by James M Dorsey
Might is right.
That sums up US President Donald J. Trump’s vision of a 21st-century world order.
Barely a month in office, Mr. Trump has not wasted time creating building blocks for his worldview.
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Mr. Trump’s efforts to end fighting in Ukraine, coupled with his territorial ambitions in Gaza, Greenland, Panama, and Canada, have put the ‘might is right’ principle on steroids. So has the president’s unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are probably popping champagne bottles. They could have hardly asked for more.
Mr. Trump has signalled that his moves are part policy and part negotiating tactic.
Granted, at times, Mr. Trump’s bark is worse than his bite.
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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum set an example of how to curb Mr. Trump’s worst instincts when she, earlier this month, using a combination of toughness and a willingness to play ball, persuaded the president not to impose tariffs, at least temporarily.
Canada followed in Ms. Sheinbaum’s footsteps, adopting her approach as a template. Europe may do the same.
Ms. Sheinbaum and Canada’s success doesn’t detract from Mr. Trump’s application of the ‘might is right’ principle in Gaza and Ukraine by legitimising ethnic cleansing and wars designed to grab land.
The Mexican president’s approach may not work in Ukraine and Gaza, at least not in ways that would salvage a rules-based order governed by international law rather than might.
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Jordanian King Abdullah, who visited the White House earlier this week, tried Ms. Sheinbaum’s approach but to no avail.
Mr. Trump doubled down on his proposal to take control of Gaza, resettle its population elsewhere, and turn the Strip into a high-end, beachfront real estate development.
In doing so, King Abdullah highlighted the fact that Gaza, like Ukraine but unlike Mexico and Canada, raises the question of the degree to which supporters of a rules-based world order engage with Mr. Trump when he applies the ‘might is right’ principle rather than international law.
Egypt, and possibly the Arab world, appears to have gotten the message.
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Egyptian security sources said President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi would not travel to Washington for talks with Mr. Trump if the agenda included the president’s plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza.
“We cannot engage or negotiate with Donald Trump on issues related to international law, not on values that are related to a human society, not on the sovereignty of neighbouring countries… There is no engagement on this… There is a confrontation on them,” said conflict resolution scholar Ibrahim Fraihat.
Although no date was announced, Mr. Al-Sisi had been expected to visit Washington later this month. In comments to the media in Mr. Trump’s presence, King Abdullah said Egypt would present to the US president a “comprehensive vision” for the reconstruction of Gaza that guarantees Palestinians the right to stay on their land.
An Arab summit scheduled for February 27 in Cairo is expected to produce a plan that, beyond reconstruction, is likely to address post-war governance in Gaza. Arab diplomats said the plan could involve an updating of a 2002 Arab peace plan that called for recognition of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
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Credit: Wilson Center
The diplomats said proposals range from an Egyptian suggestion for the creation of a post-war administration made up of Gazan technocrats backed up by an Arab-trained Palestinian security force. Egypt would convene a donor conference to secure funding for the administration and reconstruction of the Strip.
Veteran journalist and Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari reported that President Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority submitted a US$31 billion, five-year plan for the reconstruction of Gaza in three phases. The first phase would address Gazans’ immediate needs in a territory in which Israel destroyed or damaged much of the housing stock and critical infrastructure.
Mr. Yaari said the plan envisions construction of a deep-water port, high-speed transportation networks, renewable energy facilities, and advanced health and education systems managed by a Gaza Rehabilitation Agency that would draw on a fund established by donor countries.
Getting the Cairo summit to adopt a plan may not be smooth sailing. Some Arab states are more insistent than others on ensuring that reconstruction of Gaza is linked to a credible path toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Many doubt the ability of an unreformed Authority, widely viewed as dysfunctional and corrupt, to handle the reconstruction. They also question the ability of the Authority’s security forces to take on Hamas’ continued presence in the Strip.
Similarly, some Arab states, like the United Arab Emirates, believe the Cairo summit should respond to Mr. Trump’s resettlement plan in the vein of Mexican President Sheinbaum’s handling of the president. The Arab diplomats said that rather than outright rejecting the plan, the UAE has suggested Arab endorsement of the plan minus the resettlement element.
‘The bottom line is Israel has no (post-war) plan – only immature ideas, the Palestinian Authority has no credit, Egypt has no desire, and the Saudis are more interested in investing in Syria… As a result, the Gazans’ chance…to rebuild the Strip is still very distant,” Mr. Yaari said.
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Credit: Singapore Institute of International Affairs
The Gaza war, the intricacies of Arab politics, and Ukraine illustrate why the renewed dominance of the ‘might is right’ principle may not be surprising given the rules-based order’s lack of an effective enforcement mechanism and the fact that it allows a defendant or its protector in the United Nations Security Council to veto a verdict.
If anything, the rules-based order’s deficiencies reinforce the ‘might is right’ principle in a world where a critical mass of leaders adhere to the principle instead of upholding the rules.
At his first NATO defense ministers conference, the contours of a Ukrainian-Russian peace outlined by Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, suggest as much.
Messrs. Trump and Putin would essentially negotiate the peace agreement with Ukrainian officials left to hammer out the details with their Russian counterparts.
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Credit: ANI News
Mr. Trump’s plan rewards Russia by allowing it to hold on to territories it captured in the three-year-old Ukrainian war. The territories host 20 per cent of the East European country’s rare earth minerals that power technology and are worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
In addition, Ukraine would concede its ability to join NATO with the United States effectively ensuring that the alliance would reject a Ukrainian application.
To emphasise the point, NATO members would contribute to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine as individual states rather than under the alliance’s umbrella in what Mr. Hegseth called a “non-NATO mission.”
The absence of the NATO umbrella means the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defense obligation would not apply to the peacekeeping force. Mr. Hegseth ruled out US participation in the force but made no mention of intelligence or logistics support or air cover for the force.
In return, Ukraine’s existence as an independent, sovereign state would be guaranteed.
The proposed deal’s upside is that it would end a debilitating war that Ukraine cannot sustain without substantial US support, and that could lead to its demise if left to fend for itself.
The problem is that it potentially sets a precedent legitimising the ‘might is right’ principle that can be adopted by others, including Mr. Trump as he eyes Gaza, Greenland, Panama, and Canada, or Chinese President Xi Jinping, who claims Taiwan and much of the South China Sea.
Mr. Trump “will be measured as president by whether he achieves a just peace agreement that doesn’t benefit the aggressor. The process is just beginning, but, so far, Trump doesn’t appear to have caved to the Kremlin,” said Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.
Mr. Ignatius based his optimism on the assertion that Mr. Trump’s proposed deal resembles the armistice that ended the Korean War and allowed South Korea to achieve spectacular prosperity.
Moreover, Mr. Trump kept in place the Biden administration’s restrictive energy sector sanctions against Russia and voiced his continued support for Ukraine, even though his blanket freeze of foreign aid affects Ukraine, too.
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Even so, Mr. Trump adopted Israel’s negotiating tactic that seek to strip the Palestinians of whatever trump cards they may have before talks start. Only in the case of Ukraine Mr. Trump surrendered Ukraine’s cards voluntarily.
The ‘might is right’ principle’s other immediate litmus test is Gaza, as Qatar and Egypt successfully scrambled to salvage the Strip’s ceasefire agreement.
Mr. Trump took the ‘might is right’ principle to new heights with his proposition that the United States would take possession of Gaza without its 2.3 million Palestinian residents based on “US authority” rather than international law.
Mr. Trump’s proposition puts a potential future breakdown of the ceasefire and resumption of the war that has made Gaza virtually inhabitable in a different, more urgent light if that is possible.
Not that it wasn’t already an example of what can happen when ‘might is right.’
The difference is that Mr. Trump’s framework for an end to the Ukraine war erases much of the perceived double standards in US policy towards Ukraine and Gaza, when the Biden administration insisted on the application of international law in Europe but not in the Middle East.
International law is not part of Mr. Trump’s thinking. ‘Might is right’ is.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.