May 23, 2021: Team Trump Failed at Foreign Diplomacy

 

5/23/21: At this blog, we rarely criticize presidents for foreign policy failures. These “failures” often have more to do with other nations’ intransigence or come as a result of daunting complexity. 

It is, however, amusing and painful to look back on some of Rejected-President Trump’s greatest foreign policy brags.

North Koreans can certainly march.

 

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Diplomacy is always a bitch.

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First, we had his claim that he could get North Korea to give up its nukes, because Kim Jong-un was his portly pal. According to an article in The New York Times, the best estimate is that the North has doubled its arsenal in the last four years, to 45 nuclear weapons. That would be roughly the same as Pakistan. (U.S. presidents were never able to convince Pakistan to disarm either.) 

The BBC estimates that there are 14,000 nuclear weapons held by nine nations (United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel), down from 70,000 in 1986. 

Progress? 

Israel has as many as 90, experts believe, and material to produce another hundred if need arise.

 

Trump’s second brag was that he and Jared Kushner had created the framework for a lasting peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Or, as Jared told the Wall Street Journal, two months ago, “We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict.” 

Jared was pumped, because 130,000 Israelis had visited Dubai since August 2020, when the United Arab Emirates was one of the first Arab nations to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Jared was thrilled because wealthy jet-setter types – people just like him – were headed to the “Las Vegas of the Arabian Peninsula.” For the perpetually clueless Mr. Kushner, that was phenomenal success.

 

The only problem was that the plan for peace he helped craft gave Israel a free hand to kick ordinary Palestinians out of neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and boot them off even more land in the West Bank. The anger of the Palestinians increased, and they never bothered to show up for peace discussions with the U.S. negotiating team.

 

We freely admit on this blog that diplomacy is always a bitch. In this regard, the Trump approach was no more nor less successful than, say, the approach of the Obama administration. Or even the Truman and Eisenhower approaches. We fault Jared for his naivete in failing to recognize the complexity of the issues. 

And Loser Don for ridiculous bragging. 

The massive destruction from bombs and rockets and the heavy loss of life in both Israel and Palestine in recent days indicates that the Biden administration will have to try to untie the same Gordian knot that has baffled a bakers’ dozen of presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Donald J. Trump).