[rad-green] Trump’s Weakness for Power

*https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/03/patrick-lawrence-trumps-weakness-for-power/
<https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/03/patrick-lawrence-trumps-weakness-for-power/>Consortium
News          February 3, 2020Trump’s Weakness for PowerCoercive might and
money may be all that matter in Manhattan real estate.  But they are bound
to sink the president’s take-all-you-want “deal of the century” for Israel.
  By Patrick LawrenceSpecial to Consortium News*

*With the publication of the Trump administration’s Mideast “deal of the
century,” we can at least leave off any reference to it as a “peace plan.”
The Palestinians, as is well-known, had no hand in producing the terms or
the final text. But if this is not a deal and holds out no promise of peace
between Israel and a Palestinian nation,  there is nonetheless much to read
into the fraudulent framework for an Israeli–Palestinian settlement made
public last week.*

Today’s winners are tomorrow’s losers, to put the point simply.

Three years in the making, the Trump administration’s Mideast proposal is
as naked a display as we have yet had of Washington’s commitment to power
as the sole pillar of its late-imperial foreign policies. This is the
essential take-home now that this document is public. There are numerous
other examples of this emerging dependence on power alone, but the
Dealmaker’s take-all-you-want deal with Israel (and non-deal with
Palestinians) is the boldest case to date.

Diplomacy, accommodation, compromise, mutuality, the perspectives of
others: It is already clear these are among the defining features of
21st century
statecraft. Jealous of its dissipating preeminence, the U.S. proves
indifferent to all such considerations. There is no longer even the
pretense of deriving authority by way of example, so radical is
Washington’s preference for coercive might alone. The paradox is not
difficult to grasp: In displays of unadorned power we also find the limits
of power. The Trump administration’s conduct of foreign policy—primarily
but not only in the Mideast—makes failure and an American comeuppance
inevitable.

*Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and President Donald J.
Trump at Trump’s WDC unveiling of details of Middle East Peace Plan, Jan.
28, 2020. (White House/Shealah Craighead)*

The White House calls the 180–page document
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf>
published
last week “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the
Palestinian and Israeli People.” This is an arrogant display of contempt
all by itself. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, developed the document in
consultation with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab allies. It
gives Israel more or less everything it wants and leaves Palestinians with
what amount to crumbs falling from the table.

*Sham ‘State’ Proposed for Palestinians*

The U.S. plan recognizes Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley, where
the Israelis already exercise military authority, and grants Israel all of
the West Bank land where it wants to build settlements. The sham “state”
proposed for the Palestinians will have no military or defense, and Israel
will control its security. Israel will also control the borders of this
not-a-nation, so controlling Palestinians’ contacts with the outside world.
Among the few concessions-that-are-not-concessions to Palestinians, they
are awarded more or less useless tracts of land in the Negev desert.

Alert readers will have no difficulty finding a comparison here. The
Palestinian nation outlined in this set of preposterous propositions
resembles nothing so much as the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa —
poverty-ridden bits of intractable land surrounded by the superior power of
a nation built on racial identity. Check that: A comparison of equal merit
is with the stony, infertile reservations where white settlers shoved
Native Americans as the U.S. pushed itself westward.

Shame on any American who supports the Trump administration’s re-enactment
in the Mideast of these 19th century crudities. Shame on any Israeli who
makes of his or her nation so dishonorable a monument to the suffering and
sacrifice of the six million.

There is an implicit theme running through the Trump–Kushner plan, and it
is important to identify it. It has to do with the values expressed in the
document; these are certain to prove its fatal flaw.

*Dismissal of Palestinian Aspiration*

For one thing, the U.S. blueprint is a straight-out dismissal of
Palestinian aspiration. This may seem a spongy and idealistic
consideration, but it is stone real when such questions — of nationality
and identity, of recognition and parity — are at issue. The right of return
is another dimension of this. The Trump–Kushner plan simply wipes this
principle off the slate. But memory and history, like aspiration, cannot be
so flippantly eliminated, no matter how much power is brought to bear. The
last 70 years demonstrate this plainly enough.

*The World Press Photo of 2012, depicting a funeral procession in
Palestine.*

For another, the White House proposal assumes an entire people can be
bribed. This is implicit in its promise of $50 billion in development
assistance for the new collection of Palestinian Bantustans. The conceptual
flaw here is to mistake market value as the only value. This holds and
regularly proves out among New York property developers such as Trump and
Kushner. Money, power, and facts on the ground are all that matter in
Manhattan real estate. None stands much chance of winning Palestinian
acceptance, despite Trump’s insistence
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/27/trump-middle-east-peace-plan-106347>
that
the plan “will ultimately have the support of the Palestinians.”

Many years ago, during the first term of George W. Bush, Karl Rove gave an
interview
<https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html>
in
which he asserted that the U.S. was no longer bound by “discernible
reality,” as the White House aide put it. “That’s not the way the world
really works anymore,” Rove explained. “We’re an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality —
judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities,
which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.”

*Rove Warning Overlooked*

This singularly arrogant remark was much noted at the time but was thought
to reflect only the kookier extremes of the Bush II administration. What a
misinterpretation that has proven to be. Rove was effectively warning us
that the U.S. had already begun its fundamental shift toward sheer power as
the instrument of its foreign policies. This is plain in hindsight.

*Huawei expo at industrial exhibition in Berlin, 2018. (Matti Blume, CC
BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)*

There are plenty of Obama cheerleaders who continue to credit him with
cultivating a fundamental revision of U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. joined
five other nations to sign the accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs in
mid–July 2015; six days later it restored diplomatic relations with
Cuba. Fine, but the complete record must also include Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya and Yemen among the messes Obama, the serial assassin by drone,
either made or prolonged. Obama’s years do not count even as a pause
between Bush II and Trump. Underscoring the point, relations with Cuba are
re-frozen, and Trump has unilaterally withdrawn from the nuclear pact in
favor of a ruthless “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran that rests on
power alone.

Many of the Trump administration’s policies are of a piece with this notion
that power can transform reality. Beyond the Middle East, Washington makes
up tales about Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, in an attempt
to force China out of the market for 5–G telecoms technologies. In Europe,
Washington threatens sanctions against companies working on the NordStream
2 natural gas pipeline, from Russia to Germany
<https://www.google.com/search?sa=G&hl=en&tbs=simg:CAQSmQIJo9JGQr7Isd0ajQILELCMpwgaYQpfCAMSJ9QCxgfQB0zOB8EHyAfJB94CzQfjP5w59T73Pug_18z76P-Y_18j77PxowYZNyNPZl9KNktn6Oq7TZ-x5ji4GostWjKDxrru8fNXz3tsgQgr6Qtj8zW5KjjkxCIAQMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgS7vsplDAsQne3BCRqGAQoXCgVhdGxhc9qliPYDCgoIL20vMGNybmYKGAoGbnVtYmVy2qWI9gMKCggvbS8wNWZ3YgoZCgZjb3Vyc2XapYj2AwsKCS9tLzAzeHAycgoZCgZib3JkZXLapYj2AwsKCS9tLzAxa3Q0OAobCghwYXJhbGxlbNqliPYDCwoJL20vMDMwemZuDA&sxsrf=ACYBGNSDgquJrrrNNwoPMHv1AymAplYTRA:1580676994970&q=baltic+sea+and+russia&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwitwKjW4LPnAhUig3IEHZyOAwEQwg4oAHoECAcQKA&biw=1008&bih=600>,
to force Russia out of the West European market. The list goes on.

These policies share two features. They rest on power alone — in this they
are Karl Rove’s dream made flesh — and they are bound to fail, if they are
not already failing.

It is evident now that the European allies will defy U.S. efforts
<https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-builders-forge-ahead-despite-renewed-us-sanctions-threat/a-49186907>
to
sabotage NordStream 2 and keep Huawei out of 5–G. London announced last week
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britain-resisting-us-pressure-to-allow-some-huawei-equipment-in-5g-networks/2020/01/28/52e708b4-4145-11ea-99c7-1dfd4241a2fe_story.html>
that
it will allow Huawei to participate in its 5–G development program. Germany
made a similar decision
<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/16/germany-to-allow-huawei-into-5g-networks-defying-pressure-from-the-us.html>
last
autumn.

In the Middle East, it is equally clear that Iran has no intention of
buckling under U.S. sanctions and military threats. U.S. influence in the
region has already begun to decline since the drone assassination of a top
Iranian general on Iraqi soil early last month. The Pentagon now faces
popular Iraqi demands
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-demonstrators-demand-withdrawal-of-us-troops/2020/01/24/b71de708-3df3-11ea-afe2-090eb37b60b1_story.html>
to
withdraw its troops.

And now the Mideast — Israel and Palestine. The Trump administration
sacrificed all claim to “honest broker” status when it recognized Jerusalem
as Israel’s capital in December 2017 — a unilateral move that prompted the
Palestinians to stop talking to the U.S. about the plan Jared Kushner was
by then developing. Of all that is wrong with the new Trump–Kushner plan,
the absence of Palestinian input more or less assures that it will prove
dead on arrival.

Power alone is power blind. Power blind is certain to fail, for it cannot
see its way.

*Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for
the* *International
Herald Tribune**, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most
recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century”
(Yale). Follow him on Twitter **@thefloutist*
<https://twitter.com/thefloutist>*. **His web site is **Patrick Lawrence*
<http://www.patricklawrence.us/>*. Support his work via **his Patreon site*
<http://www.patreon.com/thefloutist>*.*

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