Trump, Netanyahu and the dangerous politics of staying in power

More often than is healthy, international news is framed in terms of the transactions of political leaders — who has come out on top on any given day — and the impact on those leaders' political fortunes at home.

This week we have seen the US president doing something different.

Donald Trump has not just been jostling with Russian president Vladamir Putin and Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has personally gone to war with the people of Ukraine. All, it seems, to improve the political prospects of his Republican Party in the looming US mid-term elections.

Trump this week reportedly turned off intelligence to the Ukrainians and ordered the speed to be slowed of Starlink services that help warn Ukrainians of incoming missiles. That he did so is chilling.

Reuters reported on Friday that "the order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, according to two US officials and a Western official briefed on the matter".

"The officials said ‌leaders at the Defence Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed.

"The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not specify who in the White House made the decision or who was responsible for implementing the order."

In the past six days Trump has announced a deal to buy Russian diesel (long sanctioned by the US and, indeed, the subject of threats of sanctions on others who might buy it). He has told Ukraine and European allies that the US might suspend European purchases of US weapons on behalf of Ukraine and also pressured European countries to unfreeze Russian assets.

The Trump administration is also reported to be considering easing restrictions on so-called shadow fleet vessels that have transported oil and petroleum products from countries including Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

So shutting off US intelligence and ordering a go-slow on the Starshield service might be just two more points of pressure being applied to Kyiv. But they weren't moves to apply financial pressure or shift the oil market to get oil prices down.

They weren't even simple abuse of another country's leader. ("I think it's time for Ukraine to get a new president," Trump told Washington reporters last Saturday).

These were explicit decisions to leave a civilian population exposed to ballistic missile attacks and to shift the balance of the war in Russia's favour

Beyond the scores killed and injured in Russian attacks on civilians in recent days, an unanswered Russian strike on energy infrastructure left at least 600,000 people in Ukraine without power on Wednesday.

Mid-term predictions mount

An increasing number of analysts in the United States believe that Trump will not just lose the US House of Representatives but also the Senate. Instead of seeing that development as a harbinger of some curbs on his erratic administration, the concern is about how Trump will respond to the news.

In the American capital, there is no great confidence that Trump will respond rationally, or will feel somehow chastened and therefore constrained, to exercise power in a way which reflects the boundaries of actual laws.

That means malevolent interventions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict could continue and only spread further shock waves into a Western Europe that is desperately trying to prop Ukraine up.

There is also the question of what Trump does, or doesn't do, on Iran and whether he does, or doesn't, do something before the mid-term elections in pursuit of a similar electoral boost.

The Middle East brings more tension

The conflict with Iran continues to dominate much of the coverage out of the Middle East.

But for those in the region, a much more pressing question revolves around the Israeli election, now just 10 days away.

Regional powers observe that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has done everything he could to provoke a regional confrontation — whether that be in Syria, Lebanon, within the West Bank or even with Jordan — in the run up to the election.

Like Trump, Netanyahu has played his international politics hard for domestic consumption.

Like the US president, he has often presented a spectacular failure as a sign of his strength: in Netanyahu's case, the intelligence failures of October 7, the lack of any clear victory in Gaza, or Lebanon, or Iran.

There was one contested report this week that he even pushed Washington to restart the Iran war before the Israeli vote.

The man who has emerged as Netanyahu's major opponent in the upcoming elections, Gadi Eisenkot, and two other party leaders — the right wing's Avigdor Liberman and the centre-left's Yair Golan — all warned this week that Netanyahu may start a war before the election in an attempt to stay in power.

Golan said Netanyahu will try to disrupt the democratic process before and on election day.

Recent polls have given Eisenkot a significantly larger number of seats than Netanyahu. Yet, like Trump, there is no confidence in the Middle East that he is about to lose power.

At best, the numbers are so close — when all the permutations of possible coalitions are done — that the current PM is likely to continue in the job for some time, at least as caretaker prime minister.

The biggest concern is what he might do in Syria.

The wiring of the Middle East has been rapidly rerouting since the war in Iran began on February 28: the Gulf states, Turkiye, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq have all been having to find new voices for themselves and new ways of getting along.

Some in the region argue that the need to keep the only recently-stabilised Syria more or less in one piece is the one thing all the locals can agree upon.

There is also an unstable Syria representing the threat of an ISIS resurgency. Conflict between the Kurds and Turkiye with spill over into Iraq and the restoration of the land bridge that Syria once represented between Iran and Hezbollah. All of these would be bad for the border security of Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, and for a possible renewed surge of millions of refugees.

Jordan watching on

For Jordan there are particular risks, including that 40 per cent of its water supply comes from Syria.

Yet Israel has kept up destabilising actions in Syria: pushing into southern Syria and even attacking an air base close to the border with Turkiye last month.

Jordan's King Abdullah — who was visiting Australia this week in search of closer defence and intelligence ties — told the UN General Assembly last month that the Israeli government's "expansionist appetite" is now a regional threat, citing Gaza, the West Bank and southern Syria.

His tiny kingdom — which boasts one of the world's most unfortunate set of surrounding neighbours — has repeatedly expressed its alarm about Israel's actions: from the threat to its water to what King Abdullah has called an existential threat seen in Israeli talk of forcing three million Palestinians into Jordan as Israel extends its annexation of the West Bank.

Jordan has never had many cards to play in its brief history. A presumption that the US would side with Israel in any conflict would seem to make its position even weaker.

But the fact that the US has had to withdraw many of its personnel and assets from the Gulf into Jordan changes the equation of its interest in keeping Jordan stable too.

And an irony of Netanyahu's recent actions is that it is the security deals with Jordan and Egypt — and thus relative border stability — that have allowed Israel to pursue its incursions into Gaza, into Lebanon and into Syria.

That Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is now playing with Jordan, at least rhetorically, is just one more illustration of the mess he and Donald Trump are creating around the world in their determination to stay in power.

Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.