Peace President Donald Trump’s foreign policy in action

Discussions about Trump 2.0 foreign policy that don’t focus on the remarkable diplomatic ineptness it has demonstrated so far on, well, nearly everything, have tended to focus on standard speculation about which faction is up or down. Commentators these days tend to talk about foreign policy factions of neocons, America Firsters (often called isolationists), and liberal internationalists.

The often-overlapping trends of “restrainers” and “realists” are influential in the political and academic discussions over foreign policy but don’t tend to figure into the score-keeping discussions about which faction is up or down in the government at a given moment. The liberal interventionists were prominent in the Biden Administration. In the Trump 2.0 regime, the range of foreign policy perspectives seem to be between neocons and America First isolationists, with the latter being supposedly against “forever wars”.

But with Trump 2.0, there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful differences at all between “isolationists” and neocons when it comes to ever-increasing military budgets and disdain for the value of international diplomacy and arms-control agreements. And the chaotic MAGA trade wars that Trump has initiated are not necessarily conducive to stable and peaceful international relations. Plus, Trump has been at war in Yemen, has failed to achieve any obvious steps toward a Russia-Ukraine peace, reached on apparent substantial progress in a new nuclear arms-control agreement with Iran, and has been threatening war against Canada, Denmark (over Greenland), Panama, and sporadically makes threats that he will bomb-the-hell out of countries that some defy him.

But the US remains committed to a military and political cooperation with Israel that involves the US in more and more involvements in wars in the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen. And maybe in directly supporting an illegal annexation of Gaza by Israel, complete with the ongoing war against civilians there. And, as Amor Tibon writes under the following headline:

[T]he one place in the world where an Iraq-style neoconservative experiment is about to take place, with potentially devastating effects, is the one Trump seems least interested about these days: Gaza.

It's over there, not in Iran or in Ukraine, where his administration is being dragged into an adventure drawn up directly from the Iraq War textbook. Yet Trump and the neocon-bashers around him don't seem to get it, or worse, don't have the courage to make it stop. (1)

He writes that plan being discussed by the Netanyahu government for Gaza that would involve the following:

American companies will begin operating in southern Gaza, under the supervision of the Israeli military, in a "humanitarian compound" surrounded by barbed wire. Two million Gazan citizens will be concentrated in this compound to get food and aid, while Israel will take over the rest of Gaza and use the pressure put on Gaza's population in order to topple the Hamas regime.

What will that regime be replaced with? That's a great question, but the Israeli government can't agree on an answer, except saying "no" to every suggested alternative – no to a different Palestinian government, no to temporary control by Arab governments, no to the return of the Palestinian Authority. So, no answer. …

It's plans like this ultimately lead to what President Trump described as "forever wars," with no clear exit strategy and a constantly delayed deadline. American contractors in Iraq were also responsible for egregious human rights abuses during the insurgency there, including the killings of civilians.

So, Netanyahu’s latest plan is to set up a big concentration camp – excuse me, a “‘humanitarian compound’ surrounded by barbed wire” – to be run by US mercenaries – oops, I mean “American companies”?

Yanis Varoufakis, who can be quirky but also gets a lot of things right, apparently sees a scenario unfolding similar to that Tibon describes:

The grim irony of Israel’s occupation blueprint is that it constitutes a carbon copy of the neocons’ catastrophic Iraq playbook. One would think the architects of this folly—Trump’s coterie of hawkish nostalgists that have chosen Palestine as their training ground, now that Trump is attempting to close down the Ukraine war — might recall how that particular adventure ended: in unmitigated disaster for Washington’s imperial pretensions, not to mention the Iraqi people. Yet here we are, watching Netanyahu reheat the same rancid recipe—as if the past two decades of blowback, from Fallujah to ISIS, never happened.

Picture the grotesque spectacle: two million Gazans on death row and herded into a even more dystopian enclosure than Gaza itself, rationed food by profit-hungry US contractors while barbed wire and surveillance towers loom overhead. Sound familiar? It should. This was the exact dystopia concocted by Bush’s cabal—outsourcing repression to mercenaries like Blackwater, whose atrocities later became Exhibit A in the trial of American moral bankruptcy.

And who, pray tell, was among the most fervent cheerleaders for the Iraq debacle? None other than Netanyahu himself, jetting to Washington in 2002 to sermonize about Saddam’s downfall heralding a new Middle Eastern dawn. Fast forward to today, and the same man peddles the same snake oil: smash Hamas, pacify Gaza, and — presto! — stability will magically ensue. [my emphasis] (2)

Varoufakis and his DiEM25 political group are definitely on the left side of the spectrum. But they don’t seem to share the fond hope of some left-leaning restrainers that maybe Trump 2.0 really is trying to de-militarize US foreign policy and reduce war dangers. I’m all for optimism. And political miracles do happen here and there. But hopes that the Orange Anomaly will actually become a Peace President at the moment would have to require quite a miracle!

Amos Harel isn’t expecting one at the moment:

Let me be blunt: We are marching into another disaster in the Gaza Strip. If U.S. President Donald Trump opts to stay out of the matter during his visit to the Gulf next week, Israel will begin escalating its military operations in Gaza once he flies back to Washington.

Given how the maneuver is being planned, it is fair to expect an invasion of large swathes of Gaza, prolonged territorial control, loss of life among hostages and soldiers, and further deterioration of the humanitarian situation the Palestinians are already suffering. It is doubtful, however, that it will achieve a decisive defeat of Hamas. …

Addressing a conference sponsored by the religious Zionist newspaper B'Sheva, [far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said]: "We're occupying Gaza to stay. There will be no more entering and leaving." He explained that all Gaza residents will be evacuated south of the Morag corridor. In other words, the army is planning to squeeze more than two million people into an area amounting to less than a quarter of the Gaza Strip. …

The idea of displacing Gazans, which Smotrich enthusiastically peddles, is to prepare for a "voluntary" transfer (and in practice a violent expulsion). This is the plan Trump toyed with three months ago, in that first meeting with Netanyahu. Since then, the president has hardly mentioned it. It seems he has other headaches, from the tariff war with China, to his announcement over the weekend to impose a 100 percent tariff on films made abroad to save Hollywood from, as he put it, "a very fast death." [my emphasis] (3)

A Haaretz editorial gives this grim description of the current Netanyahu government’s actions:

A total siege has been imposed on the Gaza Strip for the past two months, and as a result, children have been dying from malnutrition. The security cabinet wants to aggravate this situation. According to its plan, the entire civilian population will be evacuated to the Morag route and pushed into a zone covering less than a quarter of the entire Strip, where Gazans will also have to deal with hunger, disease and a lack of aid.

All this for what? The political survival of an out-of-touch government that has turned the war into a recipe for preserving the government coalition. Netanyahu, who backed down in the past only under direct pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, continues to go with the flow of the zealots of the Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism parties toward the delusions of a population transfer, settlements and a military government. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said it explicitly: "We are conquering in order to stay. There is no more entering and exiting." (4)

One of the consequences of the Israeli government’s continuing escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is also exposing that one of the seemingly constructive achievements of Trump’s first administration is not looking so great.

It would be an understatement to say that Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7 have undermined Saudi Arabia’s meticulous socialization strategies. What may plausibly constitute a genocide, according to the International Court of Justice, has not only shattered the frail momentum toward normalization but has also undoubtedly reignited deep-seated resistance to any ties with Israel and reaffirmed a commitment to the Palestinian cause within Saudi society. (5)

If you’re wondering whether the Republicans are right when they call any and all criticism of Israel’s war on Palestinian civilians antisemitic, this post by Frances Coppola is worth reading:

And it should not be taboo to use this word [“Holocaust”] about atrocities committed by Jews. I reject out of hand the line of argument that says "Jews would never do anything that could be called a holocaust." Jews are human beings, not angels. All humans are capable of evil. Saying Jews would never do anything evil is arrant nonsense. It is also antisemitic, since it renders Jews inhuman.

In [a previous] post, I distinguished clearly between The Holocaust, which I explicitly stated was the most horrific genocide of our time, and other holocausts. The other holocausts I cited were not conducted by the Israeli military. It would be antisemitic to uniquely refrain from calling the Gaza conflagration a holocaust simply because the proximate perpetrator is the Jewish state. (6)

Notes:

(1) Tibon, Amir (2025): Netanyahu's New Gaza Plan Is Taken Straight Out of the Iraq War Playbook. Haaretz 05/05/2025. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-05/ty-article/.premium/netanyahus-new-gaza-plan-is-taken-straight-out-of-the-iraq-war-playbook/00000196-a09b-d460-abf6-e7db1daa0000?gift=eca1bd88b3f74fc1b3f9b38803ce76d6> (Accessed: 2025-06-05).

(2) Varoufakis, Yanis (2025): X/Twitter 05/06/2025. <https://x.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1919704210481844651> (Accessed: 2025-07-05).

(3) Harel, Amos (2025): Israel Is Heading for Another Disaster in Gaza, Fueled by Netanyahu's Delusional Plans. Haaretz 05/05/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-05/ty-article/.premium/israel-is-heading-for-another-disaster-in-gaza-fueled-by-netanyahus-delusional-plans/00000196-a193-d372-abf7-b5d7343f0000> (Accessed: 2025-07-05).

(4) Editorial (2025): Israel Will Pay a Heavy Price if It Continues Its Campaign of Death in Gaza. Haaretz 05/06/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-05-06/ty-article-opinion/israel-will-pay-a-heavy-price-if-it-continues-its-campaign-of-death-in-gaza/00000196-a71f-dbb0-af9f-af9f08960000> (Accessed: 2025-07-05).

(5) Al Ansari, Hind (2025): How Gaza’s horrors turned Israeli normalization into a Saudi domestic crisis. +972 Magazine 04/24/2025. <https://www.972mag.com/saudi-israeli-normalization-gaza-crisis/>  (Accessed: 2025-07-05).

(6) Coppola, Frances (2025): The Five Commandments of writing about Gaza. Coppola Comment 04/28/2025. <https://coppolacomment.substack.com/p/the-five-commandments-of-writing> (Accessed: 2025-07-05).