The President of Peace is back.
The President of Peace is back.
Never mind that Donald Trump is threatening to bomb land targets in Venezuela, recentlycalledSomali immigrants “garbage,” warned some Democrats committed seditious behavior “punishable by death” and his White House is denyingallegationsof a war crime.
The commander-in-chief turned statesman on Thursday, presiding over the signing of a deal that he said would end “one of the longest running conflicts anywhere in the world” between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He proclaimed, “A great day for Africa, a great day for the world.”
But the event was laden with ironies.
For starters, vicious fighting is still raging between Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and Congolese soldiers.
On top of that, how many peace treaty signings have a warm-up track that includes the song “Live and Let Die,” to which guests were treated before Trump showed up?
And the ceremony took place inside the former headquarters of the US Institute for Peace, which worked to solve global conflicts since it was created by Congress in 1984 — until it was shuttered, and gutted by Trump himself.
“Marco, you’ve done a fantastic job in getting it ready — it’s a spectacular building,” Trump told Secretary of State Rubio.Getting it readyin this context meant emblazoning the name Donald J. Trump on the front facade, firing staff, ending its programs and eviscerating its budget.
But USIP is, or was, not a federal agency and owned and managed its own headquarters. A judge has ruled the administration’s takeover of the institute, including its building and assets, is illegal. An appeal is pending.
Thursday’s ceremony epitomized the contradictions of Trump’s America First foreign policy that simultaneously threatens Constitutional values, boosts autocrats, spurns allies and tears down global institutions and systems that kept the peace for decades — while wielding US power to seek new peace deals.
It also showcased an administration whose top priority seems to be polishing the legacy of the president himself, as he seeks the recognition of a Nobel Peace prize that he says he should have won many times over.
And even as Trump talked peace in Washington, US forces intensified the administration’s attacks on alleged drug trafficking boats in a campaign critics say is illegal. The militarystruck a boatin the Eastern Pacific, killing four people, US Southern Command said.
The Pentagon is facing bipartisan heat over an attack on another vessel in September which involved a follow-up strike that reportedly killed surviving crew members. Democrats have claimed this could be a war crime.
The Rwanda-DRC deal is intended to end a war that has spread carnage in Central Africa involving more than 100 armed groups in a conflict rooted in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Rwanda accuses the DRC of protecting genocidal militias while Congo says the government in Kigali sponsors rebel groups on its soil, partly to control rights for critical rare earths minerals.
The war is one of the eight conflicts that Trump claims to have solved during his presidency already. In addition to the DRC and Rwanda, he ticks off conflicts between Egypt and Ethiopia, India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Serbia and Kosovo, Israel and Hamas and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In some of these conflicts, for instance, in Gaza, Trump played a critical role and deserves a genuine foreign policy win. But elsewhere — no war was raging — for instance between Egypt and Ethiopia where the issue was a disagreement over a dam project. Some belligerents, for example India, have suggested the president exaggerated his role in quelling fighting.
Trump’s hyperbolic claims of being the only president ever to win a war have earned him widespread mockery — alongside his bleating about supposed unfairness on behalf of the Nobel committee.
That’s a shame. Because in some cases, the president has made significant contributions, smartly wielded American power, and undoubtably saved lives. His use of trade threats helped halt a hot border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia — even if his claims to have solely mediated peace ignore a significant effort by key regional powers.
But Trump does genuinely seem to hate war. He often expresses bafflement about the futility of civilian carnage. He’s absolutely right to do so and has a knack for boiling down such realities to plain language in a way that escapes many world leaders. When NATO Chief Mark Rutte says Trump is “the one person in the whole world” who can end the Ukraine war, he’s probably right.
But that doesn’t mean that the president’s multiple peace efforts are all succeeding.
He has repeatedly appeared to be trying to impose a peace that favors an aggressor — Russia — rather than the invaded party — Ukraine. At other times, it has appeared that the President is ignorant of key historical and factual issues and simply wants a deal, any deal, that he can claim as another win.
Still, sometimes a 40,000 feet approach can work. His willingness to cut through historicalhatreds helped forge the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. His envoys Steve Witkoff and his own son-in-law Jared Kushner might have looked naive in their peace-through-business red carpet to ruthless Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But they’ve done valuable details work in Gaza where the ceasefire is holding.
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda on Thursday praised Trump’s peacemaking technique as “even-handed” and “never taking sides.” He went on: “He orients us toward the future, not the past, emphasizing that the dividend of peace is prosperity and investment … President Trump’s approach is pragmatic. The process has not become an end in itself.”
Kagame has a national interest in buttering up Trump. But his description does ring true to the president’s public comments.
But Kagame was more circumspect than Trump, saying Thursday’s agreement offered the chance to “end this conflict once and for all. “If this agreement falters and things do not work out as they are supposed to, the responsibility will not lie with President Trump but with ourselves.”
DRC President Felix Tshisekedi was similarly conditional, calling the deal a “new path, a demanding path” to a place where peace might be more than an aspiration.
Trump was in an effusive mood, praising his guests and other regional leaders in the room, apparently not spotting the ironies given his reported first term denigration of “sh*thole” countries on the continent or his new visa bans that include a handful of other African countries.
And, as he often does, he seemed to blurt out his true motivations, highlighting how the deal gives US access to rare earth minerals at the center of the new geological great game between the US and China. Congo is a leading supplier of cobalt, which is essential in lithium iron batteries used for smartphones, and of coltan, which is vital in the manufacture of laptops and fighter jets.
“They’ve spent a lot of time killing each other, and now, they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands and taking advantage of the United States economically, like every other country does,” Trump quipped.
If the deal lasts and saves lives, Trump will be entitled to another victory lap.
But his attempts to promote a coup in Venezuela, his draconian use of the military in law enforcement in US cities and his assault on democracy after the 2020 election may doom his hopes of that elusive Nobel prize.
But maybe there’s an alternative.
Trump spotted FIFA chief Gianni Infantino at Thursday’s peace ceremony, saying in his inimitable way: “He’s in charge of a very small sport called, here, soccer; over there, football.”
Infantino, a Trump super pal, seems to spend more time in the Oval Office than on the sidelines of big games these days. He even showed up at the president’s Middle East peace summit in Egypt. He’ll also preside over the draw Friday for next summer’s World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
And just by coincidence, Infantino will award the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize.
Who could possibly be worthy of such an august honor presented on behalf of five billion football fans?
Any guesses?