If you relied on mainstream media projections of the world today, you would only know a pandemic world of shut down, economic malaise, chaos, and violence.  The leading foil for this calamitous vision is certainly the lizard king himself, President Donald John Trump.  Four years of projection of the president as a bully, ignoramus, naive tool of dictators, and incompetent has been critical to the effort to remove him from office, first, through deep state insurrection, innuendo, and then, impeachment.  Somehow the President had managed to withstand the onslaught. only to have the coup de grace, the Covid pandemic, demolish the hard won domestic victories of the first three years, and put him at the mercy of an entirely unpredictable opponent, a virus .  The promoted image of the President has been one of only superficial animal instincts and cunning –  entirely devoid of a plan, a vision, a stable direction.

The reality on the world stage is quietly one of the more effective stewardships of American foreign policy of any president in my lifetime.  The lizard king has managed on multiple fronts to create momentum that would, under any other leader of acceptable presentation to the media image makers, be seen as historic in scope.  Under assault from a huge southern border migration begun in the previous administration, threatening to permanently make the border disappear and criminal trafficking to explode, propagated by  enormous media pressure based upon a narrative of Trump as hater, the President achieved implausibly instead an almost complete stoppage in cross border illegal traffic that had evaded two previous presidents , negotiating  a “Remain in Mexico” accord with Mexico itself to halt the flow.  Trump harangued successfully NATO partners in providing more financial support for the common defense, likely saving NATO from a self induced dissolution based on largesse and detachment, and pivoting to more engaged mutual defense partnerships with Poland, India, Australia, and Japan.  Trump dramatically re-ordered the unholy marriage of climatology and globalist socialist ambitions with U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord, and removed almost overnight American energy vulnerability with support of fracking.  The President stopped a western decades long subservience to Chinese economic malfeasance of trade imbalances and intellectual theft threatening to enucleate western economic strength and resolve. Most impressively in the Middle East, Trump in three short years succeeded at successfully moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem, reversing the calamitous Iran agreement, smashing ISIS,  and eliminating the two most implacable monsters of terror to the region, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Qasem Soleimani.   Most effectively, he has managed all these achievements with a dramatic lack of commitment of military forces to new American military adventures, a first since World War II.

The above achievements alone would be an impressive foreign policy record for any President, much less one who is roundly derided as absent any intellectual depth or patience.  Now, August 13, 2020, brought an even more unexpected and spectacular achievement.  The United Arab Emirates became the first Arab nation in nearly 30 years to enter into mutual recognition with the state of Israel.  The “Abraham” accord, negotiated with the assistance of  Trump’s Middle East team led by his son in law Jared Kushner, managed to go where even the previous Egyptian and Jordanian pacts decades ago failed to go – complete bilateral recognition across diplomatic, economic, tourism and trade sectors.  The agreement has completely upended long standing notions of supposed diplomatic expertise, and opened a long closed door to real progress and peace in the region.

For decades, US and global diplomacy leaned almost entirely on Israel to concede on multiple fronts to hostile Palestinian demands in order to “affect’ an environment suitable to solving the implacable Israeli-Palestinian “problem”.   The Palestinians were viewed by the Arab and external world as the aggrieved party, with constant pressure on Israel through sanctions, UN resolutions, terrorist actions, and border wars to trade survival for etherial “recognition”.  It was considered gospel – no progress without Palestinian agreement, and no Palestinian agreement without abject Israeli surrender. Israeli doves bought into the charade – at one point Israeli Prime Minister Olmert offering to the Palestinians 95% of the West Bank, a physical connection between Gaza and the West Bank, negotiations toward some sort of refugee return to Israel Proper, and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.  This nearly complete capitulation was rejected by Palestinian leader Abbas, as the underlying goal of the Palestinians was eventually restoration of all of “Palestine”.  As has become the sage saying in the across the Middle East, “the Palestinians never waste an opportunity, to waste an opportunity”.

The Trump administration saw something that had eluded the Obama Administration – the Iran threat had flipped over long standing rationalities among Arab states to shun Israel.  Iran’s revolutionary Shia desire to rout long standing Sunni  dominance in the region had led to severe destabilization of the Levant from Lebanon through Syria to Iraq, and the southern Saudi peninsula in Yemen. With the acknowledgement by Arab states that their economic global leverage on the single resource of oil was rapidly diminishing and the need to convert their economies onto 21st century platforms to survive , the 13th century basis of Iranian theocracy and radical Sunni extremism was identified as an existential threat.  Progressively the example as the way forward to the 21st century was their formerly implacable foe, Israel.  Israel had proved itself the resilient nation of the region, powerful militarily, first world in technology and economic diversity, and a worthy advisory to Iranian belligerence.  The US superpower could no longer be relied upon to be the military policeman, and Russia and China too flawed in power projection to provide any counterbalance.

The United Arab Emirates are the logical first signees to the Abraham accords.  The Emirates have presciently prepared for the post oil world by investing in a modern future.  The port at Dubai has become a world financial and trade center, a tourist mecca, and the pride of gulf development.  The spectacular achievement of the Birj Khalifa, completed in 2010 as the tallest skyscraper in the world by far, announced to the world that the Emirates were going to be players on the world stage.    Led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates have presented a challenge to their more powerful and richer neighbor Saudi Arabia and its ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that being mired in a single resource economy and rigidly tied to the past perceptions is a recipe for obsolescence and regime vulnerability.  Real earth shaking shifts in the tectonic plates of the Middle East are possible, and the UAE is unlikely to be the only Arab state that recognizes the opportunity that presents in an effective relationship with powerhouse Israel.

The Trump Administration was elected by voters who felt Washington had become sclerotic and incapable of seizing initiative in a changing world, and asked Trump to become the unbounded revolutionary for change.  He has done that and more, both domestically and internationally, and in normal times would be seen as a pivotal and historical figure.  Certainly, a Nobel Laureate for Peace.  The elites will never be able to admit they were wrong about their rigid interpretation of a changing world, or the abilities of that labile ball of energy and initiative we call President.

For the first time in many years since the martyrdom of Anwar Sadat, one can look at the most unstable corner of the world, and say, There’s a Chance…

Hopefully the American electorate is more prescient than the elites on November 3rd, and gives this amazing story an opportunity to develop a real and lasting epilogue .