Spread the love

Trump the Dump’s Peace Efforts Falter:

Conflicts in Ukraine & Gaza Escalate

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

A month after the much-hyped Alaskan summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald J. Trump still seems surprised that his gambit did not pay off with peace or even a ceasefire in Ukraine (AP/Associated Press, Sept. 20).

This is because Putin has all the cards, or to use the chess analogy, he is the grandmaster, whereas Trump is a mere amateur in the grand strategy of world politics.

In addition, Putin has a strange, nay ‘magic’ hold on Trump, who always defers to the Russian autocrat.

Regardless, just to demonstrate that he is not in fact beholden to Putin, Trump regularly seems to break out of the Russian’s stranglehold.

Thus, Trump said last week of Putin: “He’s let me down. He really let me down.”

But each time, Trump is not at all consequential. He undertakes nothing, absolutely nothing against Putin’s terrible daily depredations in Ukraine – and now lately his pinpricks against NATO allies – blatant violations of territorial integrity.

The New York Times’ star columnist Thomas L. Friedman has pointed out Trump’s incessant waffling when it comes to actually doing something to deter Vladimir Putin’s steadily increasing onslaught on Ukraine, not to mention his recent drone incursion into America’s NATO ally Poland.

“Putin keeps spitting in Trump’s eye and Trump keeps telling the world that it’s raining” [!] (NYT, Sept. 19).

After the drone incident in Poland, all that Trump could muster was a post on his Truth Social platform: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”    

“A day later, though, he made it clear he was going nowhere. “It could have been a mistake, he said of the drone penetration” (NYT/Friedman).

This was a clear demonstration that Trump is spineless and gutless.

Again and again, Trump adds another condition or another timeline for when he will impose meaningful economic sanctions on Russia.

Middle East

There has been no progress in the Middle East, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beginning a new offensive in Gaza City and lashing out across the region – with Trump collusion.

He had the audacity to state (with tongue in cheek): “They have to be very, very careful,” Trump said of Israel after it targeted Hamas inside Qatar, a US ally that has been hosting diplomatic negotiations.

No one will believe that Netanyahu did not inform Trump beforehand that he intended to violate Qatar’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – least of all Qatar that hosts the largest US base in the Middle East.

Trump’s put on show disappointment and frustration (he is a passable actor) is much different from the confidence and dominance he tries to project on the international stage, especially as he trumpets his (pseudo) diplomatic efforts and campaigns for the Nobel Peace Prize (AP).

Thus, asked about his goals for the upcoming UN General Assembly (UNGA), Trump said “world peace”.

(Here he was showing his Dr Jekyll side and not Mr Hyde’s).

Trump has irritated so many people in the world at large, that he could very well be booed when he addresses UNGA.

Under his watch, he has succeeded in escalating the most high-profile conflicts instead of winding them down!

The statement by Max Bergmann, a State Department official under Democratic President Barack Obama, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, is instructive: “This whole last nine months of peace efforts was just a merry-go-round.”

Trump the Showman or Trump the Statesman?

Trump is very susceptible to pomp and show – as his recent second state visit to the UK illustrated.

He prizes bold gestures – a stealth bomber strike in Iran, a sweeping tariff announcement – but solving a global jigsaw puzzle is far beyond his capacity or aspirations.

He is the very embodiment of the ‘Emperor in his new clothes’!

Trump usually ends up spinning his wheels on more challenging issues and eventually gives up, such as when he tried to persuade Kim Jong Un, in his first term, to end North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Matt Kroenig, a senior policy adviser at the Pentagon during Trump’s first term, wonders that in making peace in Ukraine and Gaza, there may also come a point when he says: ‘This is too hard, let’s move on to other issues.’

Trump’s Dilettantic Foreign Policy

U.S. foreign policy is usually a team venture for presidential administrations, requiring extensive coordination among agencies through the National Security Council.

But Trump has idiotically slashed the staff of both the Council and the State Department and completely extinguished the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

On top of that, Marco Rubio  serves as both secretary of state and national security adviser – a burden far too heavy for Rubio.

Trump himself is a man fuelled by grudges and grievances.

There is no real policy-making process in his administration.

There is no sign that any of Trump’s policy declarations conveyed through social media are vetted first by area experts in the State Department, National Security Council or the CIA; no sign that anything is run by the Senate or House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Middle East is increasingly in turmoil

In the Middle East, because of his own foolishness and lack of diplomatic finesse, Trump is getting caught in the middle of an increasingly combustible situation.

He has visited Arab nations, including Qatar, this year to strengthen ties, and he has backed Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Iran to the hilt.

But now Israel, emboldened by its battlefield success, is striking more widely throughout the region, including the recent attack targeting Hamas official in Doha.

That jeopardized negotiations that the United States has been trying to push along and rattled Arab leaders’ faith in Trump’s ability and willingness to influence, let alone rein in, Netanyahu.

Some of them now view Israel, not Iran, as their primary security threat.

It’s a notable diplomatic shift after Israel and some Arab nations grew closer during Trump’s first term, when the Republican president championed the Abraham Accords.

During next week’s annual high-level gathering at the UN General Assembly, Rubio and Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, another diplomatic nincompoop, can expect to hear a chorus of criticism, with Arab nations seeking a more fundamental shift in how the US approaches the region.

Trump’s equivocal approach to Putin

In Europe, Trump has frustrated his critics with his equivocal approach to Putin, often nonsensically suggesting that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is just as responsible for the war that Putin started with his February 2022 invasion.

Trump recently bragged that his Alaska meeting with Putin “accomplished a lot”, [actually nothing at all] but “it takes two to tango” [Zelensky and Putin, where the latter is extremely reluctant].

Fears that the war in Ukraine could spill over have been heightened by recent Russian military incursions into the airspace of NATO members Poland and Estonia.

After three Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace on Friday, Trump said it could signal “big trouble” – in Trump-speak: big talk, but again no concrete action to deter such provocations.

Trump created the volatile and chaotic situation, and there seems to be no one and no institution capable of controlling his evil instincts.

However, Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska (Brig. Gen. retd.) has risen to the occasion and contradicted Trump on ‘X’: “Mr. President, Putin is the one who is the invader. And now this war is on your watch, and you’ll be judged in the history books in the decades to come by your actions or lack thereof” (NYT).

The writer can be reached at:

shashimalla125@gmail.com