Trump smashes failed globalism, aids Israel decisively, yet risks empowering Islamists through dangerous diplomatic illusions.
British journalist and author Melanie Phillips argues that this week marked a historic rupture: the collapse of the old global order and the birth of a new, uncomfortable reality—one that both strengthens Israel’s position and simultaneously endangers it.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Donald Trump delivered an unmistakable message to Western elites: globalization has failed. It hollowed out Western economies, empowered hostile regimes, and left democracies dependent on adversaries. The lecture was delivered in the symbolic heart of liberal universalism—and landed like a hammer.
Trump’s earlier threats over Greenland had already shaken allies, but his pivot to an Arctic security framework with NATO chief Mark Rutte underscored a deeper truth: Western security had been neglected for decades.
Even committed globalists quietly conceded defeat. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted that when international rules no longer protect nations, self-defense becomes unavoidable. Yet Phillips notes the staggering hypocrisy—these same leaders enriched China, appeased Iran, tolerated Russian corruption, and relentlessly punished Israel for defending itself against genocidal enemies.
While Iran slaughtered thousands of its own protesters and armed proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, Europe largely looked away—yet moralized endlessly against Israel. This moral inversion, Phillips argues, is what produced a “Caesar in the White House.”
Trump, she writes, is not a fascist or madman but a transactional strongman driven by power and loyalty. That is troubling—but also why he has become Israel’s strongest ally ever to sit in the Oval Office. His opponents, by contrast, are animated by hostility—or indifference—to Western civilization and Jewish survival.
Still, Phillips issues a stark warning. Trump’s Board of Peace dangerously includes Qatar and Turkey, states deeply hostile to Israel and sponsors of Islamist extremism. In Syria, Trump’s indulgence of former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa has already led to massacres of Kurds—America’s allies—and freed ISIS prisoners.
Even more alarming are the naïve statements of Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who claims Iran, Hamas, and Qatar can be reasoned with—despite mountains of blood proving otherwise.
Phillips concludes that the old international system betrayed peace, justice, and Israel. Trump’s order replaces it with raw power. That power may save Israel—or catastrophically misjudge its enemies.
For now, Israel breathes easier than it ever did under globalist moralizers. But it must also hold its breath.
