Please hold off the Nobel Peace Prize for a little while.
President Donald Trump took office with the promise to quickly end two wars in Gaza and Ukraine. He has taken a fundamentally different approach to both conflicts with Joe Biden, and in some cases, he has resulted.
What he hasn't done is the end of the war. In fact, this week, solutions to both conflicts seemed farther than ever before.
Gaza's fragile ceasefire, which took effect shortly before Trump took office, was crushed after Israel launched airstrikes that killed more than 400 people, according to Gaza's health ministry. Hamas has also resumed launching rockets at Central Israel, and the situation is rapidly returning to full-scale war.
Also in a call with Trump this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin effectively rejected a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine previously agreed under US pressure. Russia and Ukraine have agreed to halt each other in attacks on each other's energy infrastructure, but this has not stopped mass drone attacks from both sides, including the Russian attack on Russian hospitals that took place several hours after the suspension was announced.
Both sides will hold talks in Saudi Arabia next week through US intermediaries, and the Trump team reportedly hope to move quickly to a complete ceasefire, but there remains a harsh difference between the negotiating positions of both sides. Therefore, apart from miracles at the negotiation table, the war in Ukraine appears to be less than it was in January. The war in Gaza seems far from one.
What does this tell us? First, the obvious but important point: the end war is more difficult than starting them. Hamas and Israel still have essentially incompatible demands for a final ceasefire. Putin gave no indication in his official statement or in his US intelligence report assessment that he is interested in ending the war with anything other than full Ukrainian surrender.
It is unrealistic to expect the American administration to end two cumbersome foreign wars in the first two months. If Trump is bound by that standard, that's because he himself proposed that during his campaign he could end the war in Ukraine “24 hours.” It also shows the limitations of Trump's unpredictable diplomatic style.
A brief explanation of the situation in Gaza and Ukraine
In Gaza, Trump began strong in January. In January, the president-elect team worked with the resignation of the Biden administration to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Both the Biden administration and local government believed Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkov, had pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to compromise that he had been missing for months.
However, the deal was “Phase 1” of a ceasefire, intended to last six weeks, during which Israel and Hamas were to negotiate the permanent purpose of hostilities. Phase 1 saw the release of 33 Israeli hostages and nearly 1,800 Palestinian prisoners, but at the beginning of March the contract was expired without visible signing.
Essentially, Israel is still reluctant to agree to a permanent settlement that places Hamas, and does not want to allow Palestinian authorities to take over the strip's rule, as the Biden administration hoped. Hamas is reluctant to disarm and is unlikely to abandon the remaining hostages, the source of leverage. Perhaps it is not dependent on the possibility that more Palestinian civilians will be killed.
Of course, Trump had other ideas on how to resolve the conflict. It suggests that the US should take ownership of Gaza, “clean” civilians and redevelop them as beachfront resorts.
As a result, ceasefires are now effectively deprived of life support. By resuming the war, Netanyahu was able to reconstitute his right-wing government, avoiding early elections. For now, at least, he has full support for the Trump administration. Meanwhile, a brief rest in the suffering of the Gaza people has come to an end, and hope is dark for the rest of the hostages.
In Ukraine it has been about five weeks since Trump improved US policies by launching direct negotiations with Russia – Ukraine was absent. It seemed that the US was changing its approach to conflict as well as changing its aspects.
However, in the end, it is unclear how much it actually changed after the month of drama. The war was still fiercely furious, and after a brief pause, the US resumed delivering weapons. Recent events may have ultimately had a greater impact on the US relations with Europe than on the course of the war. NATO allies have questioned the security assurances of the alliance's long Sacrosanct, forcing the head of state to question whether they would like to visit the White House if President Trump and the Vice President are handed over to Zenkenkey, if they would be at risk of the type of treatment.
Perhaps the Ukrainians achieved rhetorical victory by agreeing to a ceasefire that the Russians had refused. It could also perhaps strengthen the case of more Ukrainians and sympathetic members of the regime. Before presenting the contract to Moscow, Secretary of State Macro Rubio said, “Ball is currently in the Russian court.”
But for now there are few indications that the White House is preparing to pressure Russia to accept a wider ceasefire. In fact, it could be that they are preparing more concessions on behalf of Ukraine. In stark contrast to Zelensky's treatment, Trump has only said positive things about his interactions with Putin. Witkov, a New York property developer, is now a versatile diplomat who is Trump's point man in both the Middle East and Ukraine, defending Russia's drone strike before the suspension comes into effect and promises potential US-Russia energy cooperation.
Trump's “Breakstaff” diplomacy
Trump's willingness to break norms and fundamentally change policies can produce diplomatic outcomes.
His threat to separate US troops from Syria reportedly gave US troops leverage to negotiate a deal between Syrian Kurdish forces and the country's new government, preventing new deadly conflicts, which many have feared after the collapse of the Assad regime, at least for the time being.
Trump has been criticized for talking directly with Putin over Ukraine, and recently his envoy negotiated directly with Hamas over hostages for US citizens. (There was a time when Republicans attacked presidential candidate Barack Obama and said they were willing to speak directly to our enemies “without prerequisites.”
Still, there is an incident in regards to Ukraine where Trump and his officials are only publicly acknowledging what the Biden team personally admits. Ukraine rarely takes all of its territory by military means, even with US support.
When Trump began talking to Russia in February, Samuel Carup, a rand company analyst and a former State Department official who advocated negotiations to end the war, believes the Trump team has demonstrated its political will to restore bilateral channels with Russia, but added, “My concern is simply a rush to delve into this concern in line with the fact that it has a coordinated plan.”
Similarly, in Gaza, the Trump administration took office with a ceasefire.
“There's some advantage to being completely ignored from normal practices like the Trump administration. You can just try something new and break it. And some of it is a good idea,” said Iran Goldenberg, a Middle Eastern expert who served in the Biden administration and Kamala Harris campaign, recently debated an outburst that would explode beyond the direct talk between the US and Hamas. “On the other hand, if you want to negotiate a complex transaction, rigour, knowledge and preparation are also very important.”
The two attitudes said in January to reach the first Gaza ceasefire.
Ultimately, the limitation of Trump's approach may be that it is often detached from reality. The heat dream built by Trump's AI at Gaza Beach Resort distracted me from the work on developing actual viable plans for Gaza's future and justified the most extreme purpose of Israel's annexist rights.
Some Trump officials, including national security adviser Mike Waltz, suggested that Trump's pointless vision was a pressure tactic to guide regional governments to come up with their own solutions.
However, the Arab government presented their own (obviously flawed) reconstruction plan for Gaza in early March, and the White House quickly rejected it, clinging to Trump's vision of the Levantin “Riviera” that cleaned up the Palestinians. Like Greenland and Canada, Trump appears to be serious about this.
In Ukraine, Trump's views on the conflict appear to be heavily influenced by Russia itself, or at least US sympathizers. Including his inaccurate comments, it was Ukraine that launched the war, suggesting that Zelensky was a very unpopular “dictator.”
Recently, Ukrainian troops have claimed they are “completely surrounded” in the Russian Kursk province, claiming they are at risk of being slaughtered. This is Putin's own argument about the situation in Kursk, but not the US intelligence report evaluation. (The Ukrainian forces in Kursk are steadily losing ground, but are not surrounded.)
More fundamentally, he consistently argues that it is a matter of the territorial issue of Putin's assigns, despite little evidence that it is true.
Trump's unpredictable approach and willingness to break unwritten rules of international diplomacy can help him talk about his adversaries. However, it is difficult to get real results without being involved in the reality of the situation.
