Matt Kroenig: Hi Emma, usually January and February seem like slow months that drag on forever as we wait for spring. But not this year.
It is hard to believe the Trump administration has only been in office for a little over two weeks. They are moving so fast that it is hard to keep track of everything that’s happened since our last column.
Emma Ashford: I heard the groundhog saw his shadow the other day, so I assume that means another six weeks of wild executive orders. Perhaps I’ll just crawl back into my burrow.
MK: Trump has threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico and imposed them on China. There’s talk of taking over Greenland and the Panama Canal. Not to mention sanctions against Russia and executive orders to build an American “Iron Dome” missile defense and restore maximum pressure against Iran. Plus, the USAID shutdown and restructuring. And now, a proposal for the United States to occupy Gaza.
Where should we begin?
EA: Let’s start with Gaza, which is both the most recent outburst and has the biggest potential downside for U.S. national security. The Trump administration hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday at the White House, and during remarks to the press, Trump said that the United States would occupy the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been fighting its war against Hamas. He told them that the United States has “an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East” and that all the Palestinians who live in the strip will be resettled elsewhere.
I’m not even sure where to begin with this. It’s pretty much every bad idea you can imagine rolled into one: The U.S. government takes responsibility for the territory Israel has flattened, gets to combat a likely Hamas insurgency, is in charge of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip by removing all the Palestinians. And for what? To build luxury hotels on the beach? This is utterly crazy.
MK: Trump’s outsider status and comfort with disruption has the virtue of drawing attention to a failing policy. And I think we can all admit that the politically correct mantra of a two-state solution has been tried for more than 30 years and has failed. And we do not seem like we are getting any closer. Instead of the two sides living in peace, we got Oct. 7, 2023, and a major war.
I see Trump’s provocative proposal in part as a challenge to the regional actors. Trump does not seem to like military occupation and nation-building. After all, he was a critic of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, I don’t think he relishes the idea of taking over Gaza. I think he is laying out a bold position and challenging the Palestinian Authority and Arab states by saying, essentially, “If you don’t like the idea of the displacement of the Palestinians and an American occupation in your backyard, then offer something better.”
EA: You might be right that this is a negotiating tactic, but even as Trump’s staff tried to walk it back, the president himself doubled down on Truth Social, saying that Palestinians would be resettled in the region and the United States would manage Gaza’s redevelopment!
It has certainly grabbed the attention of leaders in Arab capitals, but they seem unwilling to cave and take significant numbers of Palestinian refugees from Gaza; there’s a widespread belief across much of the region that doing so will simply enable Israel to annex the strip and displace Palestinians permanently.
Nor are regional states keen to bear the cost of rebuilding Gaza just to see Israel flatten it again in a few years; they’ve tried that approach before, and it doesn’t work. So perhaps Trump will get some concessions on aid to Gaza, but I don’t see regional states committing significantly more.
And this notion of occupying Gaza is in direct conflict with one of Trump’s own reported priorities, which is expanding upon the Abraham Accords from his first term, particularly through Saudi-Israeli normalization. But at this point, progress toward a Palestinian state is a prerequisite in Riyadh for any steps toward normalization; the Saudis keep saying this loudly and publicly.
I don’t know who has been telling the president that an occupation of Gaza will help this goal—though I suspect it might be his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Whoever suggested it, they’re wrong. The only person who will be happy with a U.S. occupation of the Gaza Strip is Netanyahu, who gets to foist responsibility for cleaning up his mess onto the United States.
MK: We will have to see how this plays out. In the meantime, do you plan to invest in beachfront property in the new Riviera of the Middle East?
EA: That waterfront property isn’t going to look too good while U.S. troops are fighting an insurgency all over it. And I think Bob Pape’s argument here at Foreign Policy earlier this week is also worth considering: What if a U.S. occupation of the Gaza strip sets off a new wave of jihadi violence across the Middle East and elsewhere?
MK: He makes a valid point. Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have not historically targeted the United States, but a U.S. occupation of Gaza could change that.
There is also news closer to home, including Trump’s tariff threats against Canada, Mexico, and China.
Some have criticized the president for launching a trade war against allies, but that is the wrong way to think about it. The president’s demands dealt with his top priority of strengthening border security. Canada and Mexico both agreed to take additional steps to help seal the United States’ borders almost immediately, and Trump took the tariff threat back off the table.
What do you make of this episode?
EA: Well, the chart for the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last few days looks less like a typical stock market and more like one of those seismographs that tracks earthquakes. It’s just fluctuating wildly, as markets try to adapt to each new shock. Call me old fashioned, but I’m not sure that constantly roiling the markets with threats is good for business.
Trump certainly got the Canadians and Mexicans to publicly bend the knee. But are these real concessions? Less than 1 percent of the fentanyl entering the United States comes through the northern border, and only about one in 12 of the migrants apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. And the Canadians just recommitted to something they were already doing!
MK: Some of the steps are new and seem to be in response to the pressure, such as Mexico’s plan to send 10,000 national guard troops to help secure the border. But Trump has said the tariffs are simply being paused, so this is an issue that will likely come back up in the future.
EA: Markets and businesses aren’t exactly big fans of this kind of uncertainty, either, so I’m not sure holding the tariffs over everyone’s head like a sword of Damocles is going to help. Bloomberg now calculates that uncertainty over tariffs will cut U.S. industrial production by 1 percent in the next year. Ultimately, if this is a negotiating or pressure tactic, fair enough, but it’s definitely worrying to me that Washington is considering massive tariffs on some of its biggest trading partners.
Did you know that we import about a quarter of our oil from Canada and Mexico? We’re talking about significant areas that will impact Americans’ daily lives.
Also lost in the shuffle has been the China tariffs that the administration put in place, prompting Chinese retaliation. I’m just not sure that threatening tariffs for every foreign-policy issue is the silver bullet that the White House thinks it is.
MK: I was glad to see that the tariffs on China remain in place. The United States and its allies need to continue to derisk their economies from China.
EA: Great. How can we derisk while simultaneously waging a trade war against our closest trading partners? You’re a proponent of so-called friendshoring, right? It’s hard to friendshore when you don’t have any friends left.
MK: There has been a lot of coverage claiming that Trump is targeting the United States’ friends first, but this overlooks the fact that he has already hit three-quarters of its adversaries with threats: sanctions on Russia, tariffs on China, and maximum pressure against Iran.
Another issue that seems more permanent is the Trump administration’s plan to restructure the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In recent days, Washington froze all foreign aid, shut down USAID’s headquarters, recalled workers from overseas assignments, and proposed moving the organization into the State Department. What is your take?
EA: My take is probably going to be unpopular with all sides. There are legitimate problems with how development aid is run by the U.S. government; its successes are extremely limited.
Some of the related organizations that conservatives are now zeroing in on for criticism—the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), for example—often act in quite problematic ways, promoting highly divisive social issues in some societies and building an NGO elite class in others.
It’s past time to reconsider USAID’s role and whether it might not be better to combine aid and diplomacy under the State Department. Britain did the same thing a few years back, combining aid and diplomacy into the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO). Thus far, that merger has been poorly implemented—thanks to COVID-19, Brexit, and Boris Johnson—but I think the principle is sound.
That said, shutting down USAID overnight with no clear guidance to staff and leaving literal warehouses of food to rot overseas when there are starving people is just malpractice. This could have been done much more effectively with a step-by-step plan. And it certainly won’t improve the United States’ image around the world.
So, are you in favor of getting rid of USAID and organizations like the NED? That seems to be the new Republican line. But I remember as recently as last week, a lot of conservatives thought these institutions were pretty vital.
MK: Let’s remember when and why these organizations were founded. They were set up during the Cold War to advance the United States’ position in the global competition with the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, however, USAID lost sight of its purpose. It has become more of a U.S. taxpayer-funded charity organization than a tool of great-power competition.
I think it is time to realign its mission. I’m not in favor of shutting it down but of repurposing it to better advance U.S. interests in the new Cold War with China and Russia.
Some organizations, like the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and the NED, have done a better job of pivoting to the new geopolitical moment. The NED, for example, supports dissident groups in the United States’ autocratic adversaries, striking at dictators’ Achilles heel.
I am not sure that moving USAID to the State Department will solve the problem. The entire State Department itself needs to be more strategic. Diplomats need better training to fully understand their job is not to maintain foreign relations, but to advance U.S. interests.
I think Secretary of State Marco Rubio had it right when he said on his first day on the job that all State Department activity “must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
EA: State Department reform is essential. And there are a lot of great ideas floating around out there, including from a number of former diplomats who see the need for reform. And I completely agree that the department needs to get back to its core mission, which is achieving U.S. interests through effective diplomacy.
But I do worry that most of the energy in the Trump administration around diplomacy seems to be focused on ending DEI initiatives and using a bunch of special envoys. I worry that State might be reduced to little more than a vestigial diplomatic presence and consular work if serious reforms aren’t undertaken. It also doesn’t help that the department’s budget is likely to be aggressively slashed.
MK: Some of these moves caught me off guard, but others were entirely predictable. Trump followed through on his campaign promises to get tough on Iran and to build an “Iron Dome” for the United States with executive orders this week.
EA: He says he’s going to get tough, but he wants to reach a deal and have a “big Middle East Celebration.” That doesn’t sound like he’s keen to bomb Iran, like you so often suggest.
MK: His statements on Iran this week were right on target. Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon,” and the best way to achieve that goal is through diplomacy. A deal that is stronger and more durable than former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal is what Trump will be aiming for, and that would be a major achievement if he gets it.
Maybe we can delve more into that issue next time? Or maybe there will be three dozen new executive orders and crises to address before we reconvene and this will all feel like ancient history?
EA: Yeah, by our next column, the United States will probably be trying to conquer the Outer Hebrides for its strategic importance to the global Harris tweed trade.
This administration is already giving new meaning to the phrase “flood the zone.” Better stock up on caffeine and headache pills.
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