for their past ac­tions and fu­ture plans at the Com­man­der-in-Chief fo­rum.

The coun­try that they knew grow­ing up seems to be chang­ing for the worse in their eyes.

The con­ven­tion is like­ly to gloss over Trump’s non-es­tab­lish­ment po­si­tion.

Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial con­tenders hit Oba­ma hard on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty but of­fer few re­al­is­tic al­ter­na­tives.

The US Re­pub­li­can Par­ty pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates stake out hawk­ish views on pol­i­cy to­wards the Mid­dle East.

ISIL’s re­cent at­tacks in Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen show po­ten­tial re­cruits that it can take its fight any­where.

Egypt-US re­la­tions are on the up­swing due to com­mon se­cu­ri­ty threats, but prob­lems re­main.