Trump the peacemaker - is this for real?
From Ukraine to the Middle East, the president-elect seems able to reach the parts other political leaders cannot
Oh, how we laughed when Donald Trump said he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. "Idiot," we said. "Doesn’t he realise that neither side will give up? What does he know that the European Union and the rest of the international community doesn’t?" Well, hardly had Trump been elected when noises about a ceasefire and even a resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the New Year began to emerge. The Trump factor was what made the difference - or so anyone says.
Then the big one: Gaza. No one seriously believed that big mouth Donald Trump could halt the merciless conflict which has led to thousands of civilian deaths and destruction of property and infrastructure on an almost unimaginable scale. Except it looks like he has. At any rate, everyone is talking about a ceasefire deal as early as this week.
Again, it has, by general agreement, been the second coming of the 47th President that has made the difference—not by bombing Tehran into the Stone Age, as many expected, or by giving the Israeli Defence Force the licence to destroy what is left of the Gaza Strip, but by apparently strong-arming Israel into making concessions. As the BBC’s Middle East expert Jeremy Bowen put it on Today, Trump’s envoy “read the riot act” to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, last week. Trump is nothing if not unpredictable and his support for America’s allies is always conditional.
We all heard Trump talking tough about defeating the terrorists and threatening Iran. There would be “hell to pay,” he blustered, if the hostages weren’t freed by Hamas by the time he entered the White House. How could this warmonger end the conflict when he has given such unconditional support to his right-wing soulmate, Bibi Netanyahu? The talks in Doha were supposedly deadlocked because of Israel’s refusal to agree to a military withdrawal while Hamas still held Israeli hostages. The right-wing parties that dominate the Knesset said that a ceasefire before the release of hostages would be giving the terrorists a kind of victory. Not anymore, it seems.
Bibi found himself on the wrong side of the Trump tongue. The Israeli PM has now cancelled his trip to the President-elect’s inauguration next week, supposedly because of a recent prostate operation. This may be true, but everyone expected him to make every effort to attend, given Israel’s dependency on US weapons and financial support. The Biden administration had been supporting the Israeli war effort to the tune of $4 billion a year. However, the US seemed unable to use this leverage to secure a deal.
Until Trump came along. He reportedly made it clear there could be no continuation of the Israeli offensive unless and until all diplomatic channels had been exhausted. Yet, everyone assumed those channels had already run out of steam long ago. Hadn’t Joe Biden’s team been trying desperately to make progress before the end of his presidency?
Biden’s envoy, Antony Blinken, has made ten trips to the Middle East since October without success. On his last visit to Doha, where arms-length negotiations with Hamas are being conducted, Blinken was humiliated by a snub from the Emir of Qatar and left empty-handed. It was Israel’s refusal to withdraw its military that scuppered that deal. Now, suddenly, it seems that Isreal is prepared to conduct a phased withdrawal without securing an immediate release of the hostages first.
Israel’s far right seem to have indicated that they will no longer hold Netanyahu to ransom and will even accept Hamas having a future role in the administration of Gaza. It is assumed that this is because Trump may be more willing to accept Israel annexation of the West Bank in future. But Trump has given no guarantees on that and seems to want to restart the Abraham Accords with the Gulf States which envisaged a two state solution to the Palestinian problem.
What is going on? This is all very puzzling to those of us who thought Donald Trump was just a blowhard egotist who talked off the top of his head about matters he doesn’t understand. But something is happening here, as Bob Dylan once said and we don’t know what it is. Why is everyone apparently trying to lend creedence to Donald Trump’s brutalist diplomacy? Why are irreconcilable enemies suddenly dancing to the tune of this politician widely condemned by his opponents as a racist warmonger and even a fascist? From Ukraine to the Middle East, the Orange Man seems to be able to reach the parts other political leaders cannot.
Of course, Trump has always denied that he is a militarist and insisted that he wanted to put a full stop under America’s disastrous foreign military adventures. He claimed that it has historically been his Democratic Party opponents who often became enmeshed in intractable and expensive conflicts across the globe. If anyone had been listening to the speeches at the Republican National Convention in July, they would have heard speakers pointing out that it was working-class Americans who paid for these adventures with their taxes and their lives. They believe that Trump wants to end wars, not start them. That he is a peacemaker.
Of course, neither the war in Ukraine nor the conflict in Gaza has been resolved. The ceasefire in Gaza involves a complex choreography of phased troop withdrawals and hostage releases. Anything could go wrong with the timetable, and probably will. Nevertheless, it is slightly bizarre to hear everyone declare that the Trump factor has made a material difference to the negotiations over Gaza.
All this is fuelling the mythology of Trumpism, which is that only a strong man can get things done. There may be something in that. However, the downside is that this may encourage other strong men to try to get their way—not least in China, where another strong leader is looking to restore sovereignty over Taiwan.
Vladimir Putin is also a strong man and a genuine militarist. He recklessly started the first European war since 1945 by invading Ukraine—a sovereign nation three years ago. According to Chatham House, Russia has since lost 700,000 troops killed or injured. That is a heavy toll, even for a big country. Moreover, the Russian economy is buckling under Western sanctions and the cost of maintaining a war economy. The sugar rush of increased armaments production, now 40% of GDP, is giving way to inflation and public sector austerity.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, there is frustration and war weariness. An increasing number of Ukrainian voters now seem prepared to concede territory to Russia as a means of ending the conflict according to opinion polls. In a country of 40 million, just about every family has lost members or found themselves looking after sons and relatives with horrific injuries. Zelensky has been stepping up missile attacks on Russian soil and consolidating the seizure of Russian territory in Kursk, it is assumed, as a prelude to negotiations.
Team Trump has made no secret of its reluctance to keep pouring money and matériel into a war they believe Ukraine cannot win. The President-elect has angered liberal opinion in the past by appearing to talk positively about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. But no one should doubt his determination not to appear to lose. His declaration that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours just by being Donald Trump obscures the intense diplomacy that has been conducted in his name, some of which involved Elon Musk, at least as an observer. It is not capitulation.
There is zero chance of the war actually ending 24 hours after Trump takes office next week, but there is every likelihood of a pause in the fighting this year—not least because both sides need to regroup and lick their wounds. That is all Trump needs to bolster his image as the great military realist, as if he is some latter-day Clausewitz. That he certainly is not, but the fact that everyone is talking about his influence on world affairs is itself, to use military jargon, a fact on the ground.
There is a momentum behind his second administration that has turned many of his critics into reluctant cheerleaders. It will assuredly dissipate in coming years as his diplomatic coups come unstuck and other conflicts arise. His belligerent approach to diplomacy will coursen the language of world affairs and could lead to many more conflicts as others try to emulate his style. But, for the moment, everyone seems hypnotised by the Trump magic. To the horror of his many detractors, not least in the liberal US media, he may have delivered on his daft promises, and got the last laugh, even before he enters the White House.
I think you mean 'coarsen' Iain