A pair of advisors to Donald Trump is under increasing pressure to deliver on the goal of giving him a presidential legacy.
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are believed to be in the hot seat as they continue to broker peace on behalf of Trump in a series of world conflicts. Whether they are successful will decide how Trump’s legacy as a world leader is written, according to CNN analyst Steven Collinson. This pressure may make the pair’s efforts trickier, and their aims of brokering peace that much harder.
Collinson wrote, “Witkoff and Kushner might be unorthodox. But they have the indispensable credential every successful peace negotiator needs — empowerment by the president. Special envoy Witkoff, a wealthy real estate developer, has been a Trump friend for decades. Kushner has no official government role.
“But he’s the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and therefore family. Neither appears to have any political ambition outside polishing Trump’s legacy. Each man personifies Trump’s unique brand of foreign policy.
“They’re business tycoons who disdain formal diplomatic and governmental structures and seem to see every global conflict as a potential real estate deal. Each also has huge commercial interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, a concern for critics who believe Trump makes no distinction between his own interests and the nation’s.”
This work towards cementing the legacy of the president may work in the pair’s favor though, if they can survive the pressure that comes with being part of the Trump administration, Collinson suggests.
“Trump’s impatience also means Witkoff and Kushner are under the kind of pressure that can lead to superficiality,” he wrote. “Successful US peace efforts usually followed painstaking and intricate diplomacy.
“The Camp David Accords in the Carter presidency were the culmination of an entire term of preparatory work. The Dayton Accords that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia followed months of daring wartime diplomacy and relentless US duress on the parties led by Richard Holbrooke, the most talented American diplomat of his generation.
“But Trump’s evisceration of the department has deprived his administration of institutional memory and expertise that might have built on any breakthroughs by Kushner and Witkoff.
“America’s amateur peacemakers may have Trump’s ear, but they have yet to prove they belong in the geopolitical big leagues”.
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