Redrawing the Map
Where Biden stumbled, Israel succeeded making Trump's job a lot easier
Released late on a Sunday, the Hunter Biden pardon is an epitaph to a presidency that started with high hopes but in the end was overtaken by serious political incompetence, multiple domestic crises and a rapidly fracturing global order. Even if you weren’t confident about Biden as president, you could at least have held out some hope given his long track record and foreign policy expertise, but in that department too things started to fall apart as his term wore on. Ukraine is in a worse than ever position since Russia launched its war and in the Middle East the policy of maintaining a negotiated order and artificial stabilization too failed to stand the test of the new power dynamics that are changing the world.
Yes, Israel has won a number of decisive battles by rolling back and almost destroying Hamas, incapacitating Hezbollah and most importantly rendering Iran impotent and solidly on the defensive. Within the past week we have consequently seen the re-emergence of a possible deal with Hamas involving the hostages, a complete redrawing of the battlefield in Syria with a potential collapse of the Assad regime and, interestingly, a nascent and unafraid civil society in Lebanon. The latter is learning that Nasrallah’s terror group’s hold on its society had in the end its limitations. It started with exploding pagers, was followed by aerial attacks and troop incursions and now a ceasefire deal that - although many pro-Israel forces some do not like it - for all intents and purposes is actually a solid win for Israel. In all of these instances the Israelis, under the often controversial leadership of Bibi Nethanyahu, defied the wishes of Washington whose sole strategy was to avoid escalation. Think Rafah, think Haniyeh, think again about those pagers. Israel just pushed forward.
Although not without flaws and terrible losses, Gaza was largely captured, the blueprint to destroy Hezbollah (which had been in the making for years) only needed to be activated at the right time. That is what happened and it worked, devastatingly. In a certain way you can argue that most of the heavy lifting has now been completed and that will make the entry of Trump on the international scene a lot easier. It is not inconceivable that the Lebanon ceasefire was pushed in a hard way by some of Trump’s people: it is one front less to worry about, it has boxed in Iran and it will give Israel and the US all the necessary room to wrap up the Hamas piece, hopefully with a hostage release and a more stable Gaza.
To be clear, the war is far from over. Gaza will remain quite chaotic and dangerous, Iran is not down and out and a re-emerging caliphate in Syria has inserted a whole new dynamic into the Middle East, but we have reached a certain plateau. Israel has re-asserted itself and with it created a new power balance.
Biden’s strategies are a thing of the past and Trump’s transactional approach will have to be the new norm of doing business in the Middle East. It also means that long term strategic goals like a two-state solution, neutralizing Iran’s nuclear power while achieving regional harmony will have to take a back seat. US foreign policy in the Middle East will be reactive, at times driven by economics and at other times driven by domestic considerations. Its principal enforcer will be one of the strongest armies on the planet, the IDF.
As America passes the torch to yet another septuagenarian leader there will paradoxically be a generational shift. An ever strong America that will through increasing collaboration with strong and reliable local proxies achieve its short-term goals. This is Trump’s preference, but it is quite certain that the current global landscape does not give him any other options than to approach the world in this particular way. Israel and the Middle East are a case in point.
Photo: IDF chief Herzi Halevi visiting the troops in Lebanon a few weeks ago.