On July 9, weighing in on the never-ending tragedy his guest at the White House has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for initiating and pursuing, US President Donald Trump waxed sanguine about an imminent resolution to a nearly eighty-year-old problem and a nearly two-year-old ongoing genocide.

“We gotta get that solved. Gaza is—it’s a tragedy and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to get it solved. A lot of hate, long-term hate, but we think we’re going to have it solved pretty soon—hopefully with a real solution, a solution that’s going to be holding up.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Get it solved:

Make other people do things that correspond to the solution you want to see, irrespective of their or anyone else’s interests. The opposite of solve.

Contextual note

Trump’s language with reference to time must never be taken literally. What does he mean when he promises to “have it solved pretty soon?”

The peace candidate of 2024 promised to resolve the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” once he had the keys to the White House in his hands. Not only has that not happened, there has been no progress on the various verbal initiatives he has taken. Most experts now believe that the war will either continue for years or end when Ukraine’s army and government collapse.

Trump can be quick and decisive, however. Didn’t he successfully apply his “in, boom, out” strategy Trump biographer Michael Wolff claims he had announced days before “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program by dropping multiple bunker-buster bombs?

Most serious observers believe that the current pause in hostilities after the “12-day war” is due to a request on the part of Netanyahu’s government that had begun to panic at the extensive damage the Iranians were capable of inflicting on Israel’s military installations over the course of that brief conflict. Those same observers expect that the peace will be broken, most probably by Israel at a more convenient time. So long as the idea can be maintained that the US intervention has eliminated any prospect for Iran of advancing with its nuclear program, the “peace” is likely to hold. But even US intelligence appears to believe that the program has only been delayed, not destroyed. Few, however, countenance the idea that either Israel or the US has abandoned its ultimate goal of achieving regime change in Iran.

As for Gaza, Trump’s promise to “get it solved” rang particularly hollow as most experts see no basis for agreement between Israel and Hamas. Journalist Jeremy Scahill at Drop Site describes what most acknowledge to be obvious: “Since Donald Trump announced on July 1 that a Gaza ceasefire deal was likely, if not imminent, Israel has sought to sabotage negotiations through well-worn methods in an effort to block a deal that would end the war.”      

Some attribute to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the great French diplomat who not only advised Napoleon Bonaparte but was instrumental in conserving France’s pivotal role after the Corsican’s defeat and banishment, the remark, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more it’s the same thing”). To some extent, diplomacy — when it is applied seriously — serves to defend the long durée by seeking to avoid radical disruption, which rather than bringing about any kind of change tends to produce chaos. The disruptive approach of US foreign policy, especially over the past quarter of a century, offers a perfect illustration of such consequences, especially in the Middle East. Libya and Syria stand as exemplary illustrations of the trend.

Trump cannot escape from a mode of thinking conditioned by the reflex now built solidly into US culture: “time is money.” Americans feel the proverbial expression as a permanent pressure on them to act quickly and avoid spending too much time on working things out. They apply it to business as well as politics.

When applied to the realm of diplomacy, we might want to call it the doctrine of “soonism.” If you manage things on the basis of “sooner rather than later” you don’t allow yourself the time to fully understand the issues you’re trying to deal with. Unfortunately, Trump isn’t alone, nor is he the worst example. US President George W. Bush’s insistence on punishing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for possessing nonexistent weapons of mass destruction with Operation “Shock and Awe” was a far worse example of soonism than anything Trump has done. “We will fight them over there,” declared Bush, “so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”

US President Joe Biden’s precipitation in seeking to immediately exclude Russia from the SWIFT network based on the belief that he would reduce the ruble to “rubble,” while at the same time refusing to engage in diplomacy and, at the same time, instructing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to ensure that ongoing diplomacy be disrupted, provides another example of disastrous soonism. His team seriously believed that by acting quickly, Russia would not have the time to react. We now know that his calculation was erroneous. As a result, more than a million people have died, with no end in sight.

Soonism is the enemy of diplomacy, a form of traditional human communication based on the principle of taking the time to understand the stakes and hammer out possible solutions to unresolvable conflicts. The current debate around ending the war in Ukraine, which Trump promised to do in 24 hours, turns around two contrasting positions. On the Ukrainian and transatlantic side, it’s a “30-day ceasefire.” Thirty days is a value that corresponds to soonism. On the Russian side, it’s the examination of the “root causes.” Those roots descend deep into the landscape and have grown over time. They don’t belong to any short-term timeframe.

Is any other explanation needed for the easily observable fact that diplomacy has become an extinct art form?

Historical note

History advances through moments that may be short or prolonged. Many students of history, anthropology and sociology have noted the contrast between two extreme orientations of national or regional cultures. At one extreme is the idea that history can be understood as a series of dramatic events, often framed as showdowns between opposing parties or interests. In such cultures, people acquire a view of history as a series of “significant dates” at which different percussive events have redefined the course of history. At the opposite extreme, we find cultures that privilege the idea of the longue durée. They see even dramatic events and radical shifts of influence within power structures as blips on the radar. In their view, history plods on with the weight of a civilization’s mass, evolving slowly over time, while maintaining a stable worldview.

Trump, habituated to US business culture focused on short-term decision making, has a habit of seeing future events as happening “soon,” as all his recent comments on Gaza reveal. In typical Trumpian style, apparently referring to events that played out in 2005, he expresses his judgment of Israel’s decision at the time to pull its settlers out of Gaza. “The Gaza strip. I call it the Gaza strip. One of the worst real estate deals ever made. They gave up the oceanfront property. It was supposed to bring peace, and it didn’t bring peace. It brought the opposite. But we’re doing pretty well on Gaza. I think we could have something fairly soon to talk about.”

We might see this “soon to talk about” as a step back from a few days earlier when he said, “we think we’re going to have it solved pretty soon.” Talk is cheap. But the notion of solving generally supposes some kind of lasting duration, even if not necessarily the historiographer’s longue durée. Last week it was about solving, this week about talk. That seems to be a pattern with Trump. He bandies about theoretical solutions, such as border walls, the conquest of Greenland and the annexation of Canada, or building a riviera on the Gaza coast. This makes for animated conversation, but anything resembling a solution somehow fades from our collective memory as a project or even a possibility.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.