El Equipo Inesperado: Cómo Negocia Trump

Here's what gets me, though.

The criticism of Kushner has always been the same: he works through back channels, he bypasses official structures, and his financial interests, he runs a private equity firm that has taken billions from Gulf states, create potential conflicts of interest that are, at minimum, uncomfortable.

Es que eso es un problema serio.

That's a serious problem.

Cuando una persona negocia con países del Golfo Pérsico y también tiene negocios con esos países, es difícil saber dónde termina el interés público y dónde empieza el interés privado.

When a person negotiates with Gulf countries and also has business dealings with those countries, it's hard to know where the public interest ends and the private interest begins.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

And I want to be precise here, because it's not an accusation, it's a structural problem.

The potential for conflict is built into the situation, regardless of what anyone's actual intentions are.

A ver, y Steve Witkoff, el tercer hombre.

And then there's Steve Witkoff, the third man.

Es un empresario del sector inmobiliario, como Trump.

He's a businessman from the real estate sector, like Trump.

No tiene experiencia diplomática formal.

He has no formal diplomatic experience.

Pero Trump ya lo usó como enviado especial en el primer mandato.

But Trump already used him as a special envoy in his first term.

Witkoff was involved in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations earlier in Trump's second term.

And the argument for him is basically: he's a deal-maker.

He understands how to structure agreements between parties who don't trust each other.

Which, in fairness, is actually a useful skill in diplomacy.

Bueno, sí.

Well, yes.

Pero hay una diferencia entre negociar un edificio en Manhattan y negociar el fin de una guerra en Oriente Medio.

But there's a difference between negotiating a building deal in Manhattan and negotiating the end of a war in the Middle East.

Los intereses son más complejos y las consecuencias son mucho más graves.

The interests are more complex and the consequences are much more serious.

I mean, that's the tension at the heart of the Trump foreign policy model, isn't it.

The idea is that traditional diplomats are captured by process, by protocol, by their own institutional histories, and that sometimes a fresh set of eyes with no stake in the existing system can cut through all of that.

La verdad es que a veces esa idea funciona.

Honestly, sometimes that idea works.

El problema es que la diplomacia también necesita continuidad.

The problem is that diplomacy also needs continuity.

Cuando cambias de presidente, los acuerdos que hiciste con personas personales del presidente anterior pueden desaparecer.

When you change presidents, the agreements you made with the previous president's personal people can disappear.

That's a really sharp point.

The institutional memory of the State Department, even when it's frustrating and slow, is precisely what gives agreements durability.

A deal made between presidents' personal friends can evaporate when the friendship evaporates.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Mira el ejemplo de los Acuerdos de Abraham.

Look at the example of the Abraham Accords.

Fueron importantes, pero el conflicto entre Israel y sus vecinos no terminó.

They were important, but the conflict between Israel and its neighbors didn't end.

A veces los acuerdos de Trump son más simbólicos que permanentes.

Sometimes Trump's agreements are more symbolic than permanent.

Right, so let's talk about the location for a second, because Islamabad is not a random choice.

Pakistan has been positioning itself throughout this conflict as a mediator, and that's its own fascinating political story.

Pakistán es un país interesante porque tiene relaciones con casi todos.

Pakistan is an interesting country because it has relationships with almost everyone.

Tiene buenas relaciones con Estados Unidos, con China, y también con países musulmanes.

It has good relations with the United States, with China, and also with Muslim-majority countries.

No es ni pro-americano ni anti-americano completamente.

It's not completely pro-American or anti-American.

And historically, Pakistan has hosted some of the most sensitive back-channel negotiations of the modern era.

Henry Kissinger used Islamabad as a staging post for his secret trip to Beijing in 1971, which opened China to the West.

There's something almost poetic about this happening there again.

Bueno, y esa es exactamente la comparación que quiero hacer con Nixon.

Right, and that's exactly the comparison I want to make with Nixon.

Nixon usó a Kissinger, que no era un diplomático tradicional al principio, para hacer cosas que los diplomáticos profesionales decían que eran imposibles.

Nixon used Kissinger, who was not a traditional diplomat at first, to do things that professional diplomats said were impossible.

Hay un paralelo con Trump.

There's a parallel with Trump.

The difference being, and I say this with great respect for Kissinger's intellectual firepower even when I disagree profoundly with his decisions, that Kissinger was a serious strategic thinker with a historical framework.

He had a theory of international order.

The Trump team's theory seems to be: let's make a deal.

Es que "hagamos un trato" puede funcionar a corto plazo.

"Let's make a deal" can work in the short term.

Pero Irán tiene intereses muy complicados: su programa nuclear, su influencia en Líbano, su relación con Rusia y China.

But Iran has very complicated interests: its nuclear program, its influence in Lebanon, its relationship with Russia and China.

Un acuerdo simple de dos semanas no resuelve esos problemas.

A simple two-week agreement doesn't resolve those problems.

And the uranium enrichment question is sitting right in the middle of all of this.

Iran's parliamentary speaker Ghalibaf cited the denial of Iran's right to enrich uranium as a reason the ceasefire was being violated.

That tells you where the real negotiating battle is going to happen.

El programa nuclear iraní es el problema central.

The Iranian nuclear program is the central problem.

Irán lleva muchos años enriqueciendo uranio.

Iran has been enriching uranium for many years.

Para ellos, es un símbolo de soberanía nacional, no solo una cuestión técnica.

For them, it is a symbol of national sovereignty, not just a technical matter.

Para Estados Unidos e Israel, es una amenaza existencial.

For the United States and Israel, it is an existential threat.

The extraordinary thing is how this echoes 2015 and the JCPOA, the nuclear deal that Obama negotiated and Trump then tore up in his first term.

The argument for the deal was: verifiable limits are better than no limits.

The argument against was: any enrichment capability is unacceptable.

Neither side has moved.

A ver, y ese es el problema con enviar a Vance, Kushner y Witkoff.

And that's the problem with sending Vance, Kushner and Witkoff.

Son personas que pueden cerrar un acuerdo de negocios.

They are people who can close a business deal.

Pero este problema tiene cincuenta años de historia y muchos actores.

But this problem has fifty years of history and many actors.

No es una transacción.

It is not a transaction.

Look, I've sat across from enough negotiators in enough difficult contexts to know that sometimes the person without institutional baggage can actually move things.

I'm not dismissing this team entirely.

What worries me is the absence of any visible long-term framework.

La verdad es que tienes razón en eso.

Honestly, you're right about that.

Y hay otra cuestión: el Secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio, no está en este equipo.

And there's another question: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is not part of this team.

Eso nos dice que el Departamento de Estado no controla esta negociación.

That tells us the State Department is not controlling this negotiation.

El poder está en otro lugar.

Power is somewhere else.

That is a detail I find fascinating and slightly alarming.

The Secretary of State is constitutionally, institutionally, the chief diplomat of the United States.

If Vance is leading this, Rubio has been sidelined on the biggest diplomatic event of the year.

Bueno, mira, en la primera administración de Trump pasó algo similar.

Well, look, something similar happened in Trump's first administration.

El Secretario de Estado Rex Tillerson tampoco tenía mucho poder real.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also didn't have much real power.

Trump prefería hablar directamente con los líderes extranjeros por teléfono, sin preparación formal.

Trump preferred to talk directly with foreign leaders by phone, without formal preparation.

And Tillerson was famously reported to have called Trump a moron, which tells you how that relationship ended.

The question is whether, structurally, the United States can sustain a foreign policy that operates through a president's personal network rather than its professional institutions.

Es que el mundo también tiene que adaptarse a este estilo.

The world also has to adapt to this style.

Otros países aprenden que para hablar con Washington, no es necesario hablar con el Departamento de Estado.

Other countries learn that to talk to Washington, you don't need to talk to the State Department.

Tienes que hablar con las personas cercanas a Trump.

You have to talk to the people close to Trump.

Which creates its own distortions, right.

Some governments are better positioned for that kind of relationship-based access than others.

It tends to favor authoritarian leaders who can make personal commitments without domestic constraints, and disadvantage democracies where foreign policy requires broader consensus.

Sí, es un punto muy importante.

Yes, that's a very important point.

Y también debemos mencionar que estas negociaciones empiezan mientras Israel todavía bombardea Líbano.

And we should also mention that these negotiations start while Israel is still bombing Lebanon.

Eso hace la situación muy inestable para cualquier equipo negociador.

That makes the situation very unstable for any negotiating team.

So here's where we land, I think.

The team going to Islamabad is unconventional by any historical measure.

That's not automatically bad.

But the challenges they face, the nuclear question, the Lebanon question, Iran's domestic politics, the Gulf states' competing interests, those are not problems that yield to deal-making logic alone.

A ver, para terminar: lo que vemos en Islamabad es el estilo Trump aplicado al problema más difícil del mundo en este momento.

Look, to finish: what we're seeing in Islamabad is the Trump style applied to the hardest problem in the world right now.

Puede funcionar a corto plazo.

It might work in the short term.

Pero sin una estrategia clara a largo plazo, los problemas van a volver.

But without a clear long-term strategy, the problems are going to come back.

And that's the history of the Middle East in a sentence, really.

Every few years, someone announces a deal, the world exhales, and then the underlying tensions reassert themselves because they were never fully addressed.

I hope this time is different.

I genuinely do.

But hope is not a strategy.