- 09:00
The international political scene is changing, but its features are still fleeting and with no final configurations. The main driver is the new foreign policy orientations outlined by President Trump. Are we witnessing the end of the transatlantic partnership, the demise of NATO, the withering of the civilizational framing of the Western political community for the sake of transient political deals between these countries and the totalitarian dictatorships whose strategic interests and political cultures are inimical to the West? The roots of these abrupt changes are still predicated on internal political transformations, shifting paradigms, and the culture wars that have substantially remodeled the various political landscapes in Western democracies.
We have a hard time understanding the international political dynamics shorn of the ideological and strategic continuum that binds them to the dynamics of the interior. We are undoubtedly witnessing the rise and crystallization of a conservative revolution and the breakdown of the long-held political consensus. Some of these consensuses are transient and are likely to be redefined and repositioned as quickly as possible, and some others are substantive departures that require major intellectual deliberation and renewed political agreements.
The late political statements of President Trump are quite decisive regarding the transatlantic community, the future of NATO, and their underlying subtexts. However critical the policy issues that are attached to them, the debate about their relevance and importance is central to the strategic security of the Western community. The financial and logistical debates can never outweigh the fundamentals and displace the center of gravity away from the normative consensuses and their underlying political dynamics. The transactional nature of President Trump's foreign policy can never dispense with the centrality of the intellectual framing and its strategic wherewithals.
Europeans have to reconsider their responsibilities in terms of aligning their financial contributions to the requisites of a working relationship, redefine their strategic priorities along with their responsibilities within the transatlantic community, revise their intellectual premises, and reestablish the basic covenants that should undergird the renewed security pact. The US is right to challenge European irresponsibility and ask for a renewed partnership based on equal entitlements and obligations.
The strategic reorientations implied by the security threats posed by Chinese and Russian imperialisms and their ancillaries should be seriously taken, and the temptation of voluntarism, cronyism, and unilateralism should be avoided on the US side. Redressing the cumulative backlogs and drawbacks of the past is essential if the Western community is to confront the totalitarian power axis and its determination to destroy the transatlantic community as a prelude to the unraveling of the European Union, energize a dying Russian imperialism elicited by the whims of a criminal dictatorship, and concede to the predatory dynamics of the Chinese imperial behemoth.
The advocates of this policy inflection in the West are flawed since the curtailed vision forgets the centrality of the transatlantic alliance in addressing the strategic, commercial, and economic challenges and the importance of building and sustaining a working bloc and expanding its transcontinental networks. However effective transactional diplomacy, can never dispense with the need for steady strategic platforms and multilateral strategic security.
The cases of Ukraine and Gaza are cases in point whereby political expediency and extensive political networking are quite instrumental in addressing the respective wars and their strategic outcomes. Undoubtedly, Russia and Ukraine are in dire straits and badly in need of working mediation to help them extricate themselves from the extended and recoiled cycles of violence. The war of trenches and its tragic realities and reminiscences should come to an end based on a negotiated solution whereby the strategic tradeoffs in the Donbas and Crimea should be matched with solid security guarantees to Ukraine, acknowledgment of its sovereignty, and peacekeeping missions fully assumed by the EU and coordinated with the US. The mineral agreement between the US and Ukraine should be an indirect commitment to the security and reconstruction of Ukraine. Sadly enough, the visit of President Zelensky was not strictly pre-scripted to avoid the major diplomatic blunder and its negative repercussions. Hopefully, it's not going to derail the diplomatic exchange and put at risk the awaited political normalization and the projected peace process.
The recanted political derogation of President Trump towards President Zelensky should be relegated to the footnotes of political vagaries. The unsavory rehabilitation of the Russian autocrat is countervailed by the pathetic plight of a decaying Russian dictatorship. Otherwise, the eventual peace agreement should draw the line for the future of security in Europe and the need for imperial Russia to define its thresholds and renounce its imperial forays if peace is to hold. President Trump is bound to an open declaration of intentions to dispel whatever equivocations in this respect.
The case of Gaza highlights the compounded impasses of the Iranian imperial policy in the Near East, the end of its proxies, and the declining fortunes of Palestinian Islamist radicalism. The Gaza reconstruction proposal emitted by President Trump is a direct insinuation that there are no chances for a rapid and consistent reconstruction unless Hamas withdraws from the picture. Otherwise, the war that started on October 7th, 2024, should end with the resumption of negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the State of Israel based on a trail of peace agreements and the restoration of mutual acknowledgment.
The political and demographic restructuring of both Israeli and Palestinian landscapes necessitates geopolitical remapping, demilitarization scenarios, and rehabilitation of the erstwhile economic community and integrated division of labor. Palestinians have to adjust to Israel's right to exist, and Israelis have to feel confident about their security and overcome their distrust based on a well-negotiated agreement that validates their basic national rights. The curbing of extremism on both sides should be thoroughly conducted, monitored, and consolidated over time.
The Palestinian Authority should seize this tragic episode driven by the instrumentation of the Palestinian question by Iranian power politics to reform and project itself into a conclusive peace deal with Israel. Israel has to relaunch a new dynamic of peace based on its military and political achievements and a renewed commitment to put an end to the nihilistic drifts of an open-ended conflict and an equitable solution. A negotiated settlement between the parties of the conflict should be updated and adjusted to the emerging realities, and the principled commitment to a just solution based on moral reciprocity, mutual acknowledgment, and strategic security has become more urgent than ever.
The assumption of a re-edited Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement (1939) is far-fetched, and the hypothetical alliance between the U.S. administration, Russia, North Korea, and Belarus is a mere fantasy. Trump is instrumentalizing political conflicts to reimpose himself as an inevitable mediator and reposition the US as the key power player, guarantor of peace, and post-war reconstruction actor. This ambivalent and multilayered strategy should be minutely screened if we were to come to terms with its innuendos, mercurial sequences, circuitous and erratic trajectories, and the arcane of unresolved long-haul conflicts.
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