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After touching down in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, US President Donald Trump was awarded a gold medal, the country's highest civilian honour, by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz.
Like a string of presidents before him, Mr Trump bowed down to receive the gaudy honour.
Then the White House announced arms deals worth approximately $147 billion — nearly $US110 billion — and King Salman tweeted that the visit would, "strengthen our strategic cooperation, lead to global security and stability".
The United States and Saudi Arabia also signed a string of other agreements, which Mr Trump said represents "hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs".
Each nation has touted the trade as boosting local production and employment — something the Saudis need to do urgently if their flawed plan to wean the economy off oil and boost the private sector is ever to get off the ground.
It's a telling triumph of commercial interest and strategic orthodoxy over campaign rhetoric pitched at the so-called alt-right.
A sign of American-Saudi exceptionalism?
On the campaign trail, Mr Trump attacked Hillary Clinton over funding to the Clinton Foundation, denouncing the Saudis as "people that push gays off … buildings".
"These are people that kill women and treat women horribly," he said at the time.
Mr Trump's promises to ban Muslim immigration offended many in the Muslim world.
But as Mr Trump was flying in, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir told the BBC, "we can't see it biased against any group or religion".
That's precisely what's worried a series of US Federal Court judges, considering his subsequent executive orders are designed to deliver on that promise.
But Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of most of the 9/11 hijackers, has never been on the list.
It's hard to know if it was an accident or a sign of American-Saudi exceptionalism that Steve Bannon, an architect of the alt-right platform and Mr Trump's chief strategist, was seated next to Saudi's religious affairs minister Saleh bin Abdul-Aziz Al ash-Sheikh, but Twitter wags enjoyed the irony.
Saudi Arabia rolls out the red carpet for Trump
Since US president Franklin D Roosevelt met Saudi King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud on a warship on the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal in 1945, the relationship with the oil-rich kingdom has been key to America's approach to the Middle East.
And the Saudis have welcomed Mr Trump's election as a chance to restore the natural order after former president Barack Obama upset them by signing a deal to lift sanctions on the Saudis' arch regional rival, Iran, in exchange for curbs on their controversial nuclear program.
While King Salman met Mr Trump on an enormous red carpet at the airport, he wasn't there to greet Mr Obama.
Even though Mr Trump on Thursday extended the sanctions relief that flowed from the nuclear agreement, he's been welcomed with open arms.
Mr Trump hasn't stuck with Mr Obama's pause on sending weapons used to bomb Yemen in Saudi Arabi's controversial war, which threatens to starve millions of people.
But he has promised more confrontation with Iran, which just re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, the pragmatist who signed the nuclear deal and — during his election campaign — took swipes at Iran's terrorism-sponsoring Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump likely to call regional powers to solve own problems
Mr Trump will deliver a speech later today, seeking to galvanise Islamic action against Islamic extremism and terrorism. And he'll attend the inauguration of a centre to track and combat extremism.
While Saudi Arabia energetically exports the Wahabist interpretation of Islam at the root of most extremist Sunni Muslim ideology, its royal family is reviled by extremists who accuse it of usurping divine supremacy and selling out to the West.
Mr Trump will likely continue the Obama administration's call for regional powers to do more to solve their own problems. But he'll be less critical of allies like Saudi Arabia, more willing to send them arms and more willing to use force when he deems it expedient.
His strike on a Syrian airstrip and Syrian war planes after the Government's alleged chemical weapons attack is a case in point.
The Syrian Government is an ally of Iran, which provides and coordinates a substantial ground force to fight the rebels.
It's also an ally of Russia, which provides substantial airpower, and the attack — which supposedly destroyed 20 per cent of the Syrian government's war planes — comparatively strengthens Russia's hand.
This oil-rich and conflict-ridden region is essential to US national security interests, and Mr Trump reportedly spent most of the 12-hour flight from the US in meetings with staff and working on his speech.
But much of that time is likely to have been spent discussing the deepening controversy over Russia's alleged interference in the US election and Mr Trump's firing of former FBI director James Comey, who was overseeing the investigation of that case.
A lack of political capital
Mr Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia has been compared to Richard Nixon's visit in the midst of the Watergate scandal that was slowly destroying his presidency.
Like Nixon, Mr Trump will travel next to Israel, reportedly the source of the sensitive intelligence on aviation security that he shared with Russia.
He has asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off building settlements on land the Palestinians hope will become their future state. And he's talked of doing "the ultimate deal" to achieve the two-state solution that Mr Netanyahu's coalition partners in government oppose.
But for the foreseeable future he'll have neither the political capital nor the time to make it happen.
Topics: donald-trump, world-politics, government-and-politics, trade, business-economics-and-finance, defence-and-national-security, community-and-society, saudi-arabia, united-states
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