Five months into Donald Trump’s second term as president might be too soon to assess whether he's living up to his peacemaker aspirations. But early indications are not promising.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
No one believed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign boast that he would end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours.” After returning to the White House, even he conceded he was “being a little sarcastic” in making that hubristic claim.
Still, the world had good reason to believe that the 47th U.S. President came to office committed to stopping the destruction in Ukraine and Gaza and dead set against direct U.S. military involvement in those wars – or any other conflicts abroad, for that matter.
If “America First” stood for anything among Mr. Trump’s MAGA disciples, it was a repudiation of the postwar role of global policeman that the U.S. had assumed since 1945.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Mr. Trump insisted in his second inaugural address. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”
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We are only five months into Mr. Trump’s second term – too soon to make any definitive assessment about whether he is living up to his peacemaker aspirations. But the early indications are not promising. Mr. Trump appears to have given up on efforts to sweet-talk Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and has all but abandoned attempts to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombing of Gaza.
Earlier this month, Mr. Trump used a hockey analogy to explain his retreat from actively mediating a peace deal between Mr. Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “I said [to Mr. Putin], ‘maybe you’re going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot,’ because both sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they’re able to be pulled apart,” he offered. “You see in hockey, you see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds, let them go for a little while before you pull them apart.”
His likening the Ukraine war to a hockey brawl exposes the extent of Mr. Trump’s understanding of the kind of complex geopolitical crises that U.S. presidents are normally expected to manage. Little wonder, then, that, despite his self-proclaimed negotiating prowess, Mr. Trump has so far come up empty in seeking “deals” to stop the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza.
The same has been true for Mr. Trump’s bid to reach an agreement with Iran to end that country’s nuclear program. The U.S.-Iranian negotiations that began in Oman in April were going nowhere before Mr. Netanyahu launched the bombing campaign on Iranian targets that could now draw the United States into a direct military conflict with Iran.
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By then, Mr. Trump was already giving up on the prospects of a deal with Tehran. In late May, Mr. Trump’s lead negotiator, Steve Witkoff, had tabled a proposal that would prohibit Iran from enriching uranium within its own borders, but allow it access to enriched uranium from elsewhere to produce nuclear power. But in early June, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spurned the offer.
“Iran could have civilian nuclear power without enrichment, but Iran rejected that,” Vice-President JD Vance wrote on X on Tuesday, in what seemed to be an effort to prepare Mr. Trump’s MAGA base for a potential U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “[O]f course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the President has earned some trust on this issue.”
Mr. Trump’s primary consideration in deciding whether to use U.S. military force to try to destroy Iran’s underground Fordow enrichment facility (as only U.S. B-2 bombers equipped with U.S. bunker-busting bombs could) should not be whether it might upset Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene. It must be whether such a plan could work without dragging the U.S. into a prolonged conflict or unleashing dangerous unintended consequences.
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Even if toppling the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran is not a stated objective of U.S. military involvement, that could be a likely outcome of sustained U.S. attacks. And regime change in Iran could create a whole new set of problems.
Still, the U.S. President’s favourite cable news channel, Fox News, has largely framed Israel’s continuing assault as a historic military success, one that has provided a unique opening for the U.S. to end Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Trump appears increasingly tempted to seize it. Doing so would shatter his hopes (however delusional) of winning the Nobel Peace Prize he believes he so richly deserves.
Still, Mr. Trump also likes to side with winners. And for now, Israel looks like it is winning.