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The Trump court is a royal progress that moves between Palm Beach and the White House, for the most part in private planes. But the interests of the US government require that at least some of its members be willing to travel farther afield than Florida. Trump talks of putting the US economy behind a great tariff wall, but he also wants deals, which means he needs dealers.<\/p>\n
America\u2019s official chief diplomat is the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, but so far his activities have been fairly limited. Instead, the role of principal US emissary is currently filled by the unlikely figure of the property developer Steve Witkoff.<\/p>\n
Witkoff first met Trump in a deli in New York in the 1980s, where he paid for Trump\u2019s sandwich. He got his start in property by driving around Harlem and Washington Heights in a \u2018beat-up Buick\u2019 looking for apartment buildings to buy. He later moved on to downtown office buildings, often borrowing money from Lehman Brothers to pay for them. One of his business partners was Mark Walsh, described by the New York Times<\/em><\/a> as \u2018one of Lehman\u2019s biggest profit producers\u2019, \u2018skilled at making all that debt vanish\u2019 \u2013 until the bank collapsed in 2008.<\/p>\n The appointment of \u2018the king of condo financing\u2019 as the president\u2019s special envoy might have been taken as a sign of American disengagement from world affairs. But Witkoff has been busy. In January he was tasked with pressuring Israel to pull its forces back from Gaza and declare a ceasefire (and, in the process, with reminding Netanyahu who\u2019s boss). Witkoff demonstrated that word from Washington was enough to force Israel to accept terms that had been on the table all along. But it was hardly a diplomatic achievement. Trump\u2019s attention has since wavered and Israel has renewed its assault<\/a>, declaring its intention to occupy the whole of Gaza indefinitely.<\/p>\n Yet his special envoy\u2019s work was good enough for Trump, who cares more about being able to proclaim that a deal has been cut than on its concrete effects. Witkoff was charged with taking over negotiations with Russia, suspended since late 2021. He has met Putin four times as well as sitting down with his foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov. Some of the criticism of Witkoff has come from people who believe the US shouldn\u2019t be negotiating with Russia at all. But the accusation that the US team is out of its depth has obvious merit.<\/p>\n According to Trump, Witkoff is \u2018a natural born winner\u2019 with plenty of common sense. He\u2019s certainly an experienced gladhander with some useful friends (including the prime minister of Qatar, Muhammad bin Abdulrahman al-Thani). In negotiations between the US and Iran over Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, Witkoff sat across from Abbas Arraghchi, a thirty-year veteran of Iran\u2019s foreign ministry, who has been posted everywhere from Japan to Jedda and Helsinki.<\/p>\n Trump appears to see Witkoff\u2019s inexperience as a positive attribute. Rubio is involved in the talks with Iran, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has also been speaking with Russia\u2019s intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin. But channels that were previously run by one of the most experienced American diplomats and securocrats, Bill Burns, are now run by a New York landlord who says he \u2018suffers from wanting to be well liked\u2019.<\/p>\n Witkoff\u2019s current position most closely resembles the role played by Jared Kushner (with whom he is friendly) in Trump\u2019s first term. Except Kushner never took on the entire international file. A succession of secretaries of state and CIA directors, along with the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, shared the load.<\/p>\n Witkoff says that his personal relationship with the boss is what matters. He never misses an opportunity to compliment Trump, whom he refers to as \u2018the master\u2019, casting himself as a mere prot\u00e9g\u00e9. Still, he has ventured some comments on American strategy: Russia should be accommodated; Iran having a nuclear weapon would give it \u2018outsized influence\u2019 in the Gulf, and the US can\u2019t allow that. \u2018This whole peace through strength thing is not just a slogan,\u2019 he says. \u2018It actually works.\u2019 Witkoff claims that American diplomacy has entered a new golden age: the US is \u2018curing and solving conflicts all around the world\u2019.<\/p>\n The US has had ambassadors without portfolio before, and close associates of sitting presidents have been made diplomats. Biden made Rahm Emanuel his ambassador to Tokyo, a sign that Japan could have direct access to the president if need be. But it\u2019s difficult to see Witkoff\u2019s rise as anything other than a debasement of the diplomatic m\u00e9tier. Substantial tasks lie ahead for the US. There will need to be real diplomacy with China. Shouldn\u2019t the imperial envoy be a cold sophisticate, rather than one of the president\u2019s golf partners, a cigar and steakhouse poser?<\/p>\n Perhaps Witkoff merely reflects Trump\u2019s propensity to value loyalty over competence and schmoozing over government. The emperor\u2019s personal envoy need not be a Metternich or Hardenberg. The imperial family needs hotels in Dubai, golf clubs in Qatar and cryptocurrency deals in Abu Dhabi (the latter organised by Witkoff\u2019s son). If you see the world as a collection of properties, what you really need is an estate agent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n