Hour of Judgment Is at Hand for Trump

The allegation by the newly returned and imperishable Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he goes through the Byzantine intricacies of forming a multiparty coalition government in the Knesset, the world’s most argumentative forum, that President Trump has legitimized antisemitism by having Kanye West and Nick Fuentes to dinner at his club at Mar-a-Lago, is an almost unspeakable outrage. There is no legitimate precedent in all of the history of diplomacy for a leader of one country even to comment upon the dinner guests of a private citizen, though a former and aspiring holder of a high office in a foreign country. It is no one’s business, not even his neighbors’, whom Mr. Trump invites to dinner.In these circumstances, the Israeli prime minister-designate’s comments are particularly poorly chosen because Israel has never had a president of the United States more unequivocally well-disposed to it than Mr. Trump. Every president since Jimmy Carter has indicated an intention to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but it never happened until President Trump did it, and Israel passed an important milestone for the small cost of a few days of routine demonstrations.It was from this trivial reaction that Mr. Trump’s six predecessors recoiled. In a stroke, Mr. Trump detonated the unfeasible dream of Palestinian spokespeople that, the Arabs having provoked the 1967 war, and having been defeated, had an indefectible right to demand that the pre-1967 borders be resurrected, confirming the severe division of Jerusalem.President Trump also played a vital role in the so-called Abraham Accords by which Israel’s relations were normalized with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. He was generous in sharing military information and hardware with Israel and was unambiguous throughout his presidency about the unconditional right of Israel to survive and flourish as a Jewish state. This was a considerable departure in Israel’s favor from the implicit preferences of the Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Obama administrations, which professed to believe in the legitimacy of Israel but under unspecified conditions that left the government and people of that state with substantial reasons to be concerned about how far the temptations of moral relativism might propel the United States toward the appeasement of the more militant and populous Arab powers. Mr. Trump saw more clearly than any of those previous presidents that the agitation of the Arab world in favor of the Palestinians was essentially an emotive red herring designed to distract the Arab masses from the practically unlimited misgovernment from which almost all of them have suffered throughout the life of the State of Israel. Also, Mr. Trump clearly perceived that the conduct of the Arabs’ ancient foes — the Turks and the Persians (Iran) — was a much greater threat to the Arab world than any plausible concern posed by the Jewish state. President Trump played a seminal role in helping to realign the Arab powers in a substantially more confident relationship with Israel as they faced, with justifiable concern, the unfriendly approach of their ancient Turkish and Iranian foes.Another almost simultaneous outrage is Hungary’s purported veto of nearly $19 billion of Nato humanitarian aid for Ukraine. I have been a consistent supporter of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government in Hungary and particularly his refusal to allow a million destitute refugees to flood into his country of only about 9.7 million people. He has produced great economic progress for Hungary and has managed the traditionally extremely sensitive strategic position of Hungary between more powerful neighbors with great dexterity. He presumably means this veto on aid to Ukraine as a gesture to incentivize President Zelensky to soften his peace terms with Russia. That may be a reasonable objective, but it is not an acceptable method of pursuing it, and Hungary grossly abuses its position as a member of NATO and of the European Union by this nasty and materially damaging gesture which invites and should receive serious retribution within the Alliance.In this respect, Hungary has placed itself in a similar category to that of Turkey, which frequently acts as an opponent of NATO’s interests and is exercising unreasonable leverage to counter the clear desirability of strengthening the Alliance by the admission to it of the two vigorous northern democracies, Sweden and Finland. Their abandonment of their sometimes spurious neutrality opposite Russia at this point is a distinct accretion of strength for the Western Alliance. Both Turkey and Hungary are close to the point where they must either become more respectful of the wishes of the alliance that has protected them, or test the bracing climate of navigating the cross-currents of international relations without the benefit of adherence to the most successful alliance in the history of the world.What is needed is for someone in the Biden administration, and there are mot many visible candidates for such a role, to brush up on President Eisenhower’s firmness and suavity in overcoming French and British objections and bringing West Germany into NATO as a full ally in 1955, just a decade after he had received the unconditional surrender in the West of the recently deceased Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, and only three years after he retired as founding supreme commander of NATO. Statesmen, like states and alliances, must retain fundamental principles while adapting to changing conditions. Messrs. Netanyahu and Orban have just flunked that test, though not irretrievably. Neither the current dramatis personae of world affairs nor the up-and-coming personalities of the American political parties are forested with Eisenhowers — he was a world-historic figure before he became president.These are galling times for Mr. Trump, and to some extent he has himself to blame. He warned of the dangers of ballot harvesting as early as 2019 but bungled the task of preparing his party and its candidates, including himself, from the effects of the abuse of it in the 2020 election.Mr. Trump had some reason to be confident of a satisfactory result in the midterm elections last month and instead they were a heavy disappointment, in effect, a defeat. He gambled on his ability preemptively to take control of the Republican Party, and he lost. If he maintains the spirit and tenor of his candidate announcement speech a week after the elections — upbeat, positive, and champion of a reform program while avoiding disparagements of rivals and an obsessive preoccupation with the recent past, however just some of his grievances are, he could still regain a favored position in the quest for renomination and reelection. If so, Mr. Netanyahu’s ungrateful insolence, like the shameful dismissal by Fox News of the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, without cause, will not be remembered. If Mr. Trump is unable to sell himself as a new and more bonhomous personality, his enemies will succeed in convincing millions of voters that he is a distracted and erratic King Lear figure, and this week’s minor irritants will not, in the resulting overall decline in his political fortunes, be worthy of recollection. The hour of judgment for Donald Trump is at hand; he can still succeed, but with a new play-book.

Hour of Judgment Is at Hand for Trump

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