#OyVeyDonaldTrump bear hugs Obama's M.E. Policy. Pax Americana returns.Netanyahu is given a Putz on his Touchas and sent to bed without "gifts' of Caviar, Cigar and a Magnum of Champagne

Trump Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy



Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during a memorial ceremony for Ron Nahman, the founder of Ariel, one of the largest Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.CreditJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — President Trump, after promising a radical break with the foreign policy of Barack Obama, is embracing key pillars of the former administration’s strategy, including warning Israel to curb construction of settlements, demanding that Russia withdraw from Crimea and threatening Iran with sanctions for ballistic missile tests.

In the most startling shift, the White House issued an unexpected statement appealing to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish settlements beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Such expansion, it said, “may not be helpful in achieving” the goal of peace.

At the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki R. Haley declared that the United States would not lift sanctions against Russia until it stopped destabilizing Ukraine and pulled troops out of Crimea.

On Iran, the administration is preparing a set of economic sanctions that are similar to what the Obama administration imposed just over a year ago. The White House has also shown no indication that it plans to rip up Mr. Obama’s landmark nuclear deal, despite Mr. Trump’s withering criticism of it during the presidential campaign.Continue reading the main story



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New administrations often fail to change the foreign policies of their predecessors as radically as they promised, in large part because statecraft is so different from campaigning. And of course, today’s positions could shift over time. But the Trump administration’s reversals were particularly stark because they came after days of tempestuous phone calls between Mr. Trump and foreign leaders, in which he gleefully challenged diplomatic orthodoxy and appeared to jeopardize one relationship after another.

Mr. Trump, for example, made warmer relations with Russia the centerpiece of his foreign policy during the campaign, and European leaders were steeling for him to lift the sanctions that they and Mr. Obama imposed on President Vladimir V. Putin after he annexed Crimea. But on Thursday, Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley, sounded a lot like her predecessor, Samantha Power.

“We do want to better our relations with Russia,” Ms. Haley said in her first remarks to an open session of the United Nations Security Council. “However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.”

Similarly, Mr. Trump presented himself during the campaign as a stalwart supporter of Israel and sharply criticized the Obama administration for allowing the passage of a Security Council resolution in December that condemned Israel for its expansion of settlements.

“While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace,” the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said in a statement, “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”

The White House noted that the president “has not taken an official position on settlement activity.” It said Mr. Trump would discuss the issue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel when they meet Feb. 15, in effect telling Mr. Netanyahu to wait until then. Emboldened by Mr. Trump’s support, Israel had announced more than 5,000 new homes in the West Bank since his inauguration.

Mr. Trump shifted his policy after he met briefly with King Abdullah II of Jordan on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast — an encounter that put the king, one of the most respected leaders of the Arab world, ahead of Mr. Netanyahu in seeing the new president. Jordan, with its large Palestinian population, has been steadfastly critical of settlements.

The administration’s abrupt turnaround also coincided with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s first day at the State Department and the arrival of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in South Korea on his first official trip. Both men are viewed as potentially capable of exerting a moderating influence on the president and his cadre of White House advisers, though it was unclear how much they had to do with the shifts.

With Iran, Mr. Trump has indisputably taken a harder line than his predecessor. While the Obama administration often looked for ways to avoid confrontation with Iran in its last year, Mr. Trump seems equally eager to challenge what he has said is an Iranian expansion across the region, especially in Iraq and Yemen.

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In an early morning Twitter post on Thursday, Mr. Trump was bombastic on Iran.

“Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile,” he wrote. “Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!” In a second post, he said wrongly, “Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.”

Still, the administration has been careful not to specify what the national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, meant when he said on Wednesday that Iran had been put “on notice” for its missile test and for its arming and training of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The new sanctions could be announced as soon as Friday. But most experts have said they will have little practical effect, because the companies that supply missile parts rarely have direct business with the United States, and allies have usually been reluctant to reimpose sanctions after many were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear accord.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, replied, “This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran,” according to the semiofficial Fars news agency. “The American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless.”

Some analysts said they worried that the administration did not have tools, short of military action, to back up its warning.

“Whether the Trump administration intended it or not, they have created their own red line,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “When Iran tests again, the administration will have no choice but to put up or shut up.”

Mr. Netanyahu will cheer Mr. Trump’s tough tone with Iran. But the American statement on settlements may force him to change course on a delicate domestic issue. His coalition government seemed to take Mr. Trump’s inauguration as a starting gun in a race to increase its construction in occupied territory.

After Mr. Trump was sworn in, the Israeli government announced that it would authorize another 2,500 homes in areas already settled in the West Bank, and then followed that this week with an announcement of 3,000 more. On Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu took it a step further, vowing to build the first new settlement in the West Bank in many years.

For Mr. Netanyahu, the settlement spree reflects a sense of liberation after years of constraints from Washington, especially under Mr. Obama, who, like other presidents, viewed settlement construction as harmful to the chances of negotiating a final peace settlement. It is also an effort to deflect criticism from Israel’s political right for Mr. Netanyahu’s compliance with a court order to force several dozen families out of the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona.

Mr. Trump had also promised to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But in recent weeks, the White House slowed down the move, in part out of concern that it would cause a violent response.

The policy shifts came after a turbulent week in which Mr. Trump also clashed with the leaders of Australia and Mexico over one of the most fraught issues of his new presidency: immigration. He defended the tense exchanges as an overdue display of toughness by a United States that has been exploited “by every nation in the world, virtually.”

“They’re tough; we have to be tough. It’s time we’re going to be a little tough, folks,” he said at the prayer breakfast Thursday. “It’s not going to happen anymore.”

Yet later in the day, the White House felt obliged to put a more diplomatic gloss on events. Mr. Spicer said Mr. Trump’s call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia had been “very cordial,” even if Mr. Trump bitterly opposed an agreement negotiated by the Obama administration for the United States to accept the transfer of 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention camp.

A senior administration official disputed a report that Mr. Trump had threatened to send troops to Mexico to deal with its “bad hombres.” The official said that the conversation with President Enrique Peña Nieto had been “actually very friendly,” and that Mr. Trump had been speaking in jest.

Zion loses its Virginity ( finally) to backstabbing Uncle Sambama : United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 a step away for the Cause of Peace.

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 In four respects, UNSCR 2334 undermines the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace and threatens what little regional stability is left. First, it could force Israel to fall back on its powerful legal position as the only existing legal inheritor of the British Mandate. Second, it compounds the error made by Obama's transition team even before he came to power of ignoring a written commitment of a US president. Third, it has placed Sisi's government in Egypt – a keystone of regional stability – in an untenable position. Fourth and most painfully, it will make it far more complicated – if not impossible – for the Palestinian leadership, enticed by the prospect of international coercion, to accept a reasonable compromise. The New Zealanders, do-gooders with a very dim understanding of what they have wrought, can be forgiven such folly. The Obama administration has no such excuses.

"Be careful what you wish for; you might get it" says the old adage, and sober elements among the Palestinian leadership may yet rue the day they managed to secure an American abstention leading to the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334. The resolution condemns “settlement activity” anywhere, including East Jerusalem, and calls upon all members to distinguish in practice between Jews who live on one side of the Armistice Line of 1949 and those who live beyond it. It presumes to speak in the name of international law and to create the conditions for further progress towards peace in the interests of both Palestinians and "legitimate" Israelis. In fact, this poorly designed and atrociously timed diplomatic tool seems set to harm, if not entirely destroy, the very purposes it was designed to serve.

It is bound to do damage to Israeli interests (and those of Palestinian employees in Jewish-owned businesses) through the encouragement of practices already promoted by the EU (labelling, differential tariffs, etc.) and by giving momentum to the BDS movement, which aims at the ultimate delegitimization of Israel and the entire Zionist project. But these effects can be effectively countered by energetic action by Israel and its friends, not least in the US Congress. As in the (non-comparable) case of terrorism, they must not be allowed to dictate life and death decisions to Israel that need to be taken strictly according to the national interest.

Much greater harm has been done to the prospects for peace and regional stability.  There are several sad aspects to this, all pointing to the short-sighted and perhaps vindictive mindset behind the Obama administration's decision to let it happen when it could easily have been avoided. In line with several of the administration’s past decisions, it speaks the language of high morality but fails to attend to basic facts or possible consequences.

To begin with, the entire disquisition rests upon President Jimmy Carter's costly mistake of allowing a similar text, UNSCR 465, to slip through in March 1980. The passage of that resolution had serious consequences both to Carter’s political standing (Obama, preferring to act in his lame duck period, took no such risks) and to the advancement of the process initiated at Camp David. When Israeli leaders are confronted with a UN and US endorsement of the Arab narrative, which ignores the circumstances of both 1949 and 1967, they are unlikely to feel comfortable enough to work for an equitable compromise, and certainly not when there is no partner for compromise on the other side.

Moreover, by using litigious language (which may lead to trouble at the ICC, if the Prosecutor's office is not careful in the use of criteria such as gravitas and complementarity), UNSCR 2334 may leave Israel no choice but to stand on its own interpretation of international law. That interpretation stands on very firm ground, as suggested by the late Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy. The so-called "Palestinian Occupied Territories" were never Palestinian at any point for these reasons: first, the Palestinian leadership rejected UNGAR 181 (November 1947) in all its aspects and launched a war of annihilation; and second, the territories were held between 1949 and 1967 by an occupying power that gained the recognition of only two states (Britain and Pakistan) to their annexation to Jordan. They are therefore, as the late Prime Minister Begin was fond of reminding his listeners, res nullius. Israel is thus the only existing inheritor of the League of Nations mandate, which called upon the mandatory power to secure the "close settlement of Jews on the land."

Israel never chose to turn the political effort to reach a compromise into a legal wrangle, but that choice may now have been thrust upon it. The Israeli government has sidestepped even elementary legal arguments, such as the obvious meaning of the phrase in UNSCR 242 calling for withdrawal from "territories," not "the territories." The assumption was that a narrow legal approach would bind Israel’s hands when the day came to offer significant concessions. But now that Israel has been essentially put in the dock by 2334, it has ample legal tools at its disposal with which to counter the assault – at the expense, sadly, of a coherent discussion of practical compromises.

A second unfortunate aspect is that the Obama administration, secure in the presumption that it was "saving Israel from itself," drew no lessons from its own past errors of judgment. This goes all the way back to the decision, taken by Obama’s transition team before the 2009 inauguration, to annul a written commitment by President George W. Bush in an exchange of letters with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2004 that implied that the terms of reference for negotiations should reflect the demographic realities on the ground. This abandonment, which shook Israeli professionals and politicians, was unprecedented, and did much to undermine the prospect of peace from day one. Indeed, Obama's efforts to create "daylight" between US and Israeli positions led to the one of the longest barren periods in the history of the peace process. Now the mistake has been repeated and worsened. A tragedy replayed as a farce is still a tragedy.

A third and highly damaging, if indirect, result of the vote is the potential discrediting of Egyptian President Sisi as a useful influence in the region. Approached by President-elect Trump, with whom he has established a warm relationship, Sisi was willing to pull the Egyptian draft. Instead of honoring Trump’s wish to let the incoming administration take its own stock of the situation, Obama dismissed the effort as irrelevant. With the proclamation “we are still here,” he went ahead with the resolution, cooperating with the likes of Venezuela and Malaysia, putting Sisi in the untenable position of being less loyal than they are to the Arab cause. Obama’s ill-judged action has reduced Sisi’s vital role as a cornerstone of regional stability, and rapid action will be required to undo the damage.

Finally and most tragically, the resolution greatly reduces the likelihood that the Palestinian leadership will have what it takes to strike a workable compromise at the negotiating table. It is weak and divided (notwithstanding President Abbas’s success at the Seventh Fatah Conference, where he isolated and even criminalized his rival, Muhammad Dahlan), and has not been marked hitherto by the courage necessary to make an implementable outcome possible.

Abbas did offer a conciliatory note after the UN vote, calling for coexistence and implying that he is aware that the future still depends on the Israeli electorate. But he is less able now than ever before to offer a vision that departs from the template of expectations he and his colleagues have generated. A "solution" tailored to satisfy the hopes fostered by the UNSCR text – i.e., the delegitimization and ultimate removal of each and every Jew living beyond the 1949 armistice lines, absurdly including East Jerusalem – simply cannot be implemented. Anyone who encourages the Palestinians to believe that the forced removal of hundreds of thousands is preferable to a convoluted but practical compromise that would involve human dislocation on a much smaller scale – and that leaves Jerusalem a living, united city – is abetting a pipe dream.

Venezuela and Malaysia, virulent anti-Israel players, did this for their own reasons. Senegal tagged along. New Zealand may have failed to comprehend what the initiative entails, and in Europe the settlements have been an obsessive preoccupation for years. But the Obama administration was well positioned to know that this resolution would do little but harm. Its decision to let it happen anyway, when Egypt offered a legitimate and honorable way out, raises troubling questions about Obama’s motives. Still, there is a silver lining. Given the Obama administration’s own practice of annulling its predecessor's position, it is now their position that can legitimately be undone – by practical and symbolic acts – come January 21.