The Power of One Man’s Ego

By Scott Kelly

Blessed be the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of God

Donald Trump has seemingly performed a miracle and given some credence to the prophetic predictions of his anointment as America’s savior that is so fervently held by some of his most ardent MAGA supporters. What was this miracle? Breaking with decades of American tradition of kowtowing to Israel and using the weight of American military and economic might to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, going so far as to install American soldiers in diplomats to oversee the IDFs operations in the area. This has widely been reported as a humiliation to Israel in their domestic press, drawing heaping amounts of criticism onto their political mastermind, turned America’s cuck Benjamin Netanyahu.

As interesting as its been to watch the play by play unfold between Trump, Netanyahu, and the cast of characters from Hamas, to Qatar, to Iran that have drifted in and out of the plot over the last two years since the terrorist attack on October 7th, it’s been more shocking to see what this means for the international community and the credibility of the rules based international order America has backed since the end of WWII.

The great hope of the post WWII world order that America backed was that we would never experience a global catastrophe like that again. The years following WWII saw the creation of the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. A sleuth of robust multinational institutions spanning from New York, to Brussels, and Shanghai emerged promising endless growth through trade, the maintenance of national sovereignty through cooperation rather than conflict, and the protection of human rights.

Trump’s presidency has been marked by a sharp rebuke of that ideology. From putting tariffs on enemies and allies alike, flouting diplomatic norms and casually questioning the value of our most robust treaties and alliances (talking about you NATO) he has been widely (and often accurately) bemoaned as a chaos agent that tears apart the very fabric of normative behavior that keeps the world from descending into maddening, irreversible chaos.

But he forced a ceasefire in Gaza. Was this because of some masterful 3D chess like negotiation strategy he employed from his reality TV start days? No. He simply remembered that in the international system the strong do what they will, and the weak do what they must. Those that bemoan the impact his presidency has had on America’s standing abroad and the integrity of the rules based international order must ask themselves two things.

If the rules-based international order and the multilateral institutions that embody it are effective agents for good in the world, which in this case we can look at as either preventing or ending a genocide, then why has it failed to save lives, Israeli or Palestinian, in the Gaza strip or West Bank in the past two years? And if it has no true agency, how much damage does it serve as a distraction, a purveyor of false hopes to people faced with terrible choices and lured into bad decisions about their future because they believe they can rely on these institutions for justice?

Ask the people of Gaza who have received a small and still fragile reprieve, what has had more of an impact on their odds of survival. The International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister? Or Trump getting so fed up with that same prime minister he told him it was time to wrap things up.

Many of our professional political class on both sides of the aisle will say that the rules-based international order is clumsy and complicated and time-consuming, but that’s why we must try so hard to make it work! However, when Trump shows up and says “hold my beer,” we are reminded of just how easy ending a conflict can be when you hold all the cards and are shameless about using them.

Of course, there are limits to this. The same egotistical narcissism that allowed Trump to brashly barge into office, yank Israel’s leash and spit in the eye of many of his closest allies within his own domestic political coalition is seemingly putting on us a path to some kind of war with Venezuela, supposedly to stop all the fentanyl that they aren’t producing from making it to America. At least the Bush administration tried to make their lies sound convincing.

But here we see a different kind of problem, also based in ego and narcissism or more specifically, a lack thereof. And this lies with the American Congress, whom despite having the power of the purse and the power to declare war seem inept at even pretending to desire to keep executive power at bay. Watching the democrats and republicans go back in forther in congress is like watching two eunuchs fuck. Technically they might be doing it but they’re not going to produce anything and no one will feel good after. Our founding fathers believed that it was important that the people, through congress, always have the ability to decide how America committed its blood and treasure at home and abroad, and that Congress would jealously protect its power from the executive branch. Looks like they were half right. The lesson here is that we need to look at how politics operates domestically and internationally very differently. At the turn of the century we were “blessed” with a cadre of professional statesmen who conned the American public into the GWOT, and in doing so sacrificed American lives, increased terroism around the world, destabilized regions, ran up the deficit and failed to check the rise of China, all the while claiming the problem was that the world world was complicated, so “just trust us, we’re the professionals, you don’t understand, go enjoy the mall”. Trump effectively raining in Israel shatters that illusion, and raises the question if one man’s ego (even a morally compromised one like Trump’s) can do more to end wars and stabilize the world order than the entire rules based international order and the legacy multilateral institutions that represent it. Conversely, the lack of that same ego in Congress appears to cause them to sit silently while Trump ramps up hostilities with Venezuela with little to no justification, and makes us question if there really are 3 separate and equal branches of government anymore. The erosion of congressional power isn’t caused by Trump’s assertion of his own, but by decades of bipartisan apathy surrounding foreign policy and feckless leadership in both political parties. Congress needs to take a page out of Trump’s book and start picking fights just to remind people it can. — About the Author Scott Kelly is a former Green Beret who now challenges the way America thinks about power. He hosts the “At the Water’s Edge” podcast.