Today, as President Trump participates in the historic Sharm El-Sheikh summit in Egypt, we’re witnessing a transformative moment in global affairs: a comprehensive Gaza ceasefire, the release of all remaining Israeli hostages by Hamas, and a 20-point peace plan reshaping the Middle East. But this deal represents something more profound than diplomatic success—it exposes the failure of credentialed expertise and validates a fundamentally different approach to complex problem-solving.
The tangible results: humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza, a technocratic governance transition, and reconstruction under international oversight. A blueprint built on measurable outcomes rather than theoretical frameworks.
The Failure of Credentialed Expertise
For decades, the foreign policy establishment—graduates of elite institutions, steeped in international relations doctrine, rotating through State Department positions and prestigious think tanks—oversaw an unbroken record of failure in the Middle East. They mastered the vocabulary of diplomacy, speaking eloquently about “multilateral frameworks” and “stakeholder engagement,” while conflicts deepened and peace remained a mirage. Their impressive credentials never translated into results.
Enter three real estate moguls: Trump, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner. Their qualification wasn’t academic pedigree—it was a track record of closing complex deals in brutally competitive markets. They understand leverage instinctively. They recognize what truly motivates decision-makers. They know precisely when to apply pressure and when to create value.
This was diplomacy by demonstrated competence, not diplomatic credentials. The results speak for themselves.
Moving Past Military Solutions
Neo-conservative foreign policy—built on the premise that military intervention could reshape societies—ensnared both political parties in expensive, protracted wars from Iraq to Afghanistan. Foreign policy professionals championed these ventures with assured predictions of democratic transformation. The actual outcome: trillions spent, countless lives lost, and growing instability.
Trump’s Gaza approach reflects what successful deal-makers grasp intuitively: strategic pressure paired with targeted action against genuine threats like Iran’s nuclear program can compel adversaries to negotiate without committing American forces to occupation. By isolating hostile actors while bolstering allies’ defensive capabilities, this strategy ended what Trump called a “long and painful nightmare.” Kushner and Witkoff applied their deal-making expertise to create a structure where all parties recognized greater value in peace than continued conflict—demonstrating that understanding incentives outperforms military doctrine.
Moving Past Universalist Assumptions
Neo-liberal foreign policy operated on the assumption that Western democratic frameworks could be universally applied, resulting in failed nation-building that ignored local realities. Credentialed diplomats, certain of their moral and intellectual authority, lectured regional leaders about governance while relationships fractured and American influence waned.
Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff took an entirely different approach. As developers who’ve structured deals across cultures and negotiated with vastly different stakeholders worldwide, they forged genuine relationships with Arab leaders by respecting regional distinctions and concentrating exclusively on mutual interests. From the Abraham Accords through this Gaza framework, their work with leaders throughout the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the broader region proves what expert negotiators understand: parties don’t need shared values—they need visible mutual advantage. The credentialed establishment never learned this basic principle of successful negotiation.
Moving Past Identity Politics
Contemporary progressive ideology imposes simplistic oppressor-oppressed frameworks on intricate geopolitical situations, obscuring the actual complexities of culture, history, and regional power dynamics. Foreign policy professionals, immersed in academic ideology and Washington consensus thinking, imported these reductive frameworks into international relations with foreseeable disasters.
Trump’s team bypassed these ideological obstacles completely, bringing together over 20 world leaders under Egyptian President al-Sisi’s co-hosting focused on concrete, achievable objectives. This reflects the developer’s methodology: determine what each party genuinely wants, structure terms creating mutual benefit, and execute the agreement. By emphasizing economic development and security cooperation over identity-based narratives, they demonstrated that skilled negotiators consistently outperform ideologically-driven diplomats.
Economic Tools as Primary Instruments
This is where real estate expertise becomes most apparent. Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner grasp capital flows, investment incentives, and economic leverage at a level foreign policy professionals simply cannot match. They don’t compartmentalize economics and diplomacy—they recognize economic power as the most effective diplomatic instrument available.
Trump’s deployment of tariffs, trade agreements, and targeted sanctions isn’t simply nationalist policy—it’s sophisticated negotiation technique. Arab states finance Gaza’s reconstruction because the agreement aligns with their interests. Iran confronts isolation through economic pressure because these negotiators understand financial vulnerabilities. The “Trump economic development plan” for Gaza embodies what developers know instinctively: prosperity creates invested stakeholders in continued stability.
Witkoff, who built a substantial real estate investment operation navigating sophisticated transactions across multiple jurisdictions, grasped how to structure multilateral agreements where varied parties each recognize value. Kushner contributed his experience executing billion-dollar transactions and architecting the Abraham Accords. These aren’t theoretical policy constructs—these are fundamental competencies for closing transformative agreements.
Expertise vs. Credentials
The contrast devastates the foreign policy establishment’s reputation. Their decades of stewardship generated perpetual warfare, collapsed peace initiatives, and accelerating instability. Then three outsiders—ridiculed by credentialed experts as unqualified—accomplished in months what the professionals failed to achieve in decades.
What explains this? Real estate moguls operating at the highest tier possess capabilities the credentialed class fundamentally lacks:
- Pattern recognition in multifaceted negotiations involving numerous stakeholders
- Discerning what parties genuinely want versus their stated positions
- Command of leverage—understanding when to deploy it, appropriate magnitude, and when to offer value creation instead
- Tolerance for risk and readiness to abandon unfavorable agreements
- Concentration on achievable terms rather than ideal theoretical constructs
- Genuine respect for counterparties’ interests without requiring ideological conversion
These capabilities aren’t acquired in international relations courses. They’re developed through high-stakes negotiations where failure carries personal financial consequences.
A New Paradigm
As Trump formalizes this agreement in Egypt following his Knesset address, we’re observing more than hostages returning home—we’re seeing empirical proof that deal-making competence surpasses diplomatic credentials. Questions persist regarding implementation specifics like Hamas’s disarmament and long-term governance arrangements, but the trajectory is unmistakable.
The foreign policy establishment perpetuated decades of failure while their credentials shielded them from accountability. Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner operated without such protection—only their capacity to deliver results mattered. They delivered.
The traditional approaches failed for decades. The deal-makers succeeded in months. The ramifications extend well beyond the Middle East—to every domain where credentialed expertise has displaced demonstrated competence and measurable results.
