‘Whom the gods would destroy…’

So, what’s more ridiculous?

A properly senile relic in charge of the sole superpower (read Biden), or a deliberately insane megalomaniac bent upon stamping his own uninformed thumbprint on global affairs and making a joke of that superpower (read Trump)?

People may have laughed when POTUS-47 bragged about buying or even taking over Greenland, pretty much the same for the Panama Canal, and making Canada America’s 51st state, and rolled their eyes as his yes-men stood up and clapped every time he showed off his provocative executive orders – a sight right out of a real-life third-world tragicomedy, perhaps our own Islamic Republic or Modi-land next door.

But surely nobody thought that his smart idea of relocating Palestinians elsewhere “permanently” to live “beautiful lives” for the US to “take over” Gaza and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East” was even remotely laughable. Because, while it’s about as un-doable as his other expansionist ideas, this is different; and much more dangerous.

Unlike the nonsense about Greenland, etc., this will not fade away. Bibi, too, was lost for words because this takes the whole debate about the holy land back more than a hundred years, long before the controversial, illegitimate birth of Israel or the unfair two-state proposition, to the time when Theodore Herzl led the Zionist movement’s push to buy Palestine from Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the early 20th century.

The sultan said no, of course, but only after playing with the idea for a good 15 years and ultimately realising that even an all-powerful caliph didn’t have it in him to cleanse a land of all its people just like that. But Trump is a much bigger power player, at least in his own eyes.

And even as the countries he wants to take all the Palestinians have flatly rejected the idea, as have all of America’s traditional allies, it has already, effectively killed the ceasefire and, knowingly or unknowingly, played right into the hands of the rabid right that keeps Netanyahu’s shaky coalition in place by removing the two-state solution from the table once and for all – something even the most pro-Israel American presidents shied away from for obvious reasons.

Israel’s far right has been salivating at the prospect of a Gaza without Gazans since the Naqba failed to drive all Palestinians out of their homes. And they didn’t think this particular dream was about to come true even as they flattened the entire strip and mercilessly killed tens of thousands of Palestinians over the last 15-16 months.

And then, just like that, Trump delivered it to them from the highest, most powerful platform in the world. Now Israel will want nothing less, Egypt and Jordan will never take permanent refugees, and Palestinians will never leave their land, which means an uglier, more bitter round of the conflict is inevitable – with the hijacked blessing of Uncle Sam – for which, in time, Washington’s friends and foes alike will hold one Donald Trump responsible.

And let’s not forget his penchant for tariffs, which means tariff wars; another classic example of how a strongman’s self-destructive policies will elicit cheers from the same blinded support base whose lives his antics will make more miserable.

These tariffs will make food, fuel and automobiles more expensive for his loyal fans who’ll then drown their inflation fueled anger in more expensive (tariffed) beer and wine from once perfectly normal trading partners. And they’ll wonder when the commander-in-chief’s promise of reducing inflation will be honoured.

Also, as the few hours before his classic U-turn on tariffs on Mexico and Canada showed, such things spook risk out of financial markets across the globe and send a rush of safe-haven flows into the dollar on their way to US Treasuries.

That’s bad news for everybody, especially emerging markets as a rising greenback sucks capital out of riskier assets/markets, makes dollar-denominated debt (like Pakistan’s) more expensive, and pushes local currencies lower for now fault of anybody’s.

Estranged allies, a bloodier Middle East, emerging market stress, full scale tariff wars and more inflation in the US constitute a curious combination to Make America Great Again. How long do you think before Americans remember Senseless Joe’s time with fondness?

There’s enough about modern American politics and politicians to remind you of that old, undisputed law of the universe that has held true since the times of Greek and Latin classics: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”. In the long run, maybe it’s America’s own standing in the world that Trump is really harming.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025