Trump’s Israel First Agenda
Plus: Unnerving AI progress, a ‘coup’ in Turkey, military-industrial chic, space junk risks, the return of mercantilism, and more!
—As part of a plan to permanently displace all Palestinians from Gaza, the US and Israel have asked officials from Sudan and Somalia if they would be willing to resettle Gaza’s population, AP News reported. The news comes as Israel’s Defense Ministry prepares to launch a “very large emigration department” that could facilitate a mass expulsion, according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. (See below for more on how Trump is approaching the Middle East in his second term.)
—A new measure of AI progress—the time it would take a human to do tasks that the latest AIs can do—was unveiled this week, and its implications are freaking some people out. Researchers looked at computer coding tasks that AIs can complete with a 50 percent success rate and those they can complete with an 80 percent success rate, and either way the upshot was the same: In the realm of coding, at least, the “length” of tasks AIs can perform is doubling every seven months.
—Turkish officials arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the primary political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a move that one Turkish political scientist called “nothing short of a coup.” The charges—which include corruption and aiding a terrorist group—came just days after Istanbul University made the strange decision to annul Imamoglu’s 31-year-old college diploma, making him ineligible to run for president shortly before his party was expected to nominate him as its candidate.
—The National Archives released 63,000 pages of previously classified documents related to the JFK assassination, some of which bolster the longstanding theory that a small clique within the CIA was behind the killing, according to journalist Jefferson Morley, who has written extensively about the assassination. In any event, the documents revealed some dirty CIA laundry, including the existence of numerous clandestine operations in the early 1960s that were at odds with the State Department’s aims. (Morley joined the NonZero Podcast to discuss the JFK assassination late last year.)
—In Nature, South African physicists warn that space junk is not just cluttering Earth’s orbit but crashing down to Earth, posing a threat to aircraft and sometimes landing in populated areas. In a plea that should sound familiar to longtime NZN readers, the researchers call for stronger international coordination and tighter regulation of private launch companies—and, of course, warn about the theorized “Kessler Syndrome,” a chain reaction of destruction in outer space that, once triggered by floating junk, could leave countless smashed satellites and an ocean of fresh debris in its wake.
This week, Washington launched a bombing campaign in Yemen to prevent the Houthis, a militant group that has de facto control of Yemen’s government, from attacking Israeli vessels as they transit the Red Sea. President Trump vowed on Truth Social that the attacks will continue until the organization is “completely annihilated,” while National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accused Tehran of providing support for Houthi attacks and stated that “all options”—including military action against Iran—“are always on the table.”
For anyone expecting Trump to follow an “America First” foreign policy, which aims to avoid unnecessary engagement in foreign conflicts, these moves must be confusing. Houthi strikes may well present a real economic threat to Israel, Egypt, or Europe, but they have a trivial impact on the US economy. So why is Trump suddenly willing to launch a campaign of airstrikes halfway across the globe? And why, at a time when the president is railing against countries in Europe for expecting free US protection, is he providing free US protection for his allies closer to the Red Sea? The best answer may also be the simplest: America First only applies outside of the Middle East.
The Houthis have long maintained that they’re attacking ships in the Red Sea as a way to pressure Israel into ending the war in Gaza. During ceasefires in Gaza, the attacks stopped. The Houthis did threaten to resume strikes on Israeli ships earlier this month, but this was in response to reports of Israel blocking the transit of food and electricity into Gaza (and no such strikes had materialized when Trump started his bombing campaign). There is thus reason to think that a lasting end to the war in Gaza—something that would serve US interests—would make most of the Houthi problem go away and spare Washington a great deal of money and trouble. But Trump seems uninterested in pursuing that sort of resolution. Instead of pressuring Israel to reach a deal with Hamas, his administration has endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to restart the war in Gaza and has blamed Hamas for the restarting of it; according to the White House, it’s Hamas’s fault that talks on phase two of the ceasefire broke down—notwithstanding the fact that even the former chief of staff of the Israeli air force said that “Israel violated the second stage… We didn’t enter talks about the second stage.”
In short, Trump is unwilling to put real pressure on Israel, but he has no problem risking war with Iran and sending US forces into a conflict in Yemen. And he’s doing this in order to support a war that has badly damaged America’s image abroad and increased the chances of terror attacks at home. It’s easy to see how all of this serves the interests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose decision to return to war will help keep him in power and out of jail. Whether it serves Israel’s interests is another question, given that, predictably, the death and suffering it inflicts on Gaza is helping Hamas’s recruiting and intensifying regional hatred of Israel in ways that could imperil its longer term security. In any event, it’s hard to see how current policies serve the interests of the United States—or line up with any sort of policy that calls itself “America First.”
So why does America First not apply in the Middle East? One reason may be that pro-Israel donors in the MAGA coalition are getting their way. The most famous of these benefactors is Miriam Adelson, a longtime Trump backer who has reportedly played a big role in shaping the administration’s thinking on the war in Gaza. Another explanation may be that Trump, for all his talk about ending wars, has surrounded himself with hawkish and strongly pro-Israel advisers like Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both of whom have long backed Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas in full.
Whatever the case, this week’s events suggest that Israel holds something approaching veto power over the application of Trump’s America First principles to the Middle East. Like the Biden administration, the Trump team has ceded “the initiative to Netanyahu,” argues Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute, thus locking itself into “a cycle of policies contrary to American interests.” Trump has also, as part of his pro-Israel agenda, pursued policies that seem contrary to the American constitution—cracking down on pro-Palestinian protestors in ways that are likely to be reversed in the courts on First Amendment grounds.
Many supporters of Trump had hoped that he would break with the Biden administration’s pattern of abjectly accommodating Prime Minister Netanyahu’s relentless deployment of mass violence. But if there’s a case for calling Trump’s Middle East policies anything other than “Israel First,” it’s just that, though they please the Israeli government and serve the prime minister’s short-term political interests, they probably don’t serve Israel’s long-term security interests.
NZN managing editor Connor Echols made the case this week that the Trump administration is transforming America from a plutocracy into a full-blown oligarchy—a system in which a privileged few use economic, political and even military authority to govern in self-serving ways. If you liked that argument, you might appreciate some recent news items that strengthen it:
—The White House is “seriously considering” a deal to let software giant Oracle run TikTok in the United States, according to Politico. That would be sure to please Larry Ellison, a longtime ally of both Trump and Elon Musk who holds 40 percent of the company’s stock.
—Trump’s family is looking to buy a stake in the crypto exchange Binance as its founder, billionaire Changpeng Zhao, seeks a pardon from the Trump administration for a money laundering conviction that landed him in federal prison for four months last year. The Wall Street Journal reports that the talks appear to be in early stages but notes that Trump's pursuit of a “business deal involving a felon seeking a pardon from his administration would be an unprecedented overlap of his business and the government.” Steve Witkoff—Trump’s top negotiator for conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine—is also reported to be “involved in the talks.” (The Trump administration has denied any connection between Witkoff and the Binance negotiations.)