How can one make sense of the actions of the world’s most powerful man? Think of him as a star.
Where do so many commentators go wrong? They judge Donald Trump according to the diplomatic playbooks they inherited, forcing him into political frameworks that have repeatedly failed to explain him. Yet Trump is not merely playing by different rules. He is reshaping the entire universe of global strategy. What was, will no longer be.
Most commentary columns about Trump are simply childish. They see only what is happening at ground level, while Trump is already operating far above it. By the time the process now underway is complete, Israel will be the second-most powerful country in the Eastern Hemisphere, surpassed only by China.
Trump is a kind of North Star, blinking in the heavens since the dawn of time, pointing humanity in the right direction and reminding it not to lose sight of its goal. In classical schools of international statecraft, the North Star symbolized consistency above all else. Then came Donald Trump.
Many of his critics say he is the opposite of stable, at best. But that interpretation remains trapped in the terminology of traditional liberal democracy, while Trump is practicing pure Realpolitik.
Like Otto von Bismarck, the father of Realpolitik, Trump is willing to abandon what others regard as “sacred alliances,” such as NATO in its traditional form, in favor of new arrangements designed to maximize the power of what he sees as the world’s forces for good. He prefers practical solutions that work over ideological visions that remain forever out of reach, such as the belief that “the Palestinians seek peace.”
A world governed by strength
Trump’s Realpolitik is built on overlapping interests, power and deals. His argument is straightforward: the democratic world has ceded ground for too long to hostile and authoritarian forces, and the time has come to reclaim it.
Trump is becoming a guiding star for global stability, a model for others to follow. That stands in contrast to the irresponsible instability of former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, which contributed to today’s global turmoil. Trump is the complete opposite of the “flip-flopper” image pinned on him by those who have not given the matter much thought.
Examine all his decisions, the executive orders he has issued, the Cabinet members he has appointed and the principal policy documents released by the U.S. administration, including the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. All of it proves that he is far from erratic. Everything is coherent. Everything is rooted in classical conservative policy.
Common sense. A return to the Judeo-Christian values that form the foundation of the great Western civilization responsible for most of humanity’s achievements. Defending what is good without apologies. Prioritizing tradition and family values. A healthy nationalism. A constant struggle against evil and human wickedness. No accommodation and no apologies.
Therefore, for the first time in modern history, drug traffickers responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands are simply being bombed from the air, while millions of criminal trespassers who threaten to destroy the United States are being captured and deported.
Trump is doing everything he can to bring about the immediate replacement of Western Europe’s progressive leaders, whom he holds responsible for the continent’s decline. And Iran, which threatens world peace, will see its leadership disappear.
Imagine Europe adopting Trump’s principles some 40 years ago. Europe would not be collapsing today, and Iran would now have a stable democratic monarchy. We will return to that shortly.
Why is he seen as unpredictable?
Trump is a North Star, but of a new kind. He combines stability with built-in chaos, aggressive instincts with calculated restraint. That is how the leader of the world’s greatest power should act when it has set itself the goal of saving Western civilization from destruction.
In a collapsing, chaotic world, one must operate with deception and misdirection. One must be equipped with deep geopolitical understanding, remain alert, immediately recognize when massive tectonic interests are shifting and be there to prevent a collision, or, conversely, to smash those interests into one another in order to crush the axis of evil.
That is why Trump creates storms and kicks up clouds of dust through impatient, contradictory statements and double meanings. He is bursting with laughter as he writes the conflicting messages that generate the latest sandstorm, having already instructed his negotiating team on the outcome he wants to achieve.
Meanwhile, he blinds the enemy and his critics at The New York Times, whose interpretations are immediately copied, without deeper thought, by professional journalists in the Israeli media. They focus on the sand and choke on the dust of the storm, while he has already moved on to the next geopolitical masterstroke, one that changes the world order and makes our beautiful blue planet a safer place.
Rami SimaniWhat are the Abraham Accords if not an extraordinary geopolitical masterstroke that changed the world order? And what about the unusual negotiations he recently forced on the Iranians? While everyone is busy shouting that the Iranians are deceiving him, that is precisely the smokescreen he created.
It is now becoming clear, as was always evident, that the Iranians will not get a crumb unless they place their heads on the guillotine, or in other words, unless they give up their nuclear capabilities.
But along the way, and this was the holy grail he was pursuing, Trump succeeded in drawing all the supporters of the axis of evil, Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan, into tacit support for the idea that if they want an agreement with Iran to be signed, they must support the Abraham Accords.
In both cases, Israel and the free world benefited. If, as seems likely, no agreement is signed, then those countries will not enter into peace agreements with Israel. But the very fact that Trump made the statement, and that they tacitly accepted it, is the achievement he sought, one that will yet change the world order.
If an agreement is signed and those countries join the Abraham Accords, then, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to paradise.