It was hard to swallow the various initiatives and proposals that flooded from the White House and indeed Trump’s lips this week. Where does one start – with Gaza and the crazy Trump ‘wacko’ notion of the ‘Riviera of the Mediterranean’? Or, do we look at a somewhat lower decibel view – the threats and or actions by Trump when it comes to tariffs. Tariffs, these things you remember up until Trump as a policy instrument that used to be about trade policy. Well, not any more according to Trump.
It was dismaying and equally disheartening to listen to the various efforts by his advisors past and present to normalize the actions along with Republicans in Congress while the loyal opposition, the Democrats, seem ‘rooted in their seats’ with what appears to be only minor ‘huffing and puffing’ against the many mania actions by the President.
What seems most startling is his recent flood of actions – Executive Orders and Memos – take us back to Trump 1.0 – but worse. The Trump Gaza proposal seems to be – without question – the winner of the week though. As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes, point out:
While his announcement looked formal and thought-out — he read the plan from a sheet of paper — his administration had not done even the most basic planning to examine the feasibility of the idea, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Inside the U.S. government, there had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon, as would normally occur for any serious foreign policy proposal, let alone one of such magnitude. There had been no working groups. The Defense Department had produced no estimates of the troop numbers required, or cost estimates, or even an outline of how it might work.
There was little beyond an idea inside the president’s head.
And as David Leonhardt, also of the NYTimes, noted:
For all the early energy of his presidency — the flurry of executive orders, confirmations and firings — Trump has looked less disciplined this week than he did in the initial days after returning to office. The last few days have instead conjured the chaos of his first term, when his grand pronouncements often failed to change government policy.
Back to the Gaza proposal, for a moment. It is worth noting Aaron David Miller’s view as set out recently in his FP in a piece titled, “Trump Makes Population Transfer an American Policy”. Miller has had a long connection with the region. He was a former U.S. State Department Middle East analyst and importantly a negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations there. As he wrote:
From my 27 years of working in the official U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy business, I can say President Donald Trump’s Gaza gambit goes above and beyond the craziest and most destructive proposal any administration has ever made (and there have been some strange ones). In one fell swoop, standing next to an Israeli leader who looked like the cat that just swallowed a dozen canaries, the president let loose on a scheme that is not just impractical but dangerous.
Trump has now harnessed U.S. prestige and credibility to propose an idea that will be perceived as forced transfer or worse; validated the all-too-dangerous fantasies of the Israel right; undermined key U.S. partners Egypt and Jordan; made his own goal of Israeli-Saudi normalization that much harder; and for good measure sent an unmistakable signal to authoritarians everywhere that they have the right to assert control over other people’s territory.
Clearly, it is ‘stomach churning’ to many that have been involved in the long unsuccessful effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and more recently to end the Gaza war. Arab partners have uniformly rejected the Trump proposal for Gaza and Israeli support at least to the extent of organizing the Israeli military to aid voluntary evacuation as pointed out by Alexandra Sharp at FP:
Such suggestions have sparked a flurry of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to stop the joint Israel-U.S. proposal. Both Jordan and Egypt have refused to accept displaced Gaza residents, with Jordanian King Abdullah II rejecting any efforts to annex the territory and Cairo stating that the plan “constitutes a blatant and flagrant violation of international law, international humanitarian law, and infringes on the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.” Egyptian officials told Time magazine that such a plan could undermine the country’s peace treaty with Israel and harm the region’s stability.
Saudi Arabia also strongly rejected the proposal and vowed not to sign a normalization deal with Israel—a foreign-policy priority for the Trump administration—without the creation of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza.
In the face of the Gaza proposal, Trump’s recent tariff actions against Canada, Mexico and China, seem positively tame. Still, though, it was rather crazy stuff threatening 25 percent across the board tariffs on Canada and Mexico only to hold off for 30 days after discussions with Mexican and Canadian leaders and then applying 10 percent across the board tariffs against China. The ultimate outcomes remain unknown though it is startling that Trump’s actions to delay action comes after accepting, at least in the Canadian case, proposals that had been offered significantly earlier. And not unlike the Gaza proposal, it is hard to discern either the methods or the ultimate goal of Trump’s proposals and demands. Is there a method or a clear goal? The question that faces allies and foes alike is: is there a method to the madness? Not surprisingly experts and opinion writers have in the past, and in the early days of this second Trump Administration are trying to assess what objectives and outcomes is Trump attempting to achieve? And what diplomatic means is Trump employing to achieve those objectives.
On the latter Aaron Blake has suggested that there are four possible explanations for this current Trump 2.0 approach. In a piece in the Washington Post (Wapo) titled, “4 explanations for Trump’s shocking Gaza proposal”, Blake gives us the following possible explanations for the outburst from Trump on Gaza at the press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu. He suggests:
-
It is a distraction – “And there’s no question that Trump, more than ever, is “flooding the zone” with bold (and often legally dubious) actions that challenge everyone to keep up.”
-
It is a negotiating ploy “This could be Trump threatening the unthinkable to force Middle Eastern countries to pursue a more sustainable peace. It would basically be: If you guys can’t figure it out, we’re coming in.”
-
He’s leaning into the madman theory even more – ““The idea is basically to make other countries believe you’re completely unpredictable and capable of anything, to keep them in line.”
-
His sudden imperialist streak is very real – ““It’s possible all of this imperialistic talk is bluster. But it’s also possible that Trump feels freed up in his second term, after years of leveraging “America First” for political gain, to change it up and make the expansion of the United States (in areas he actually cares about) a key plank of his legacy.”
All have some validity. It is evident that the approaches vary from slightly ‘off kilter’ – the madman theory, to a strategic gambit – a negotiating ploy. I don’t think it is possible to draw strong conclusions at this early Trump 2.0 stage. What we do know however, that particularly with respect to the Gaza proposal, he is on his own untethered to his advisers and key cabinet members. And in the case of the ‘Gaza bomb’ it had one added dramatic effect – it left Netanyahu completely off the hook from any sharp questioning from global media over immediate Gaza actions on the ceasefire, and beyond, the role of the Palestinian Authority, and the future of a “two state solution”. It was a significant timely encounter completely avoided.
With respect to Trump’s goals, assuming there are such animals, it is hard to ignore the fact that his actions seem intended to dismantle the order that the US built; to see the United States as demanding fealty to a leading power and the shape of relations the US is striving to build under Trump 2.0. Decades of building integrated markets in North America, and likely beyond, are now threatened by Trump’s bellicose actions. Yet according to Bob Davis in FP in a piece titled, “Trump Has the Whole Global Trade System in His Sights”, this is Trump’s goal:
But he has a bigger goal in mind for his second term with plans he is still cooking up. Trump seeks to remake global trade based on what he calls “reciprocity”—treating other countries, supposedly, in the same fashion as they treat the United States. China is not the target this time—or at least not the only one. He has his sights set on any country with which the U.S. has a large, persistent trade deficit, which in his mind means it is treating the U.S. “terribly.” Success would mean sharply reducing the trade deficit, no matter which country he hits or what other geopolitical goals it impedes.
Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t have this goal in mind. He is swinging tariffs as an ‘all purpose tool’ with destruction in mind. We will be watching.
Image Credit: France 24
This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/156695312/share-center