The foreign policy establishment was wrong: Biden's appointees must recognize Kushner's success
CHARLES CHAPMAN: The nomination of Anthony Blinken and John Kerry to senior positions within President Biden’s administration signals the foreign policy establishment’s return to roles filled in President Trump’s administration by a smattering of young and unorthodox senior advisors. Despite the inexperience and nepotistic nature of Trump’s team, advisors such as Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz forged breakthroughs in long-stalled negotiations between Israel and Arab nations by rejecting central tenets of the foreign policy establishment. The establishment figures seeing resurgent influence in the new administration must take the chance to exercise their humility and accept the success of those they denounced, or they will risk undoing the progress that has made the Middle East more secure and prosperous.
In early 2017, Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was tapped to spearhead efforts to draft and enact a new plan for Middle East Peace, with a primary focus on forging long-term diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab nations. Kushner had no previous experience in foreign policy and was fresh from a short career working in his family’s real estate business, causing many to see the nomination as a nepotistic action that would have a disastrous effect on an already precarious Middle East geopolitical situation. Another unorthodox and controversial hire joined Kushner’s effort: Avi Berkowitz, a 2016 graduate of Harvard Law School who rose quickly to the position of Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International Negotiations. However, despite the almost apocalyptic and panicked response of the establishment and the mainstream media to the makeup of Trump’s team, by summer 2020 they had forged two of the most significant peace treaties of the last three decades: The Abraham Accords and the agreement between Israel and Sudan to normalize relations. They did it by rejecting the core belief of the establishment that there was no possibility of independent agreements between Israel and Arab nations without first resolving the issue of Palestine.
The establishment assumption that solving Israel's conflict with Palestine was a precondition to broader Middle East peace was not a small, insignificant part of foreign policy orthodoxy. It formed the basis of how previous administrations approached attempts to create long-term solutions for the region. At the Brookings Institution's 2016 Saban Forum in Washington, D.C., John Kerry placed specific emphasis on his belief that there would be "no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world" and that his response to people who believed “we just have to reach out to them [the Arab states]” was "no, no, no and no.” The following four years proved this wrong in no uncertain terms. By any measure, tensions between Israel and Palestinian representatives only worsened under Trump, fueled by new settlements, the U.S.’s recognition of Israeli control over the Golan Heights, and the movement of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The success of peace despite the worsening situation between Israel and Palestine is nothing short of a direct repudiation of establishment theories on the Middle East, lending credence to the belief that Kushner and his team’s inexperience was instrumental to the negotiation’s success, as it brought fresh eyes to one of the most analyzed and studied geopolitical questions of the modern era.
Admittedly, the Arab states willingness to come to the table was influenced by more than just Washington’s newfound openness to unilateral agreements, namely the continued military and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Arab states in their shared mission to contain Iran and the tantalizing economic benefits of normalized trade relations during the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the existence of external factors that provided this diplomatic opportunity does not render the Trump administration’s action insignificant, it merely underscores the willingness of the U.S. team to cast aside ideological preconceptions to pragmatically take advantage of a rapidly evolving geopolitical situation.
During a press briefing on Feb. 16, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden “is not looking to the last presidency as the model for his foreign policy moving forward.” While Trump’s attempts at diplomacy undoubtedly had many shortcomings, the Trump administration did achieve significant success in the Middle East. While Psaki’s line may sound sharp and confirm the belief of many within the foreign policy establishment that the Trump administration was little more than an aberration, the administration and the establishment would be well served to utilize their humility, recognize the mistakes in their previous reasoning, and work to build on Trump’s success by adopting some of the practices and principles they once decried as reckless and unfounded.
Charles Chapman is a staff writer for On The Record. He is a sophomore and studies history in the College.