AND
n their campaigns presidential elections (three), Donald Trump has insisted on presenting himself as an opponent of military interventionism, feeling –correctly– that many Americans were tired of the “forever wars” of regime change (Iraq et al.). In his first term, not only has he not started any new war, but his position, largely mischaracterized (t.ly/uDcLl)− as “isolationist”, earned him harsh criticism from both the old neoconservatives falcons as well as the liberals, for their refusal to continue with the “usual” – Atlanticist, imperial and interventionist – US foreign agenda of the post cold war.
Hence, the paradox of the beginning of his second presidency is that while his foreign agenda, until now, has been much more mainstream and a warmonger − Trump has spent his first year committing genocide in Gaza, bombing Yemen and Iran and now, apparently, preparing for war with Venezuela −, he himself, along with his followers, has insisted on presenting himself this time − as if all these efforts were calculated to obscure said brand − as “a president of peace,” a “global peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Prize” and proclaiming left and right his totally fictitious “victories of peace.”
In his very long speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations (September) he claimed, for example, “to have ended seven endless wars” in “a period of only seven months”, the figure that the State Department soon raised to eight (t.ly/rCyyX). According to this, his “mediations” ended the wars between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as – the eighth “success” – “between Israel and Hamas.”
Even a quick look shows that none of these statements correspond to reality: in the case of Cambodia and Thailand it was a border conflict resolved through Malaysia’s mediation (the only thing Trump did was threaten both countries with tariffs); There was no war between Kosovo and Serbia now, so nothing to “end”; between Congo and Rwanda violence continues. In the case of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, Trump’s claim to have “solved it” caused a serious diplomatic crisis with New Delhi ( sic). In the war between Israel and Iran, the United States was literally a belligerent after Trump, following the Israelis, bombed Tehran’s nuclear facilities (earning, in the process, applause from formerly critical neocons and liberals for finally “doing things right”); There was no war between Egypt and Ethiopia either.
And in the case of Gaza, the ceasefire – not “peace” –, after having been violated multiple times, is about to crumble, with Israel eager to continue the genocide, of which the United States has, in fact, been the main facilitator.
The last unmentioned case – of the supposed “peace” between Armenia and Azerbaijan – is emblematic for the depth of the fiction behind the “successes” of the self-proclaimed “peace president” and for the extent of his ignorance.
Despite proclaiming that both countries, under its auspices, signed a “peace treaty” in August, the document – which stipulates, among others, the granting of rights to the United States to build a corridor through Armenian territory to connect Azerbaijan with its extraterritorial enclave of Nakhchivan, the so-called, of courseTrump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP, t.ly/nG7NN)− was barely signed by the presidents of both countries while still waiting to resolve some thorny issues (something that, at the suggestion of Washington, did not prevent them, however, from already promising to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize).
By boasting of “stopping this war” – the conflict whose modern phase began in 1988 and which last broke out in 2023, when Azerbaijan finally took over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh, expelling all its inhabitants, that is, when the current president was out of power – Trump has had difficulty pronouncing “Azerbaijan” (“Aber-Bakhdan”, according to him) and has twice referred to Armenia as… “Albania” (t.ly/F6wm1).
All hope is to turn this lapse by pointing out that in the territories in question there actually existed in ancient times (II BC-VIII AD) an entity called “Caucasian Albania” – no relationship with the country in the Balkans – is doomed to failure because Trump is famously ignorant of the history and figure of “Albania”, an old tool of Azeri historical revisionism, which seeks to rename all the historical vestiges of Armenia in the region (t.ly/UqQ49). Then, thinking twice, Trump – “closer” to Baku satrap Ilham Aliyev – perhaps used this term “well”, although, given the context, it would hardly be considered a sign of “peace”.
On another occasion, doubling down on the Armenian erasure and improving the pronunciation of Azerbaijan in the process (this time “Azer-Baijan”), he did not even mention Armenia (t.ly/s7xew). Congratulating himself “for having stopped a war that killed millions” – but which in reality in its hottest phase (1991-1994) resulted in some 30 thousand victims –, he also assured that Vladimir Putin, in a (supposed) call, was amazed by how he “ended the endless war that they could never end.” Not only did he thus use this case to divert attention from the Russian-Ukrainian war that he himself promised in the 2024 campaign to “resolve in 24 hours” (and could not), but he also ignored that Russia was never interested in resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, only in “managing” it ( divide and rule). Clearly for Trump, as far as fiction goes, only the sky is the limit.
