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As Donald Trump touts himself because the “man of peace” for ending wars and brokering ceasefires, new revelations – comparable to a Qatari Air Pressure facility in Idaho and cryptocurrency offers with Pakistan – reveal a deeper sample. Behind the rhetoric of peace lies Trump’s acquainted playbook: profit-driven diplomacy.
Trump has touted himself because the ‘man of peace’. However from Qatar’s air base in Idaho to Pakistan’s crypto deal, his ‘peace’ partnerships look extra like deal-making.
When US President Donald Trump took to the rostrum on the White Home this week, he declared victory as soon as once more – not in an election, however in what he described as his private mission to “finish wars.” “We settled seven wars, or main conflicts, however wars,” he stated triumphantly. “And that is quantity eight.” Trump was referring to the long-elusive ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – a deal he claims his administration brokered to “carry lasting peace to the Center East.”
In Trump’s telling, the numbers communicate for themselves: eight wars supposedly stopped, and numerous lives probably saved.
On the United Nations Basic Meeting final month, he boasted that “in simply seven months, I’ve ended seven unendable wars,” naming conflicts starting from Cambodia and Thailand to India and Pakistan.
The applause he anticipated didn’t come. However Trump’s conviction didn’t waver.
“I ought to get a Nobel Prize for every one,” he quipped at one other occasion.
In latest months, Trump has positioned himself because the “Man of Peace,” a frontrunner who stops wars not via power, however via negotiation and – fairly notably – enterprise leverage. “Consider India and Pakistan,” he stated on the American Cornerstone Institute Founder’s Dinner in September. “And you know the way I finished that – with commerce. They need to commerce.”
For Trump, peace is a commodity, and commerce is the forex. His international coverage rhetoric has more and more blurred the road between diplomacy and deal-making. However the newest developments in Idaho could have simply uncovered the contradiction on the coronary heart of his “peace” doctrine.
The Qatar Base Revelation
On Friday morning (October 10), US Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced an settlement that will usually go unnoticed in a sea of protection forms. The United States, he stated, had reached a take care of Qatar to assemble a facility on the Mountain House Air Pressure Base in Idaho – a challenge geared toward coaching Qatari Air Pressure personnel and sustaining their fleet of F-15QA fighter jets.
Nearly instantly, social media erupted, with customers throughout the political spectrum – together with Trump’s personal MAGA supporters – denouncing the deal.
Proper-wing commentator and staunch Trump ally Laura Loomer referred to as it “an abomination.” She wrote, “No international nation ought to have a army base on US soil. Particularly Islamic international locations.”
The outrage mirrored a bigger discomfort: why would an “America First” administration – one which prides itself on rejecting world entanglements – open its doorways to a Center Jap army accomplice?
However officers clarified that this wasn’t a international “base” in any respect. “What we anticipate is it to be squadron operations and hangars for the F-15QA, as a result of that’s the Qatari model of the jet they purchased via international army gross sales,” Air Pressure spokesperson Ann Stefanek defined. “It’s positively nonetheless a US Air Pressure base.”
The deal, she added, had been within the works for years. Qatar first ordered the F-15QA plane in 2017 via the US International Army Gross sales (FMS) program. The coaching part – now materialising in Idaho – was a long-planned extension of that settlement.
“The partnership will present superior coaching alternatives and foster mixed operational readiness for our two international locations,” Stefanek stated.
Which may sound routine – besides it isn’t. Not when it occurs underneath a president who has constructed his total model on portraying himself as the one chief who “retains international affect out of America.”
What the Qatari Facility In Idaho Actually Is
The Mountain House Air Pressure Base, nicknamed the “Gunfighter Base,” lies roughly 50 miles southeast of Boise, Idaho. It’s house to the 366th Fighter Wing, greater than 50 F-15E Strike Eagles, and round 5,100 army and civilian personnel.
The base already hosts international forces – the Republic of Singapore’s 428th Fighter Squadron has been stationed there since 2008. German pilots have lengthy skilled on the Holloman Air Pressure Base in New Mexico. New services for worldwide F-35 coaching had been lately accomplished in Arkansas.
In different phrases, worldwide protection partnerships of this sort aren’t new. However timing issues – and in Trump’s America, timing is all the pieces.
The Idaho announcement got here simply as Trump was in search of to double down on his picture as a worldwide peacemaker. In his phrases, his administration was ending wars, lowering American troop presence overseas, and specializing in “American soil.”
But right here was a deal increasing international army presence contained in the US, even when symbolically.
The contradiction wasn’t misplaced on his critics – nor on his base.
Backlash From the MAGA Proper
“Why Qatar?” requested a number of conservative pundits on-line, pointing to Doha’s previous ties to Hamas and the Taliban. The Center Jap nation has lengthy been a paradoxical US ally – host to the Al-Udeid Air Base, the most important American army set up within the Gulf, and a key accomplice in counterterrorism operations, but additionally accused of financing extremist networks.
The unease stems partly from incidents within the latest previous. In 2019, a Saudi Air Pressure officer coaching on the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida opened fireplace on US service members, killing three. The assault prompted the Pentagon to expel 21 Saudi trainees who had been discovered to have “expressed jihadist or anti-American sentiments” on-line.
The Idaho-Qatar deal, whereas totally different in scope, touched an analogous nerve. “Have we discovered nothing from Pensacola?” one consumer wrote on X. “We’re coaching international pilots whereas calling ourselves isolationists.”
Inside Trump’s loyal MAGA circles, the transfer was seen as hypocritical. A president who denounced “globalism” now stood accused of deepening army and enterprise ties with a Gulf monarchy.
Trump’s Enterprise Offers In Terror Sponsor Pakistan
This isn’t an remoted case. From Islamabad to Doha, Trump’s peace agenda is commonly accompanied by profitable ventures tied – instantly or not directly – to his enterprise orbit.
Contemplate Pakistan. A deal signed earlier this yr between a US-based fintech agency, World Liberty Monetary, and the Pakistan Crypto Council has raised eyebrows in Washington and New Delhi alike. The agency, which goals to combine blockchain expertise throughout Pakistan’s monetary system, counts amongst its majority shareholders Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., in addition to his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Inside days of the deal’s signing, Pakistan Military Chief Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif personally met the agency’s founder, Zachary Witkoff – the son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s longtime enterprise affiliate and now US Particular Envoy to the Center East.
In line with each events, the settlement seeks to “improve monetary inclusion and digital transformation.” However in strategic circles, the optics are tough to disregard: a high-profile American fintech enterprise, linked to the president’s household, launched in Islamabad underneath the watch of Pakistan’s highly effective army institution.
“That is an opaque monetary alliance with critical political overtones,” a New Delhi-based strategic commentator advised Firstpost.
Trump’s crew has denied any political motive. “There are not any political motives behind the settlement,” World Liberty Monetary stated in a press release. However silence from the White Home has performed little to quell hypothesis.
The fusion of commerce and diplomacy isn’t new to Trump. Throughout his first time period, he often boasted about record-breaking arms offers – notably with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.
In 2017, he personally introduced a $110 billion arms bundle with Saudi Arabia, calling it “super for jobs, super for the financial system.” Later that very same yr, he praised Qatar for buying “lovely army gear.”
The message was clear: peace via prosperity, and prosperity via buy.
Critics, nonetheless, say that such transactions usually blur accountability. When a Saudi Air Pressure trainee turned a US naval base into a criminal offense scene, the political fallout was temporary. Washington’s enterprise continued.
The Idaho-Qatar pact follows an analogous script – cooperation dressed as peace, commerce framed as diplomacy.
Trump’s normal protection is: peace via enterprise.
In almost each speech since his 2024 marketing campaign started, Trump has argued that commerce – not diplomacy, not arms, and definitely not warfare – is the important thing to resolving world battle. “Sixty per cent of wars had been stopped due to commerce,” he stated. “Like with India, I stated, ‘Look, we’re not going to do any commerce if you happen to’re going to combat.’ They stopped.”
To Trump, tariffs are as highly effective as treaties. Sanctions are instruments of negotiation. And international investments – notably these involving protection gear – are the devices of “peaceable strain.”
It’s an method that makes for good rhetoric, however as critics argue, it usually turns diplomacy into transaction. The Qatar deal is a living proof: a “peaceable” partnership that concurrently advances US protection exports and deepens army cooperation with a regime that has confronted its share of controversy.
The irony is unmistakable. Trump could name himself a person of peace, however his peace is written within the language of enterprise contracts and arms gross sales.
Trump’s defenders argue that such offers are commonplace international coverage observe. US presidents, in any case, have lengthy used arms gross sales, commerce incentives, and power cooperation to take care of alliances. What makes Trump’s case totally different, critics contend, is the non-public factor – the notion that his household’s enterprise empire and his administration’s diplomacy usually transfer in tandem.
Each the Qatar air power coaching facility and the Pakistan cryptocurrency deal match that sample. They’re a shot within the arm for Trump’s companies, bolstering American protection and finance sectors – all of the whereas being framed as peace partnerships.
But it surely additionally undercuts the narrative Trump has so rigorously crafted: that he’s the anti-globalist chief who places “America First.”
That is the Trump paradox. He could promote peace like a product, however each product has a purchaser, and patrons anticipate returns.
The Nobel snub on Friday was a well timed reminder to Trump that peace is just not awarded for negotiation alone, nor for trade-driven truces. The Nobel, in any case, is given to those that advance peace as precept, not peace dressed as a enterprise deal.
In Trump’s world, nonetheless, peace usually comes with a price ticket. And America, it appears, all the time will get a lower.
On the coronary heart of all of it lies a easy query: Can a person whose worldview is rooted in transactions really be a peacemaker?
Trump’s admirers see him as a disruptor – a frontrunner who eschews the niceties of conventional diplomacy for the effectivity of deal-making. His critics see one thing else: a businessman masquerading as a statesman, lowering geopolitics to the logic of revenue and loss.
The Qatar facility in Idaho, small although it could be, is a logo of that rigidity. It represents each cooperation and contradiction – an “America First” president internet hosting a Gulf accomplice’s army challenge on US soil, all whereas claiming to finish wars overseas.
Trump has proven that his instruments for peace are tariffs, contracts, and gross sales agreements. Whether or not these instruments construct peace or just dealer short-term quiet stays to be seen.
Because the mud settles over Mountain House Air Pressure Base, one factor is evident: Trump’s model of peace is just not about disarmament or reconciliation. It’s about transaction.
He could not have gained the Nobel, however in his personal thoughts maybe, he has achieved one thing larger – a world the place peace is negotiated like a enterprise merger, and each handshake doubles as a sale.
Whether or not historical past remembers that as diplomacy or deal-making will rely not on the wars he claims to have ended, however on the partnerships – and paradoxes – he leaves behind.
