Aftandilian Publishes Op-Eds in The Arab Weekly
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published two recent Op-Eds on United States President Donald Trump’s bet on an Israeli-Palestinian deal and the Trump administration’s message to the anti-ISIS coalition.
Aftandilian published the Op-Eds in the April 16, 2017 edition of The Arab Weekly. The first is entitled “Trump Administration’s Message to Anti-ISIS Coalition Sounds Familiar,” and the second was entitled “Trump’s Bet on Palestinian-Israeli Deal Likely to be Mugged by Reality.”
From the text of the first Op-Ed:
Despite sharply criticising former US President Barack Obama’s policy on the Islamic State (ISIS) during the election campaign, President Donald Trump has hardly strayed from his anti-ISIS strategy.
During a meeting with the 68-member anti-ISIS coalition in Washington, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson outlined a familiar-sounding policy, calling the fight against ISIS the top priority and was careful not to offend Muslim sensibilities.
He emphasised that ISIS’s ideology was “a warped interpretation of Islam that threatens all of our people” and underscored remarks by Jordanian King Abdullah II, who called ISIS’s ideas and actions “a blatant violation of my faith.”
From the text of the second Op-Ed:
After several presidents before him tried and failed to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, US President Donald Trump seems to believe he and his team can do it.
This confidence is due to several factors. First is his outsized ego. Trump seems to believe that he is such a great negotiator that he can bring the parties to the table and hammer out a deal. Never mind that his predecessors all came up short. In his mind, they did not have the requisite negotiating skills to achieve the “art of the deal” — the phrase that became his self-promotional brand.
So far, however, his professed negotiating talent has not been evident: On domestic issues, his efforts to persuade Republicans in the US House of Representatives to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a Republican health care bill failed miserably as he and House Speaker Paul Ryan encountered stiff resistance from both moderate and far-right members of their own party.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).