Editor: Here is Friedman’s latest essay of a mere & compact 1,509 words, respectfully addressing President Trump.
Headline: President Trump, You Can Remake the Middle East if You Dare
Dear President Trump:
You may not be interested in Jewish or Arab history, but they are both very interested in you today. This is one of those rare moments — like after World War I, World War II and the Cold War — when everything in the Middle East is in play and everything is possible. And right now, everyone is waiting for you.
No exaggeration: You have a chance to reshape this region in ways that could fundamentally enhance the peace and prosperity of Israelis, Palestinians and all the region’s people, as well as the national security interests of America.
Be advised, though, while the wages of success will be enormous, the consequences of failure will be utterly hellish. It’s the Nobel Prize or the booby prize. Yet there is no escaping this mission. The Middle East is either going to be reborn as a strong region where normalized relations, trade and cooperation are defining objectives or disintegrate into a few solid nation-states surrounded by vast zones of disorder, warlordism and terrorists who are chillingly expert at using drones.
On every train schedule there is something known as the last train. Well, when it comes to peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians, before Israeli West Bank settlements totally choke off any possibility of a two-state deal; to ending Lebanon’s 50-year civil war, while there is still a shred of hope; to giving Syria a chance to reintegrate after 14 years of strife; and to neutralizing Iran before it gets a nuclear bomb, this really feels like a last train.
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Editor: The Reader might just recall another Friedman execise in political prescience?
A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big.
Jan. 31, 2024
There are two things I believe about the widening crisis in the Middle East.
We are about to see a new Biden administration strategy unfold to address this multifront war involving Gaza, Iran, Israel and the region — what I hope will be a “Biden Doctrine” that meets the seriousness and complexity of this dangerous moment.
And if we don’t see such a big, bold doctrine, the crisis in the region is going to metastasize in ways that will strengthen Iran, isolate Israel and leave America’s ability to influence events there for the better in tatters.
A Biden Doctrine — as I’m terming the convergence of strategic thinking and planning that my reporting has picked up — would have three tracks.
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Editor: Reader note the final paragraphs of Friedman’s latest essay; ‘otherwise, it needs to be done kinetically’ is the place holder for War!
Finally, on Iran, Israel has done the world a huge favor in stripping this awful, corrupt, repressive regime of much of its ability to project power around the region through failing states and proxy militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen while hiding behind Tehran’s nuclear program.
That nuclear program and Iran’s malign regional strategy need to be eliminated. I hope you can do it through peaceful negotiations; otherwise, it needs to be done kinetically. The more credibly we threaten the second, the more likely we will get the first.
Good luck, Mr. Trump. History has its eyes on you.
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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