ArcaMax

PARIS — President Trump has a bold new plan for Middle East peace: forget the usual song and dance about counterterrorism, humanitarian aid or even mitigating climate change. He’s proposing to skip the foreplay and get right to the main event: making sure American businesses cash in.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said. “We’ll own it. … Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … do a real job, do something different.”

Washington officials, blindsided by Trump’s proposal, have been scrambling to say things like, “This isn’t who we are as a country.” And they’re absolutely right. Usually, they like to dress up those kinds of objectives in a nice disguise first.

The kind of adventure that Trump is suggesting usually kicks off with U.S. taxpayer-funded entities linked to the State Department and the CIA gently nudging open a window of opportunity that was previously nailed shut. Enter stage left: organizations like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), swooping in like the world’s most enthusiastic PTA volunteers. They funnel cash to operatives abroad through projects with feel-good names that scream “noble intentions,” like promoting diversity, stability and freedom.

Coincidentally, these projects tend to pop up in countries that aren’t exactly sending Washington a fruit basket. Which might explain why NGOs backed by USAID have found themselves politely — or not so politely — shown the door in places like Russia, China, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Hungary, Venezuela, the UAE, Egypt, and a growing list of others. Apparently, not everyone appreciates their democracy served up with a side of regime change.

Trump has handed the wrecking ball to his newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, helmed by none other than presidential-appointee Elon Musk, in-between his SpaceX stints launching taxpayer cash into space. Together, they’ve bulldozed USAID’s operations with a 90-day funding freeze, leaving its dazed remnants under the watchful eye of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Yes, that Marco Rubio — the former Florida senator and neocon poster boy, now re-branded with a MAGA facelift so radical that it makes Hollywood boob-jobs look subtle. Rubio has vowed that any foreign aid program hoping to survive will have to fight tooth and nail through a “line-by-line” budgetary waterboarding.

Already, “independent” media in Ukraine parroting State Department talking points have started begging the public for cash. Online trolls calling themselves the “North Atlantic Fellas Organization,” using Shiba Inu dogs for their profile photos, seem to have been abandoned by their owner, who apparently can’t afford their care anymore. Surely it’s just a coincidence that now suspended State Department funding included nearly $500,000 “to encourage university students in Moldova, Poland, Romania and Slovakia” to “push back against anti-Ukraine narratives online and offline,” according to various program websites.

Usually, once these “civil society” entities have laid the groundwork for regime change, they encourage average citizens to hit the streets. If necessary, as was the case in Libya and Syria, in comes the Western military might to finish the job, under the pretext of a humanitarian responsibility to protect, sparking a conflict between the regime changers and the country’s own military. And it’s precisely at this point where the US typically gets bogged down in years-long fighting. The ultimate goal of parlaying a coup into profit fades into the distance as Washington looks around for new targets in an attempt to land some darts on the map in the interest of US economic growth.

That’s the formula. Because it would be seen as grotesque for a US president to just walk right up and grab a country by its assets. That is, until the new asset-grabber-in-chief came along. Trump was once famously caught on tape by “Access Hollywood” explaining that, if you’re famous, you can just walk right up and grab women by their privates.

Just imagine what you can do if you’re president! Trump didn't waste any time in testing those boundaries, musing about owning Greenland and the Panama Canal, annexing Canada, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and now talking about Gaza like it's another Dubai or French Riviera over which he wants the US to enjoy “long- term ownership.”

Trump’s idea apparently involves letting Israel finish leveling the place under the convenient pretext that everyone there is a potential Hamas operative. Any civilians are supposed to just flee to neighboring Jordan or Egypt, which have apparently just been waiting for around 2 million more people to show up with no roof over their head. Then rich regional partners are supposed to chip in to build Trumpland Gaza, future home of Trump Resort and Spa, probably. Although let's not pretend that he'd be the only one who stands to benefit financially from a market hand-delivered to the US.

So will the same guy who campaigned on the promise to scale back US military interventions overseas have to commit Pentagon troops? He hasn’t ruled it out, he said. Usually, multinational corporations who enjoy the privilege of being granted the opportunity to profit from development in war zones are expected to pay for their own private security contractors, and not have taxpayers fund their future privatized profits. But really, the American citizens typically fund everything else up to that point, and maybe even that too. Like in Eastern Syria, where US troops remain long after winding down active combat — all because that’s where the oil is for US companies to “keep,” as Trump once put it.

It’s basically the same old Washington hustle, just with a new twist. The only difference is that Trump’s insistence on parading those same shady interests out into the open, completely naked, is making the establishment squirm. Because now the average American can get a good look at what they’ve all been hiding under that nice taxpayer-funded suit.