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The War Trump Can’t Win

S Prasannarajan
/3 min read
Now that the streets have gone silent, the slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ has paused; and competitive statesmanship from London to Paris has been denied a chance to firm up their wobbling leadership at home with standing up for a Palestinian state; the picture that comes from the battlefield is not of the starving child staring into a void but of the freed Israeli hostage coming home; and that peace in the Middle East could really begin from the ruins of Gaza; I would have loved to read the following, even if some caveats were thrown in to sound less cheerful, in some editorial pages, or heard something along the lines in Café Liberal.
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!