I don’t know why people say that president-elect Donald Trump is going to face difficult challenges in foreign policy. All he needs to do is get Vladimir Putin to compromise on Russia’s western border, get Volodymyr Zelenskyy to compromise on Ukraine’s eastern border, get Benjamin Netanyahu to define Israel’s western and southern borders, get Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to define his country’s western border — that is, stop trying to control Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He also needs to get China to define its eastern border as stopping short of Taiwan, and get Ansar Allah in Yemen to define their coastal border as limited to just a few miles offshore — without the right to stop all shipping into the Red Sea.
In other words, if you think the only border that will preoccupy Trump when he takes office on Jan. 20 is America’s southern border, you’re not paying attention.
When Trump left office in 2021, before the Russian attack of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, one could argue that we were still in the “post-Cold War” era, dominated by increasing economic integration and Great Power peace. Russia had taken a bite out of Ukraine but had never attempted to devour the whole country. Iran and Israel were hostile but had never directly attacked each other.
Israel occupied the West Bank but had never had a government whose official coalition agreement included formal annexation of the entire West Bank, and now it has members advocating the same for the Gaza Strip. The US did not care for Ansar Allah in Yemen, but had never sent B-2 stealth bombers to drop some of the largest payloads in its arsenal on them.
In short, many bright red lines have been crossed since Trump last occupied the White House. Restoring them and “making America great again” will almost certainly require more subtle and sophisticated uses of force and coercive diplomacy than the isolationist Trump ever contemplated in his first administration or suggested in his campaigns.
In Israel, where I am right now, one of the farthest-right members of Israel’s far-right government, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, did not waste any time, declaring on Monday that Trump’s new presidency presents an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical names for areas of the West Bank. He added, “The year 2025 will, with God’s help, be the year of sovereignty” in these occupied territories.
But Trump may be more of a wild card for Israel today than Smotrich expects. He is the first US president to overtly appeal to and benefit from votes from Arab and Muslim Americans unhappy with unconditional US support for Israel in Gaza. He also comes in with as strong an isolationist mandate as any president since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, when Trump was president before, he put out a peace plan for a two-state solution in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, albeit one that strongly favoured Israel.
A Trump administration could cause a new and very different set of red lines to be crossed if it pulls back from Nato or expresses any diminished willingness to protect longtime allies.
Japan, Poland, South Korea and Taiwan have hostile nuclear-armed neighbours and the technology and resources to build nuclear weapons themselves. “They haven’t done it because they thought they didn’t need to — because they believed that the United States had their back, even in the ultimate nightmare of a nuclear war,” said Gautam Mukunda, the noted strategy expert and Yale University lecturer. “Think about that for a second: They had such total faith in the US as an ally that for decades, they have, literally, bet the existence of their country on America’s word.” He added, “Given what Trump has said about alliances, could any responsible foreign leader keep making that wager?”
These countries have seen what happened to Ukraine after it returned the nuclear weapons stationed there to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. If these countries lose faith in America’s promise — or if that promise is withdrawn — and they develop their own nuclear weapons, it would end the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that has limited the spread of nuclear weapons since World War II. That would erase the mother of all red lines.
The world, as it stands, is always so much more complicated than it seems on the campaign trail, especially today. Or as boxer Mike Tyson is said to have observed, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
— The New York Times
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