The War Trump Can’t Win

 DONALD TRUMP IS in a hurry to make as many deals as possible within the limited span of four years, as if his storied transactional power could overcome the conventional hurdles of geopolitics—and reshape history after his “terrific” imagination. And he was hoping that the Norwegian Nobel Committee would not overlook his contributions to bringing enemies to the peace table and disarming clandestine nuclear wannabes. He was indeed rebuffed by India for taking credit for ending its retaliation against Pakistan in the wake of the massacre at Pahalgam, Kashmir, but that didn’t stop him from calling the Indian prime minister a good friend. What must have irked him was that an appreciative nod from New Delhi would have added to his campaign for the Nobel. And then they gave it, on the eve of the Gaza deal, to a Trump-friendly crusader in Venezuela fighting against the Maduro dictatorship from her hideout, and who, on winning the Prize, did the “nice thing” by reportedly telling Trump that “I’m accepting this in honour of you, because you really deserved it.” That was like throwing chilli flakes into his bleeding ego: Thank you for reminding me that I’m being consistently denied what I deserve, and am I condemned to manage a world that saw, not long ago, a predecessor of mine winning the Prize for not being George W Bush. Come on!

 Let the President of Grievance lick his wounds, maybe for another twelve months before the Norwegian Committee comes around. Ukraine still beckons. But let’s not be dismissive of him because he doesn’t belong to the world that has been stolen from us by the people suffering from greatness-fetish. Let the style of the man not cloud our vision in acknowledging the substance of his achievement, no matter how much arm-twisting the strongman had to do. His 20-point plan, which will be overseen by a board chaired by the peacemaker-in-chief himself, has already begun working, with hostages returning home and Israeli troops withdrawing. The most crucial aspects of the plan include keeping Hamas out of the political and administrative future of Gaza and bringing a refurbished Palestinian Authority, which is as much discredited as Hamas is barbaric, back in power. For the moment, replacing tribal bloodlust with technocracy to rebuild from the ruins is a big leap for a region steeped in disputed histories and the cult of death. The success of restoration will determine the final phase of peace, where the idea of Palestine will have to choose between Islamism and nationalism, and where the Jewish state needs to be convinced that its right to exist has been granted by its neighbours. That the end of the war in Gaza is not a forced pause but a prologue to a new Middle East must be a shared responsibility, with the sole exclusion of the ghost of Yahya Sinwar.

We all are indebted to Trump, and it’s so painful for some of us to accept this. The indebtedness is to a president who, despite his rambunctious persona, has restored classical Americanism itself, the Wilsonian spirit of moral intervention that the neocons had messed up in Iraq. If we thought that the street fighters of the Western world could defeat Israel, that the genocidal rage of October 7, 2023 was inevitable, that the punishment far exceeded the crime, weren’t we allowing our liberal conscience to reduce the Hamas-led Palestinian struggle to a morally satisfying game of spot-the-victim? Were we marching for the end of the war in Gaza? Or for the punishment of Israel, a metaphorical October 7 with diplomatic legitimacy? In the end, it took a Trump to take control of the Middle East story co-authored by disparate moralists even as anti-Semitism shed all its inhibitions. Peace is a show of strength, and that is where Trump has, for once, played it true to the MAGA spirit without the usual cultural kitsch. Do we still wish the board of peace was chaired by an Obama so that we could pop the Dom Pérignon?

Donald Trump can only win the peace—and lose the liberals.