A Trump doctrine in foreign policy? He just made it clearer than ever

In one notable speech, on one memorable trip, we saw the clearest ever outline of what one might call the Trump Doctrine in foreign policy.

The current U.S. president doesn't tend to indulge in grand theory talk, but he effectively laid one out in Saudi Arabia.

It might be summed up as: less moralizing, more money. 

In other words, the pursuit of prosperity takes precedence over lofty rhetoric about democracy. This, in his telling, is a recipe for peace and stability.

Tuesday's speech in Riyadh was not, of course, the speech the last Republican president, George W. Bush, would have given for the first overseas trip of a presidential term.

Nor was it the speech Barack Obama gave in his first presidential address to the Arab world, when he spoke at length about democracy to university students in Cairo.

Trump spoke to a business crowd. And he, in contrast, disparaged Western do-gooders who travel around the world trying to spread democracy.

He had the CEOs on their feet applauding as he saluted the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

That's the same Mohammed bin Salman who was briefly treated as persona non grata in Washington for his suspected role in the murder and hacking to pieces of a columnist for the Washington Post.

"Commerce, not chaos," is how Trump described the Saudi leader's winning approach, before turning to criticize Western busybodies.

"It's crucial for the wider world to note, this great transformation [in Saudi Arabia] has not come from Western interventionists or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs," he said. 

"No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neo-cons or liberal non-profits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, and so many other cities."

Trump ridiculed so-called nation-builders who, he said, wrecked more nations than they built, intervening in complex societies they did not understand.

The speech "might've been the clearest articulation of how Trump sees foreign policy," said Stephen Wertheim, a historian of U.S. foreign policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.