How the Trump administration banished the ghosts blocking the path to peace
In truth, that s only half of it. The rest of the investment is in ridiculing the idea that President Art of the Deal actually knows how to negotiate. But the fact is that while Trump and his team s approach to negotiations are admittedly a wild mismatch for certain types of strategic diplomacy, they are a surprisingly good fit for others. He got nowhere with North Korea, Russia, and Turkey, but Trump s bottom-line, year-zero, unsentimental approach to mutual-interest deal-making blew expectations, and most of his predecessors, out of the water in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Latin America.
That less-experienced diplomats were the ones thinking outside the box should not surprise, but it has made it harder for the bureaucratized establishment to swallow its pride and acknowledge the progress. Two of Trump s ambassadors in particular, Richard Grenell in Berlin and David Friedman in Jerusalem, faced aggressive opposition from predecessors but turned out to be among the more effective envoys in recent years. Jared Kushner, the president s son-in-law, and Pompeo joined them in that category, and their efforts were boosted by veteran foreign-policy hands such as John Bolton and Elliott Abrams, especially in Latin America.