I don’t know why people say that President-elect Donald Trump is going to face difficult challenges in foreign policy.
All he needs to do is get Vladimir Putin to compromise on Russia’s western border. Get Volodymyr Zelensky to compromise on Ukraine’s eastern border. Get Benjamin Netanyahu to define Israel’s western and southern borders. Get Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to define his country’s western border — that is, stop trying to control Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Get China to define its eastern border as short of Taiwan. And get the Houthis in Yemen to define their coastal border as limited to just a few miles off shore — without the right to stop all shipping into the Red Sea.
To put it another way: If you think the only border that will preoccupy Trump when he takes office on Jan. 20 is America’s southern border, you’re not paying attention.
When Trump left office in 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, one could argue that we were still in the “post-Cold War” era, dominated by increasing economic integration and Great Power peace. Russia had taken a bite out of Ukraine, but never attempted to devour the whole thing. Iran and Israel were hostile, but never directly attacked each other.
Israel occupied the West Bank, but never had a government whose official coalition agreement included formal annexation of the whole West Bank and now has members advocating the same for Gaza. America did not care for the Houthis in Yemen, but we had never sent B-2 stealth bombers to drop some of the largest payloads in our arsenal on them.
In short, a lot of bright red lines have been crossed since Trump occupied the big White House. And restoring them, and “making America great again,” will almost certainly require more subtle and sophisticated uses of force and coercive diplomacy than the isolationist Trump ever contemplated in his first administration or suggested in his campaigns.
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