Brian Kelly explains how Trump has ripped away all pretence when it comes to the pursuit of US imperialist interests, arguing that these actions could provoke an anti-imperialist response far greater than his administration might have bargained for.
It seems hard to believe, but just two weeks ago many of the mainstream news outlets around the globe were falling over themselves to hail incoming President Donald Trump as a ‘peacemaker’, lauding the intervention of his Middle East envoy Steven Witkoff in brokering the Gaza ceasefire, and taking Trump at his word that his ‘proudest legacy’ would be as ‘a peacemaker and unifier’. Despite clear indications that his cabinet was stacked with appointees aligned with Israel’s expansionist far right—UN ambassador Elise Stefanik has endorsed Israel’s ‘biblical right’ to annex the West Bank; serial rapist and ‘Christian’ Islamophobe Pete Hegseth offered his ‘robust support’ for the Israeli genocide—even the sober commentariat at The Economist wondered whether Netanyahu’s trip to Washington ‘may see the president try to dominate Israel’s strongman’.
The harsh reality of the past couple of days proves that this kind of speculation was delusional in the extreme. Born out of the fawning eagerness of corporate-owned news outlets to make their peace with the incoming administration (as one observer has put it, ‘the wealthy billionaires and gigantic corporations’ dominating the ‘core segments of the US media landscape’ have ‘caved under Trump’s pressure’), the attempt to puff up the peace-making credentials of an administration that openly declares its intent to put the US on war footing internationally was always bound to end in liberal tears. There have been unambiguous indications all along that Trump would give Netanyahu a green light to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza, and in recent weeks clear signals that the US would be happy enough to watch the ceasefire deal welcomed by so many around the world go down in flames.
A Lifeline for Netanyahu and the Zionist Far Right
Even so, the shamelessness with which Trump declared his intent to ‘take over Gaza’, and to deploy the American military to expel Palestinians and make way for construction of a ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ on the very ruins of the genocide have shocked many who assumed that the barbarism of the past 16 months might be winding down. He made the announcement with a smiling Netanyahu standing by his side: grateful for the lifeline it offered his besieged government, he hailed Trump as “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.
The Zionist far right was ecstatic over the declaration: Itamar Ben Gvir, who resigned over the Gaza ceasefire and who has pushed for forced displacement since the beginning of Israel’s war, hailed Trump’s announcement as confirmation that he’d been right all along and welcomed the ‘beginning of a beautiful friendship’. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed to ‘work with [Netanyahu] and the cabinet to develop an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible’.
Bluster or Strategic Re-Positioning? Middle East Policy under Trump
Overwhelmingly, disbelief and shock have marked mainstream reaction to Trump’s announcement, even among US allies around the world. It is significant, though, that almost uniformly among those governments complicit in the genocide, disbelief has been tempered by a determined unwillingness to offend Trump. In the UK, Keir Starmer’s environment secretary Steve Reed responded to the declaration by ducking comment, going out of his way to ‘credit Donald Trump…with the role that he played in securing [the] ceasefire’. In Ireland Simon Harris displayed the same craven timidity: Trump’s plan was ‘very concerning’, he conceded, but ‘the focus has to be on keeping the ceasefire in place’.
There have been principled and unequivocal rejections of the Trump plan from some quarters. Among Palestinians and their representatives, of course, the plan is a non-starter: Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif Al-Qanou rightly denounced it as ‘racist’ and aimed at ‘displacing our people and eliminating our cause’. Closer to home Jeremy Corbyn accused Trump of “officially endorsing ethnic cleansing”, and in the US Rashida Tlaib noted that ‘the president can only spew this fanatical bulls**t because of bipartisan support [for] funding genocide and ethnic cleansing’. In the west, at least, these were isolated voices, and one gets the sense that after the early hand-wringing the global establishment—and particularly those western powers who have been on board the Israeli genocide for almost a year and a half will, if they are allowed, swallow their objections and bend to Trump’s designs.
After the initial disorientation, reaction in the mainstream press has tilted toward the assumption that Trump’s brazen declaration of US intentions is all part of some elaborate and well thought-out brinkmanship: that the insanity in a plan that threatens to blow up the entire region is all part of the ‘art of the deal’, and that Trump is only floating an extreme version of US plans as a way of forcing concessions out of Israel’s Arab neighbours. This assumes a logic and rationale to Trump’s reasoning for which there is little or no evidence, and a degree of control over events that the US would be foolish to assume.
How Low Will the Arab Regimes Sink?
While the western ruling classes seem keen to remain on good terms with Trump, it is an open question whether the US-allied Arab regimes will have the stomach—or the room—for further concessions. Until now these regimes (Egypt, Jordan and the Saudis in particular, but also the UAE and a handful of pro-western governments across the Middle East and North Africa) have worked overtime to contain seething popular anger, but Trump’s provocation has the potential to blow the lid off of discontent and ignite the kind of social upheaval that could pose a real threat to American imperial domination.
In this context it is important to remind ourselves that in some ways Trump’s crass and open belligerence has only made plain what has been a continuous feature of US policy throughout the genocide. The Biden White House made clear on every occasion its ‘rock solid’ support for Zionism’s war of extermination in Gaza, and could not bring itself to lift a finger when Netanyahu and the settler right extended their vicious war into the West Bank. Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s main concern throughout the first 15 months of the genocide was to try to balance unwavering military and diplomatic support for Israel while keeping the corrupt Arab regimes on board. Overwhelmingly Blinken’s diplomatic efforts aimed at salvaging the Abraham Accords, the Trump-era initiative meant to deliver ‘normalisation’ between Israel and its Arab neighbours—especially the Saudis.
Trump’s latest declaration raises the question of how low the Saudis and their counterparts across the region will sink to stay sweet with Washington. To put it another way, we are about to discover the limits to which these regimes can push popular anger without inciting popular upheaval. Even before Trump’s announcement the al-Sisi regime in Egypt was nervous that the example of rebellion in Syria might threaten its rule, and it is significant that Egypt was one of only two countries that did not feel the axe fall when Trump cut off foreign aid last week (the other exemption was for Israel, of course). In anticipation of Israel’s announcement that it will annex the West Bank, there are reports emerging that Jordan—until now a critical outpost of US interests in the region—is moving to a war footing.
All of this should serve as a warning that while there is a tendency to view Israel and its US benefactor as invincible in the Middle East, Trump’s overreach may very well detonate the kind of regional social upheaval that has been simmering for many years, and which could easily be brought to a head by renewed aggression. Even short of full-blown popular insurgency, the alienation of one or more of the US-friendly Arab regimes might very well provide new openings for America’s imperial rivals—most notably China. This kind of strategic positioning underpinned the Biden regime’s diplomatic and military intervention across the Middle East, but seems to have fallen by the wayside in Trump’s rush to double down on the Zionist far right.
Palestine Liberation and the Necessity of a Challenge to Empire
Recent developments, including this latest bombshell from a deranged Trump White House, point to the necessity for the global mass movement that has emerged in solidarity with Palestine to push beyond the (understandable) focus on Gaza and the West Bank. We need urgently to develop a deeper anti-imperialist politics that grasps both the centrality of Palestinian liberation for the broader, more ambitious project of social emancipation across the region, and to understand the ways that our own freedom in the so-called ‘advanced’ west is at stake in the fight for Palestinian liberation. There is no prospect for freedom in Gaza or the West Bank if our movement does not face up to—and win—the rapidly developing confrontation with capitalism and empire that is becoming unavoidable across the region, and indeed in every corner of our weary planet.
