RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-successes-bruce-thornton/

The recent agreements between Israel and two Gulf states mark yet another foreign policy achievement by the Trump administration. Five years ago no one could have anticipated that two more Arab states would normalize relations with Israel, with others to follow, perhaps even Saudi Arabia, “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” The decrepit “peace process” was stalled, and Barack Obama’s appeasing nuclear deal with the mullahs had left the region to the tender mercies of Iran and Russia. America was, as Obama put it, just one nation among others, “mindful of its imperfections.”

Then came Donald Trump, the amateur outsider whom the foreign policy establishment, trapped like a fly in amber by stale, failed paradigms, mocked and dismissed with predictions of existential doom from his foreign policy ignorance and bumbling. Yet Trump, like the “amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan, understood that the establishment’s narratives were endangering our security and interests. He brought some practical wisdom, common sense about human nature, and real-world experience to foreign policy, and recalibrated it with a few simple, Reaganesque principles: We win, they lose; America’s interests are paramount; and we should always be “no better friend, no worse enemy,” a foundational principle of foreign relations that Obama had turned on its head.

Trump’s current successes, on top of the agreement he brokered between bitter historical enemies Serbia and Kosovo, show that his paradigm-shift must be followed by a new foreign policy that can end the long string of failures under both parties. The longest of these is the Israeli-Arab conflict. Resolving this dispute has been the greatest prize for the “rules-based global order” that believes brokered negotiations, treaties, summits, photo-ops, and copious foreign aid, are the only means of ending conflict.

In terms of the Israel-Arab conflict, the old approach favored––and worsened––by Barack Obama illustrates the revolutionary nature of Trump’s foreign policy shift. Obama, a product of the elite’s unexamined received foreign policy wisdom, accepted the State Department’s hoary nostrums and doctrines. Seventy years of wars and terrorist violence were thus explained by the Palestinian people’s unfulfilled nationalist aspirations and dreams of independence, unlike the old colonies of the Western nations who gained independence after World War II.

https://spectator.us/bahrain-israel-peace-deal-trump-middle-east-iran/

On September 15, representatives from the oil-rich Kingdom of Bahrain will meet Israeli leaders at the White House to sign a historic peace deal. It will normalize relations between the Muslim state and the Jewish one, not long after the United Arab Emirates concluded a similar pact. Expect more such ‘normalization deals’. They supplement other White House initiatives, such as the deal it brokered between Serbia and Kosovo, which includes both countries establishing closer relations with Israel.

The deals are significant for several reasons. First, they represent a common regional front against the Iranian threat, which has been developing beneath the surface for some time. Their public expression sends a stronger signal to Iran and opens the door to greater cooperation between Arab states and Israel, the region’s most developed economy and the leader in advanced military technology.

These deals also signal that Arab-Muslim regimes are less concerned with domestic, Islamist opposition to their outreach to Israel. Equally important, they show that the Palestinian Authority no longer holds a veto over fellow Muslims’ relations with Israel. We saw another sign of Palestinian weakness last week when the Arab League refused to condemn the UAE for its accord with Israel.

What changed to prompt these deals? The answer is not a greater threat from Iran. The danger from the mullahs is no higher now than it was in 2005, 2010, or 2015. Iran’s Sunni neighbors and Israel have all been threatened by Tehran’s expansionism, aggressive religious ideology, and support for terrorist movements for years. Yet, until recently, Israel was the only country seeking normalization with its Arab neighbors. What finally convinced the Arab states to come to the table was actually a shift in US policy.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/our-man-in-jerusalem/91235/

We’re looking forward to the remarks to the Republican convention that Secretary of State Pompeo is due to air this evening after recording them at Jerusalem. The démarche should highlight the fact that of America’s two leading political parties, the Republicans have emerged as the more supportive of the Jewish state. It’s by no means the only important issue in this campaign, but it is one of them, and Mr. Trump is right to seize it.

It is symptomatic of the Democrats’ flux that Vice President Biden failed to think to arrange for a statement from Jerusalem. He had been, after all, one of the sponsors of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. That’s the law that mandates the move of the embassy. It was introduced by a Republican, Robert Dole of Kansas, on October 13, 1995, and on the same day, Mr. Biden threw in with him as a co-sponsor. There would eventually be 76.

The bill recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state . It declared a “Statement of the Policy of the United States” that “(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected; (2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and (3) the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.”

https://lawliberty.org/america-first-pays-off-in-the-middle-east/

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (“MbZ”) of the United Arab Emirates, the “most powerful Arab ruler” according to the New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick, is also the Arab world’s most sagacious political leader. With the UAE’s current account surplus of $109 billion in 2019 (vs. Saudi Arabia’s $47 billion), he wields enormous economic heft. MbZ has mentored Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 20 years his junior, since the Saudi leader’s youth. His agreement to normalize relations with the State of Israel, almost certainly the first of several Arab states to make such agreements, vitiates the Islamist agendas of Iran and Turkey and improves the prospects for a long-term solution to the Syrian civil war.

Both President Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden took credit for the agreement. The US president and his team worked for this agreement behind the scenes for years, and Trump announced it jointly with Binyamin Netanyahu and MbZ. In fact, Biden had more to do with motivating the agreement than he would like to admit. The prospect of a Democratic presidency spurred MbZ to lock in an agreement with Israel, in case Washington were to shift back to Obama’s accommodative stance toward Iran.

More than his personal diplomacy, Trump’s “America First” policies deserve credit for the agreement, the administration’s clearest achievement in foreign policy. By eschewing American military intervention in the region, Trump pushed the regional players to rise to the occasion. The mortal leap was more difficult for Prince Zayed, and will be for the Saudis and others who follow his lead, because Sunni radicalism remains a formidable force in the region—with funding and encouragement from Qatar and Turkey. The fact that energy-self-sufficient America no longer needs to play policeman in the Persian Gulf, and has wearied of sacrificing blood and treasure in regional wars, compels the Gulf states to act responsibly as a matter of self-preservation. As long as the Gulf States remained de facto US protectorates, they could claim that the “Arab Street” stood in the way of relations with Israel. Now that they have to take responsibility for their own defense, they look to Israel for help.