Bad News for Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Ambitions
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President Donald Trump has publicly moaned that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, and yet he seems to be on the verge of intensifying at least two wars—while, at the same time, weakening America’s position in the world and strengthening that of the most powerful dictatorships.
One of these calamities, Trump has already inflicted. Earlier in the week, he gave a green light to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s then-rumored plan to occupy all of Gaza—and, on Thursday, Israel’s security Cabinet approved the policy.
Trump had given his signal the day before when a journalist asked him whether Israel should carry out the plan and Trump replied, “That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.” Netanyahu is one of the few leaders over whom Trump does have some leverage. If he’d said, “No, that would be a big mistake” and repeated the message privately, the prime minister would almost certainly have held back—especially since his own military chief opposed the plan as unnecessary for Israeli security, certain to alienate the rest of the world (which has already grown increasingly critical of Israel’s actions), and likely to cause the deaths of not only more Palestinians but also the few remaining Israeli hostages being kept in Hamas’ hideouts and tunnels.
The double standard is staggering. Trump and his crew have no hesitation trying to dictate what’s in many other countries’ interests. He imposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazil for arresting its former president—a friend and political ally of Trump’s—on charges of attempting a coup. He has threatened to punish Denmark if it doesn’t let him buy Greenland and to punish Canada if it doesn’t join the U.S. as the 51st state. Vice President J.D. Vance criticized Germany not long ago for outlawing pro-Nazi speech and even held a friendly meeting with the head of its neo-fascist party just before an election. Yet both Trump and Vance said Israel should decide on its own whether to resume its total occupation of Gaza (which it last held from 1967 to 2005).
The green light is consistent with Trump’s earlier urgings that Netanyahu “finish” the war “quickly,” regardless of the price to Palestinian lives or violation of international law. He may believe that forceful occupation will result in the final crushing of Hamas and thus end the war—Netanyahu seems to think so—but this would come at the cost of much more death, destruction, and starvation, and, in the end, may not actually end the war. (Many Israelis thought the opening salvos in their retaliation to Hamas’ brutal invasion of Oct. 7, 2023, would deliver a knockout to Hamas; it did not.) In the meantime, it would also certainly deepen Israel’s growing status as a pariah state, even among many of its former supporters in the Western world.
Then there is the other major conflict that Trump has tried to finish one way or the other—Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Trump’s position on this war has sometimes seemed to waver. In general, he has long been supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin and harshly critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The reasons are both complex and baffling. He openly admires Putin, envies his authoritarian rule, and, to the extent he has a strategic view, aspires to see the major powers—which he sees as the U.S., Russia, and China—divide the world into separate spheres of influence. He also detests Zelensky, dating back to his attempt to pressure Zelensky into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, before the 2020 election, an act that led to Trump’s first impeachment. Since regaining the White House, he has denounced the Ukrainian president as a mere “salesman” and, earlier this year, famously shouted him down, accusing him of disrespect, in a televised meeting in the White House.
Since then, he has softened his view, especially after European leaders coached Zelensky on how to kiss the thin-skinned American president’s ring. Trump has also been visibly annoyed by Putin’s persistent bombing of Ukrainian cities and killing of civilians, defying Trump’s pleas to stop. As a result, he has resumed the shipment of arms to Ukraine, after initially suspending them, and threatened to impose sanctions and tariffs on Russia—most of them substantively meaningless—if Putin didn’t meet a deadline for a ceasefire.
Putin ignored the threats; the deadline passed with no action. And yet, after a three-hour meeting between Putin and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s all-around emissary, the two presidents are scheduled to meet in a summit in the next few days. The original plan was for Trump to meet with Putin, then with Zelensky, then for all three leaders to hammer out some sort of accord together. Zelensky said he would not meet without the presence of European officials. Putin said he would not meet with Zelensky until after a comprehensive peace—which, in Putin’s mind, is equivalent to a total Ukrainian surrender.
As of midafternoon Friday, it seems that Trump is going to proceed with the meeting with Putin anyway—no need for the Russian leader to meet with his Ukrainian foe, contrary to Trump’s earlier demands that the two engage in the summit together. Not only that, but Trump seems prepared to hand Putin a major victory, the likes of which his army has been unable to win on the battlefield, despite 3½ years of intense fighting.
Politico reported on Friday that a deal, worked out between Putin and Witkoff, would require Ukraine to cede Crimea and all of the eastern Donbas region to Russia—and to withdraw from the slivers of territory in that region that Kyiv now controls.
One inference of the report is that, after shaking on the deal with Putin, Trump will present it to Zelensky as a fait accompli, threatening to withdraw all U.S. support if the Ukrainian leader resists. European nations would probably continue to ship arms to Kyiv, but the absence of American aid—especially of intelligence assistance—would severely weaken Ukraine’s defenses, just at the moment when Russia’s cratering economy would otherwise dampen its own ability to capture more Ukrainian territory.
Putin has also said, repeatedly, that Ukraine—which he believes doesn’t exist as an independent country or culture—must give up all hopes of ever joining NATO and, in effect, rejoin Moscow’s politico-economic camp. It has not been reported whether these conditions are part of the deal that he and Trump will discuss.
If such a deal is forced through, there may indeed be “peace,” but it would not be durable peace, founded on Ukrainian independence, but would rather resemble more the “peace in our time” that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed in 1938 after signing the Munich accord, which surrendered the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany—and paved the way for Hitler’s troops to broaden their invasion through all of Europe.
Putin isn’t necessarily Adolf Hitler, and the Russian army lacks the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg brio. But the whole world is watching whether Trump caves to Putin’s demands—thus abandoning a free and democratic country in the center of Europe. If he does, China may feel emboldened to escalate its claims in the South China Sea and its aggression against Taiwan. Neighboring countries, especially South Korea and Japan, might conclude (so far, they only strongly suspect) that the U.S. will not come to their aid either and, as a result, develop their own nuclear arsenals. This would set off a chain of nuclear arms races in Asia and possibly elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Putin is capitalizing on the current dynamics. He phoned Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among other leaders, to discuss his peace talks with Witkoff. Modi also held talks with Brazilian President Lula da Silva about forming a common strategy in the face of Trump’s recent tariffs.
Xi and Putin have formed an alliance of sorts for some time, partly in a common resistance to U.S. economic dominance. But an expansion of this partnership to include India and Brazil—until recently strong allies of the United States—is due entirely to Trump, who imposed stiff tariffs on Brazil for entirely personal reasons and on India to punish Modi for buying oil from Russia. (Noticeably, Trump did not impose the same tariff on China, which also purchases oil from Russia and sells military technology to Moscow as well.)
So there you have it. In the span of less than a week, under the delusion that he’s building peace and making America great again, Trump has taken steps that will likely weaken democracy, splinter Europe, deepen the pariah status of Israel (without advancing a durable peace), and isolate the United States.
Trump wants a Nobel Prize, but his recent actions expose the depths of his foolishness.
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