Washington, Sep 20: A month after an Alaskan summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump still seems surprised that his gambit did not pay off with peace in Ukraine.
“He’s let me down,” Trump said this week. “He really let me down.”
There has been no more progress in the Middle East, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beginning a new offensive in Gaza City and lashing out across the region.
“They have to be very, very careful,” Trump said after Israel targeted Hamas inside Qatar, a US ally that has been hosting diplomatic negotiations.
Trump’s disappointment and frustration are much different from the confidence and dominance he tries to project on the international stage, especially as he trumpets his diplomatic efforts and campaigns for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Asked about his goals for the upcoming UN General Assembly, the president said “world peace.” But the most high-profile conflicts appear to be escalating instead of winding down.
Middle East is increasingly in turmoil
In the Middle East, Trump is getting caught in the middle of an increasingly combustible situation. He has visited Arab nations, including Qatar, this year to strengthen ties, and he has backed Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Iran.
But now Israel, emboldened by its battlefield success, is striking more widely throughout the region, including the recent attack targeting Hamas officials in Qatar. That jeopardised negotiations that the United States has been trying to push along and rattled Arab leaders’ faith in Trump’s ability to influence, let alone rein in, Netanyahu.
Some of them now view Israel, not Iran, as their primary security threat, according to three Arab diplomats familiar with conversations at the last summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Doha. It’s a noticeable shift after Israel and Arab nations grew closer during Trump’s first term, when the Republican president championed the Abraham Accords. The diplomats were not authorised to publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
US officials have tried to assuage doubts by pointing to Trump’s expressions of displeasure with Netanyahu’s latest moves, to recent meetings held with Qatar’s prime minister and to discussions of enhanced security arrangements.
During next week’s annual high-level gathering at the General Assembly, Rubio and Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff can expect to hear a chorus of criticism, with Arab nations seeking a more fundamental shift in how the US approaches the region.
For example, the US has tried to ensure that Israel has a military edge over its Arab neighbours. But now that Israel has attacked Qatar with US-supplied weapons – a strike that Qatar was unable to counter with its own US-supplied defences – Arab diplomats are considering demanding stronger support.
Such a move would likely be politically untenable, at least for now, with support for Israel strong among Republicans who control Congress.
Trump’s equivocal approach to Putin
In Europe, Trump has frustrated his critics with his equivocal approach to Putin, sometimes suggesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is just as responsible for the war that Moscow started with its 2022 invasion.
Trump recently insisted that his meeting with Putin “accomplished a lot,” but “it takes two to tango.” “You know those are two people, Zelenskyy and Putin, who hate each other,” he said.
Fears that the war in Ukraine could spill over have been heightened by recent Russian military incursions into the airspace of NATO members Poland and Estonia. After three Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace on Friday, Trump said it could signal “big trouble.”
During a news conference in the United Kingdom on his state visit, Trump said he was dedicated to stopping the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. Then he turned philosophical.
“You never know in war. You know, war is a different thing,” he said. “Things happen that are very opposite of what you thought.” (AP)
