'The work of a dilettante': Foreign policy expert dismantles Jared Kushner book claims

Tom Boggioni
September 11, 2022

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner (Photo by Mandel Ngan for AFP)

In a column for Foreign Policy, international affairs analyst Steven Cook called out Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner for attempting to pass himself off as an innovative diplomat for his Middle East efforts, with Cook saying he broke no new ground and inflated his resume in his new book "Breaking History."

Admitting that Kushner "was a real player in a presidential administration of consequence," Cook explained that, in the former White House advisor's book, he offers neither a thoughtful reflection on the Trump team’s encounter with the Middle East or an explication of the intellectual underpinnings of the 'disruption' it claimed to bring to bear on the region’s thorniest problems."

Writing that the Kushner book is instead a "tedious" recounting of his days working on the Middle East for Trump, Fisher noted that what Trump's son-in-law boasted was his greatest achievement was just a rehash of previous efforts.

"The Trump administration’s efforts in the Middle East bore a striking resemblance to the bipartisan U.S. approach to the region that existed on Sept. 10, 2001: support for Israel and Washington’s Arab partners—regardless of the character of their regimes—and sustained pressure on Iran using mostly, but not exclusively, economic sanctions," he wrote before adding, "The gap between what Kushner imagined he was doing and what he was actually doing is not the only weakness of Breaking History."


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The Middle East expert added, "Kushner does not even pause to offer any insight into Mohammed bin Salman or the contradictions between the brutality of the crown prince’s approach and the positive changes he has wrought in the kingdom. And although Kushner wants to break from history, he accepts the parameters of the U.S.-Saudi relationship as they are and have long been: oil and security. He never considers the possibility that there might be risks for Washington by being so tightly bound to the crown prince."

"Still, when it comes to his and the Trump administration’s signature accomplishment in the Middle East, Kushner demonstrates a lack of self-awareness and depth," he wrote. "Looking back, Kushner cannot provide a single insight about how the Abraham Accords could or should affect the U.S. approach to the region."

Summing up the book, he concluded, "Breaking History is just words on 512 pages with no lessons, no meaning, and no new way of looking at old problems. If a book can be white noise, Kushner has produced it. If it was meant to set the record straight, it failed," before ending with a brutal: " It is the work of a dilettante.

You can read the whole piece here.