Lasting Peace In Israel: The Ultimate Deal

So far, and largely in keeping with the premise of his “America First” campaign, the Trump presidency has been focused on domestic issues. Foreign policy has of course played a significant role—no president can focus exclusively on one or the other—but apart from military decisions in Syria (which Trump has for the most part outsourced to the Pentagon), crisis-management responses to the latest provocations of North Korea, and some antagonistic dealings with NATO and the G-7, domestic policy has been the centerpiece of the administration to this point. Foreign dealings have focused on a direct relationship to core American interests.

But I fully expect the administration to take on a more active role in world affairs, for the simple reason that America is still the most powerful nation and will inevitably be drawn into any major international dispute. And in the most well-known international dispute in modern times—the ongoing clashes between Israel and the Palestinians—expect Trump to get personally involved and make a strong push for a successful resolution. Contingent, as always, on domestic politics, I think Trump will be unable to resist making an Israeli-Palestinian deal a major focal point of his presidency.

For the man who campaigned on making deals, the author of The Art of the Deal who blasted “stupid politicians” making “bad deals”, the chance to solve the centerpoint of so much violence in the Middle East will be nearly impossible to resist. It would be the ultimate chance to prove himself on the world stage.

Whether anything would come of the negotiations is a different matter entirely. U.S. presidents have been trying for decades, with no permanent, satisfactory resolution to show for it. But, again contingent on the realities of domestic politics, look for Trump to make a significant push on the issue, perhaps after the midterms next year.

It is hard to imagine a man with the ego and love of deal-making such as Trump, given the power and influence of the office of the American Presidency, attempting anything less.

Trump Withdraws From The Paris Agreement; Keeps Embassy In Tel Aviv

Yesterday, in typical deal-making mode, President Trump made two major decisions, one certain to please conservatives and the other just as certain to assuage liberals. He announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015; and, earlier in the day, signed a waiver that kept the American embassy in Israel in Tel Aviv, rather than moving it to the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, as he had promised repeatedly during the presidential campaign.

So, one promise kept, another broken. Sounds like a typical day in the presidency of Donald Trump.

I agree with the conservative conventional wisdom that the Paris agreement was a bad deal for the country, and that the embassy should move to Jerusalem immediately. Persuasive arguments for both positions are fairly easy to find, and I won’t rehash them now. But what I find interesting is that the announcements of both decisions occurred on the same day, fitting what has become a pattern for this administration: bad news is regularly paired with good, or, more specifically, the announcement of one policy guaranteed to find favor with those on the Right is always paired with the announcement of another guaranteed to unsettle conservatives.

In general, this isn’t an unusual strategy in politics, or for that matter in any business involved in public relations. But I find it interesting how closely the Trump administration has been keeping to this form of one good thing for the Right, coupled with one bad. Before the Paris withdrawal and the keeping of the embassy in Tel Aviv, it was the (good) federal budget blueprint, coupled with the (bad) push for the American Health Care Act. The pattern even dates back to Trump’s cabinet announcements from the transition period, where one pick that might be greeted unenthusiastically by many Republicans was often announced alongside another guaranteed to excite the base. And there have been many other examples of the same basic pattern over the course of the Trump presidency to date.

So the next time the administration makes an announcement that is cause for celebration, wait to see what the bad news is going to be. Conversely, if there is an announcement of a policy conservatives are guaranteed to disagree with, expect some good news to emerge soon after. On this, at least, the Trump White House seems to operate like clockwork.

Israel: America's Most Vital Ally

There has been no shortage of critical articles and blog posts from the Right, condemning the Obama administration’s shameful betrayal of Israel at the United Nations—followed by John Kerry’s equally shameful farewell speech. And I agree with all of them. But I think it important to briefly lay out why it is so important for America to stand strongly with Israel, from both a strategic and idealistic viewpoint.

From a strategic (or realist) point of view, the arguments are simple. The simple fact is that Israel is the only stable democracy in the Middle East, which makes it the only country in the region generally favorable to American interests. The importance of such an alliance cannot be overstated. One hardly needs to be reminded about the number of threats to American interests currently lurking in the region, from Iran to ISIS to al-Qaeda and a variety of other groups dedicated to radical Islamic terrorism. (And, Israel is one of only a few world powers to—allegedly—possess nuclear weapons.)

Israel is the only nation in the region that shares the same goals as the United States, primarily because all of those actors hate Israel almost as much as they hate us. A relatively stable island of democracy and Western values in what for centuries has been a sea of wars, coups, and general turmoil, Israel serves as a beacon of peace and promise for the Middle East.

Which leads to the idealist’s reasons for steadfast support of Israel. Having a stable democratic partner in the Middle East is not only good for American interests, it is good for humanity’s interests. Just as America has become, as Ronald Reagan famously put it, “a shining city on a hill”, so too Israel has the potential to become, and indeed is already becoming, a shining city and a model for the rest of the Middle East.

Most of the Middle East would vehemently deny that, of course. But over the past several years, as the rise of ISIS and the prospect of a nuclear Iran has rattled Israeli and Muslim governments alike, nations that once refused to recognize Israel’s very right to exist have begun reaching out—most notably Saudi Arabia. Israel’s willingness to engage with former adversaries has won it points with many of those same countries, and its political stability has likewise earned respect from those who assumed the tiny state would be quickly swallowed up by its many Arab neighbors soon after its founding.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that for many Americans, the story of Israel is also the story of the United States. We may have played no formal role in the founding of Israel as a nation, but many American Jews did—and they brought with them the ideals of freedom and democracy that have made this country so great. We inherited many ideas from Great Britain, our parent country, and adapted them. Through some of the many people who made the modern state of Israel a reality, we passed on those same ideas.