{"id":60432,"date":"2025-09-12T22:31:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T22:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/60432\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T22:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T22:31:14","slug":"us-sway-among-friend-and-foe-is-now-shaken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/60432\/","title":{"rendered":"US\u2019 sway among friend and foe is now shaken"},"content":{"rendered":"

The shock Israeli strike against Hamas officials in Doha, followed by Russian drones piercing the airspace of NATO ally Poland, delivered twin blows to President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s longtime boast that friends and foes respect the US under his leadership like never before.<\/p>\n

Trump voiced unhappiness with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> for sending warplanes to attack the capital of Qatar<\/a>, a major US ally, but has otherwise resisted getting more involved. He has declined to denounce Russia\u2019s drone incursion into Poland, saying Thursday it \u201ccould have been a mistake but regardless I\u2019m not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s removed attitude contrasts sharply with his repeated claims about his unique ability to solve the world\u2019s intractable conflicts. While he has conceded that Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine \u2014 which he once pledged to resolve on his first day back in office \u2014 has been more difficult than anticipated, he recently said President Vladimir Putin \u201cwants to make a deal for me.\u201d
\u201cThe problem here is there is too much ambiguity in US policy,\u201d said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cOn the one hand we could not be more strongly against Hamas and Hamas terrorism, but on the other hand, we let the Qataris get away with supporting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abrams, a senior official in the first Trump administration, added that more clarity also is needed on the US policy toward Russia, since \u201cthis isn\u2019t just a war between Russia and Ukraine, and our position is we want peace. It\u2019s a war of aggression against a friend by an enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ETLive Events
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pushed back against Trump<\/a>\u2019s assertions on Friday, saying in a post on X that the \u201cdrone attack\u201d by Russia \u201cwasn\u2019t a mistake.\u201d Speaking to reporters a day earlier, Tusk said that the country\u2019s president had received assurances about the US\u2019s \u201cabsolute allied commitment and full support for Poland\u201d in a call with Trump earlier this week.Israel\u2019s strike in Qatar, which the White House has said was conducted without US approval, also thrust Trump into an awkward position between two allies, prompting the president to express regret and promise that it wouldn\u2019t happen again \u2014 a tough pledge to keep since Netanyahu said the strike was \u201ca wholly independent Israeli operation.\u201dQatar\u2019s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, meanwhile, told CNN the strike \u201ckilled any hope\u201d for the release of remaining Israeli hostages seized by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack against Israel.<\/p>\n

At the same time, and in a sign that the US support for Israel hadn\u2019t been broken, the White House pointed to the incident as an \u201copportunity for peace\u201d \u2014 echoing Netanyahu\u2019s statements even as Trump said he was \u201cvery unhappy\u201d with the unilateral strike.<\/p>\n

Regarding actions of his friends, the risk is that Trump is seen as tacitly green-lighting what\u2019s actually against US interests. <\/p>\n

The strike on Qatari soil is \u201ca clear sign that the Israeli government is concluding that there are no rules, just capabilities,\u201d said Jon Alterman, Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cIsrael is seeking to completely destroy Hamas, which many of its allies have cautioned is impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Qatar is a major non-NATO ally and hosts the largest US military base in the Middle East. Qatari air defenses were key to the defense of Al Udeid Air Base from an Iranian strike in June. The fact that the US alerted the Qataris immediately after discovering the operation was underway could explain why Israel did not inform the US beforehand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clear now to all that Washington\u2019s stated focus on so-called quiet diplomacy not only is failing to yield results, but this is fraught with generating new risks and further escalating tensions in the already fraught atmosphere,\u201d Russia\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said at a Security Council meeting on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Trump already has bucked political norms by engaging directly with Putin, who had been shunned by the West since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After hosting the Russian leader in Alaska, Trump suggested that a ceasefire and eventual permanent settlement could be close. <\/p>\n

Instead, Russia has launched a series of devastating strikes against Ukraine, and prompted NATO ally Poland to shutter a major airport and scramble jets in response to a Russian drone incursion into its airspace.<\/p>\n

The latest turn of events has allies growing more nervous that Trump isn\u2019t being aggressive enough with Putin and using the US\u2019s full leverage. It\u2019s also prompting European countries to take action. France and Germany pledged to reinforce Poland\u2019s defenses. On Friday, France announced it would summon Russia\u2019s ambassador to protest the \u201cabsolutely unacceptable\u201d drone incursion, according to Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on France Inter.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne does not accidentally launch multiple drones at Poland,\u201d Gabrielius Landsbergis, former foreign minister of Lithuania said on X Wednesday. \u201cThis was a deliberate act of aggression. If NATO\u2019s response is only the usual mumblings \u2013 such attacks will be normalized, and then more dangerous possibilities for further frog-boiling escalations will open up to Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in response that Congress is prepared to authorize \u201cbone-crushing new sanctions and tariffs\u201d for Trump to deploy, while urging European nations to impose their own sanctions against India and China for purchasing Russian oil.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US president should say that these kinds of incursions are unacceptable, whether intentional or not,\u201d said Christopher Chivvis, director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cAt the same time, we would obviously want to treat a mistake differently than an intentional incursion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Add \"ET as a Reliable and Trusted News Source<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The shock Israeli strike against Hamas officials in Doha, followed by Russian drones piercing the airspace of NATO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[7407,79,356,179,18,19,17,2120,187,43211,40731,43210,43213,43212],"class_list":{"0":"post-60432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-qatar","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-trump-news","18":"tag-us-economy","19":"tag-us-economy-news","20":"tag-us-policy-on-india","21":"tag-us-policy-on-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}