Trump: Stealth Peace Candidate?

Actually, overall, Trump’s preference for peace is not a secret. The one fly in the peace ointment has been his seemingly hyper war mongering rhetoric regarding Palestine. Even there, there are persistent rumors from Israel that Trump has told Netanyahu that he (Trump) wants the war in Gaza to be over ASAP. A second term President Trump at this juncture will be looking for a legacy, rather than currying favor with Netanyahu, so one can understand Israeli concerns. Trump is unlikely to be a pushover for Netanyahu, no matter how groveling Trump’s rhetoric may seem at this point.

On other fronts, matters seem far more clear. Trump has been clear that he wants peace with Russia, Iran, and China. Now there’s a fascinating article out that examines JD Vance’s recent peace mongering remarks. Most importantly, Vance openly states that a Trump 2.0 admin will not walk in lockstep with Israeli demands. He frames this novel foreign policy position in entirely reasonable language, but we know that Zionists are not looking for a reasonable US position—to the contrary, reasonable language sounds the alarm for them:

J.D. Vance Says a War With Iran Is Not in the U.S. Interest

The vice-presidential candidate’s comments are the latest evidence of the gravity of the GOP foreign policy realignment.

On October 26, J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, marked a distance with Israel on the escalating situation in the Middle East. On the Tim Dillon Show, he acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, but cautioned that “America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct [from Israel’s]. Sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests.” He clarified further that the U.S. interest “very much is in not going to war with Iran”. Such a war, Vance emphasized, “would be a huge distraction of resources; it would be massively expensive to our country”.

These remarks are significant for several reasons. First, they are said in the midst of a tightly fought presidential election, with most polls suggesting the Harris–Trump showdown is a toss-up. When it comes to Israel, especially during an election, what most U.S. politicians typically offer is the boilerplate of platitudes on Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security and efforts to out-hawk each other on the “pariah states” like Iran.

…

It is true that Vance did sound some conventional lines in that debate, such as a need to stand by Israel, but what is noteworthy is that he did not seize on the opportunity to burnish his aggressive credentials, even though the CBS anchor Margaret Brennan made it easy for him to do so by framing the only foreign policy issue as a question of whether the candidates were ready to preemptively strike Iran (a nation, lest we forget, not at war with the U.S.). Vance did repeat allegations about the Biden-Harris administration easing some $100 billion to Iran; when reminded by his opponent of Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, however, he said that “diplomacy is not a dirty word,” suggesting a potential openness to talk to Tehran.

…

Coming out against a war on Iran—a highly unpopular country in the U.S. (and for good reasons)—gives some credence to the notion that the GOP’s fresh restraint could be more than just an opportunistic partisanship. This impression is reinforced by statements of other influential Republicans like Elbridge Colby, the former high-ranking Pentagon official and a strong candidate to be the Trump II national security advisor, …"

…

None of that, of course, means that there is now a clear-cut divide between an ostensibly pro-restraint GOP and the pro-war Democrats. It’s more complicated than that. Some hawkish Republicans are reportedly being mulled for key national security positions in the hypothetical new Trump administration, such as Ric Grenell, the former ambassador to Germany and acting national intelligence director, Arkansas’s Senator Tom Cotton, and Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state and now a lobbyist for a Ukrainian telecommunications firm.

…

What matters, however, is the trajectory. That the influential ascendant Republicans like Vance and Colby (not to forget the self-styled Nixonian realist Vivek Ramaswamy) oppose “forever wars”, while the Democrats embrace hawkishness, is indicative of where both parties might be heading in terms of foreign policy.

That may make a difference after November 5. As the outgoing Biden administration put the THAAD anti-missile defense system in place in Israel and sent Americans to make it operational to deter possible Iranian attacks—without restraining Israel’s own escalatory actions—it is “gambling with American lives in a manner that may leave scores killed from retaliation by Iran or Iraqi militias,” warns Trita Parsi, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s executive vice-president. If the Trump-Vance ticket wins, it will have a chance to show leadership by following up on Vance’s remarks on Israel and Iran, and act to ensure that no U.S. soldiers are killed, as Parsi put it, “in a war they did not fight for America and that Congress never authorized”.

The language here is cautious, but Vance’s words are really quite extraordinary in the context of a presidential campaign in which both parties—at least in popular perception—have been engaged in a full court pander for Jewish campaign donations. Vance, whatever else, is a smart guy who’s not prone to misspeaking. Do his words in this context suggest, first, Trump campaign confidence in the electoral outcome, and second a message to Tehran, asking for restraint past November 5? That last thing a Trump 2.0 admin would need would be a major war on its hands before it even begins. We shall see.