Two important events are taking place this week: Yesterday, the Gazan hostage-cease-fire deal went into effect (but, when the other party is the Zionists, you can never be sure that they will keep their word) and President Donald Trump will take hold of the U.S. government on Monday. These two related events will shape several events in the next decade, maybe even longer.
Trump might be the last president hoping to preside over a hegemonic superpower. We might be seeing him actualizing the dethroning of that power. Israel is going to be reduced to a humdrum political entity due to the power-hungry fire gushing from its eyes. It is no longer the “regional superpower” it used to project.
As for the U.S., it must be difficult for a citizen to talk about the end of their nation’s hegemony, but from Yale to the citadels of the conservative and liberal ideologies, many scholars, researchers and analysts seem to agree that the “Trump Act II” rings the bells for the final curtain. Yale’s Timothy Snyder even says the Trump team “represents a policy of regime change and deliberate destruction” for America.
Of course, the nation with the richest natural resources, the widest plains and highest mountains, the longest natural and man-made waterways and highways, and the highest industrial output and earnings, in short, the greatest country on earth, is not going to lose its dominant position in global affairs. Its substantial market power in any area will continue to allow it to behave independently of its competitors, customers and consumers.
I am not going to summarize the thousand-page tomes of geopolitical analysts about the reasons and mechanics of the decline of U.S. hegemony. Anyone can consult Paul Kennedy, Peter Zeihan and George Friedman (my favorite realist theoreticians). Some ascribe it to the decline of America’s competitiveness for almost a decade. Others blame the provocative challenges of China, India and Russia for U.S. dominion over the oceans, space and cyberspace. There is yet another group who sees the forthcoming decline in Trump’s economic plans, especially in his “four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods,” which, they say, will backfire and bring an end to the American Century.
Whatever the reason for a stipulated “decline,” the end of U.S. global hegemony should not indicate the end of a dominant presence in international affairs for the world’s greatest country. The decline could probably prohibit the abusive behavior of the U.S. government as an accomplice of Israel, especially in its crimes against humanity, which brings us to the second most important event of the week.
Arguably, there is no love lost between the Biden administration and the U.S. left wing, in general, and The Nation magazine, in particular. The left has been telling us for the last four years that in the U.S., the domestic divisions have widened. Now, they predict that it would lead to violent clashes and divisive debates. On the other hand, the U.S. right has naturally not cherished President Joe Biden since his tolerance (or lack thereof) for the nested neocon structures within the State and Defense Departments has not been appreciated. Nevertheless, the Biden administration has acquiesced their being in the U.S. government apparatus and working for the ideal of the "Greater Israel." After all, the president himself said, the U.S. has done more for Israel than any other U.S. administration: “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and a Zionist is about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how they’ve been persecuted. I am a Zionist.”
This brings us to the other issue of the Zionists' defeat and the Hamas' victory in Gaza.
Biden might have also convinced himself that he could rescue his legacy by securing Palestinian statehood. However, he wrote a blank check to Israel, and offered the endless delivery of military aircraft and guided missiles to help the most intense and destructive aerial war against a people who don’t have one single aircraft or missile launcher. So, Biden has become the leader who killed the idea of Palestinian statehood.
The Biden administration’s inability to prevent the horrible massacres in Gaza, which has been labeled as genocide by the International Court of Justice and resulted in the arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, has already tarnished the international credibility of the U.S. The court wants to try Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the U.S. is trying to defame it.
The U.S. could have averted Netanyahu’s and his extreme rightist coalition government’s revenge operation against the innocent Gazan people after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Netanyahu and almost all Zionists in Israel and the U.S., Jewish and Christian, including Biden and then-presidential hopeful Trump, saw this raid, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage, as an opportunity to reduce the Gaza Strip into the status of West Bank. Since 1967, the Zionist policy to occupy and expel Palestinians and illegally settle in their home and farms has been in effect in the West Bank.
Netanyahu, with the incessant and complete U.S. and EU support, launched a military campaign to destroy Hamas. More than 46,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then and most of the 2.3 million population has also been displaced. Under Biden’s watch, in 15 months of war, there has been widespread destruction and there are severe shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter in Gaza. Eighteen thousand children were killed in the 467 days of daily bombardments.
So, Biden has not only watched one out of 50 people in Gaza perish but also killed the two-state solution. As a matter of fact, that formula has been dead since 2018 when Trump, in Act I, with his Jerusalem Declaration, recognized occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He had a so-called peace plan under discussion with Palestinians and Israel. As soon as Trump announced his Jerusalem declaration, the Palestinian leaders walked away from the negotiation table. While the prospects of an American-brokered peace deal were already quite slim, Trump’s approach to the conflict may have finally convinced Palestinian leaders that they have more to lose by remaining in an American-dominated peace process than from walking away.
Now, Trump is going to sit at that desk where he had killed the Palestinian peace process seven years ago. Even if the Gazan cease-fire could lead to fruitful peace talks about the future of Palestinians, Trump’s obedience to the Israeli lobby, his Zionist Cabinet cannot turn the U.S.’ Palestinian disaster around and, thus, gain time to restore the U.S.' reputation as a world leader and a superpower. His pressure on Netanyahu to accept the defeat and leave Gaza is not going to put him in any better status compared to Biden and his state secretary Antony Blinken.
However, we can be sure that Trump Act II will only deteriorate the U.S. relationship with the world. Trump never had any confidence in international institutions and the cabinet he is bringing in wearies of global responsibilities.
