A February 20 front-page lead Wall Street Journal article titled “President Acts Swiftly to Upend World Order” not only evidences a leftward drifting editorial trend but additionally, perhaps unintentionally, invites consideration regarding why such a shakeup is urgently warranted.
The essay begins by stating that “President Trump has dramatically shifted the direction of U.S. foreign policy in four short weeks, making the U.S. a less-reliable ally and retreating from global commitments in ways that stand to fundamentally reshape the U.S.'s relationship with the world.”
It then argues that Trump’s top envoys have floated concessions to Russia in peace deals that stunned European allies while keeping them at arm’s length; that his dismantling of USAID is helping China establish a stronger foothold over the developing world; that his plans to own Gaza and remove Palestinians is erasing decades of Washington efforts to broker a two-state solution; and his intent to raise tariffs heralds an end to U.S.-fueled globalization.
For starters, whereas no known concessions have been floated, and as discussed in my previous February 21 column,Trump and his envoys have indeed been attempting to broker stalemated peace negotiations to end horrific human Ukraine war casualties and mounting economic burdens upon European and American allies alike.
And yes, this involved direct conversations between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, contacts that former President Biden had avoided throughout his entire term of office, politically kicking that can of rancid tomatoes down the road beyond his hoped-for reelection.
The allies described as “stunned” by the Journal had valid reasons to be concerned about the warnings communicated to them by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a February 12 meeting of the NATO Minister’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group. He indicated that the member countries, particularly those most at risk from a potential Russian takeover of Ukraine, would need to contribute their fair share to military defense costs in return for America’s full support.
Conveying unwelcome Trump sentiments, Hegseth emphasized that the U.S. “remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”
Some alliance members apparently got the “put-up-or-shut-up” message.
On February 18, European leaders held an “emergency” meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron after being excluded from the Washington-Moscow delegation discussions about Ukraine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. During the meeting, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledged that the EU needs to “wake up” from the “geopolitical and economic lethargy” it has unfortunately experienced for some time.
As for Trump’s alleged public relations gift to China in dismantling USAID, the Journal didn’t mention that the organization’s core responsibilities won’t be terminated, but rather, are being transferred to the State Department for previously lacking responsibility and accountability.
Nor did the article explain how such USAID expenditures of $15 million for condoms to the Taliban, $3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean,” $1 million to boost French-speaking LGBTQ groups in West and Central Africa, $425,622 to help Indonesian coffee companies become climate and gender friendlier, will make developing countries respect America more.
Regarding the Journal’s reference to real estate development savvy Trump wanting the U.S. to own Gaza, truly an investment location in hell, readers should consider the context of his remarks during a joint February 4 White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Like Trump’s observation that Gaza Strip restoration “should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there.”
“Instead,” he said, “we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly bad luck.”
“This could be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth,” Trump added, to create a place where returning Palestinians aren’t “going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilization of wonderful people has had to endure.”
Finally, the Journal’s claim that Trump’s intent to raise tariffs “heralds an end to U.S.-fueled globalization” represents a threat to world order is particularly ironic in suggesting that America’s fair-trade interests through equitably balanced tariff reciprocity are unreasonably selfish and destabilizing.
Quite to the contrary, the U.S. ability to fulfill its global leadership and security role fundamentally depends upon fossil energy-fueled economic, industrial and military strength that European countries have sacrificed in response to green-energy fetishes that have made them dependent upon Russia while being cash-poor in flaccid NATO defense support.
After all, it was the Biden administration that enabled and emboldened Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorist proxies by eliminating Trump oil export sanctions, banning U.S. liquid natural gas exports to Europe, shutting down the U.S.-Canadian Keystone XL pipeline while reopening Russia’s Nord Stream Two pipeline energy noose to Germany.
Then, just prior to leaving office, Biden invoked a permanent ban on oil and gas leasing over an incredibly vast expanse covering 625 million acres of offshore waters which, if allowed to stand, essentially includes the entire Atlantic Coast, eastern Gulf of America (previously the Gulf of Mexico), the West Coast, and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.
While the Wall Street Journal has it correct in claiming that Trump is finally disrupting the dystopian world order that he and we inherited, let’s be gratefully optimistic that he appears to be succeeding.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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