Donald Trump’s return to the White House after a short hiatus has scrambled foreign capitals, not because his win against former Vice President Kamala Harris was a surprise, but rather because the next four years could look remarkably different than the last four. Trump enters the Oval Office with a big “to-do” list on his desk and a boatload of ambition to boot.
Reality, however, tends to throw cold water on the grandest plans. Some of the challenges Trump will try to tackle, like competing with China while minimizing the prospects of a war in the Indo-Pacific, are systemic problems that will likely take generations to resolve—assuming they can be resolved at all. Others require the cooperation of foreign leaders: ending the three-year war in Ukraine is clearly a top foreign policy priority for Trump but depends just as much on the calculations of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as it does on Trump’s desire to land himself the Nobel Peace Prize. Still others, like hammering out a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, are so remote that one wonders whether expending U.S. diplomatic resources on this problem is even worth the energy.
Despite all of the challenges before him, Trump has an opportunity to score a quick foreign policy win right out of the gate—one that will require very little effort on his part but would nevertheless save the U.S. military from having to take on yet another security burden. He should walk away from the former Biden administration’s attempt to strike a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Watch at The American Conservative
Author
More on Middle East
Events on Middle East
