-Analysis-
BEIRUT — Donald Trump’s successful political formula includes displaying the personality of a clown standing on a political stage, performing a one-man show that includes space for nobody but himself. But he is the clown who cunningly deceives his audience by using the buffoonery to erase all the tragedy his actions have produced.
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On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump supporters infamously stormed the Congress, in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the presidential elections. That incident, in its chaos, appeared to express the behavior of a man unlike any the United States had known in its modern history.
Trump no doubt has never read the book War and Peace by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. But we can look at the way he began his second term as President of the United States by including peace as one of the axioms of his rule, and the stated objective of winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
And yet he has entered directly into our region, where wars appear as inevitable destinies —and the United States has long been considered to be the engine of many of them.
Peace and personality
But reconciling ourselves with the idea of Trump as peacemaker is also difficult because of his personality, which includes contradictory positions, where the statement and its opposite are simultaneously declared true. The two weeks of war between Israel and Iran brought out the essence of this part of Trump’s personality.
He’s a Western version of an Arab archetype.
The U.S. president increasingly appears as a model of the “dictator” who is at times sarcastic and at other times capricious. We are told that he is nonetheless bound by the rules of the American democracy, which restrict his temperaments and personal impulses. And yet the whole world is witnessing how Trump wields power by exhibiting traits of political “madness.”
Here in the Arab world, we have made comparisons between Trump and the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. A Western version of an Arab archetype that does not adhere to the controls required by a person’s position, and ultimately breaks free of them. In both cases, we are faced with psychological symptoms evident to all, even as we can see that their blatant declaration are intentional and useful as a key feature of the personality.
Riviera in Gaza to Isratine
Neither Gaddafi nor Trump sees any real use for what’s known as “diplomacy,” opting instead for outward authoritarian behavior as a deliberate blending of politics and mockery. Truly original ideas are favored, even if they will never see the light of day.
When Trump put forth the vision of Gaza as the new “Riviera of the East,” many in the Middle East instantly made the connection to the “Isratine” project promoted by Gaddafi in his White Book about merging Israel and Palestine into one state.
The world witnessed the President of the United States able to suddenly end a dangerous war.
Just as Trump did not read Leo Tolstoy, he most likely also never thought to look to Muammar Gaddafi as his model. Yet in both their cases, absolute narcissism is a requirement for exceptionality and inimitability.
Taming Netanyahu
Most recently, Trump first became a speculative partner with Israel in its unprecedented war with Iran, then an explicit partner with the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Ultimately, in the Middle East, this puts him in bed with Israel in all its wars, from Gaza to Lebanon.
A U.S. nuclear “knockout” of Iran, Trump believed would have been sufficient to tame not only tame Tehran, but also to tame Benjamin Netanyahu with it.
And so the world witnessed the President of the United States able to suddenly end a dangerous war, to convince opponents and allies alike of an oversimplified and prevailing idea that his country is the master of this world. That would make Trump himself, as the idea entices him without ever having read Tolstoy, the man who waged war but whose goal is peace.
