Donald Trump’s foreign policy team is shaping up to be great news for Israel, the West, and the proper definition of America First. The erosion of American interests under the Biden Administration means that Trump will return to office looking at a world very different from the one he handed over. Israel is but one of many countries to find itself in a radically changed geopolitical position.
On October 7, 2023, Iran chose to heat up its long-simmering cold war with Israel, initially by proxy but eventually directly. Throughout that entire period, the Biden Administration has preached restraint. Its stated concerns for humanitarian aid and the avoidance of a wider war have hamstrung Israeli military action, prolonged suffering, leaked valuable intelligence, and explicitly protected Iranian nuclear facilities. By all indications, the incoming Trump Administration will take a very different approach.
Biden’s misplaced prioritization stems from a longstanding bipartisan elevation of conflict management over military victory. No Western military has set its sights on a crushing, dispositive, region-altering victory since the Second World War. Initially, this preference stemmed from a desire to avoid a direct, potentially nuclear, U.S.-USSR conflict. The historically anomalous, relatively bloodless collapse of the Soviet Empire then entrenched the conceit throughout Western foreign policy intelligentsia that, given enough time and international pressure, all conflicts would resolve themselves. As a result, the concentrated carnage of short decisive wars has given way to multigenerational suffering and instability. Few countries have suffered more from this conflict management doctrine than Israel. Few populations have suffered its depredations more than the hapless Arabs that the UN designated “Palestine Refugees.”
Fortunately, the confluence of three events has created a unique opening to stabilize the Middle East and reorient it around development and prosperity: (i) The elevation of the new Trump team; (ii) Israel’s potentially imminent military victory over Iran; and (iii) The revival of the first Trump Administration’s dormant Peace to Prosperity Plan. A fourth foreseeable potentially imminent occurrence—a succession crisis following the death or disability of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini—would be a welcome addition.
Taken together, their confluence promises to usher in a new Middle East, free of both the Iranian nuclear threat (and possibly the Iranian regime) and the permanently unsettled Palestine Refugees. If handled correctly, the resolution—not management—of these longstanding problems will also demonstrate the meaning of a true “America First” foreign policy. […]
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