Why Donald Trump Can’t Have Peace In Ukraine and Gaza
A desire to end conflict will not suffice in achieving an actual end to hostilities in either Ukraine or Gaza.
The United States is no stranger to peace-making, and in recent decades, Washington has played the vital role of an honest broker in bringing lasting peace to the Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere.
Where Washington succeeded, it did not impose peace from the outside but instead coaxed it out of warring parties that were ready for it. That was true with Israel and Egypt in 1979, Israel and Jordan in 1994, Serbia and Bosnia in 1995, Northern Ireland in 1998, and Israel and other Arab nations in 2020.
However, for different reasons in each case, the parties committed themselves to peace because they concluded that they would gain more from it than from continued bloodshed. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat sought peace to regain land lost in war and attract U.S. economic aid. The parties to the conflict in Northern Ireland were exhausted by three decades of “troubles.” The Abraham Accords came about largely because the parties involved decided to align themselves against a more dangerous foe in Tehran.
But U.S. peace-making without willing parties—as we see today with Russia and Ukraine, and with Israel and Hamas—is sure to backfire, tarnishing America’s global image while planting the seeds for more war. In fact, a Washington that seems too eager for peace, even a hollow peace that provides only a short respite before the fighting returns, could make war likelier in other places as well.
Seeking to impose Russia-Ukraine peace, President Trump is rescuing Vladimir Putin from global isolation, bullying Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a Russia-centric peace that he will play no role in shaping, and suspending U.S. military aid to Ukraine. However, the warring parties themselves in this conflict do not seek long-term peace under today’s circumstances.
Putin has written that “the idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians” has “no historical basis” and said that much of Ukraine once belonged to Russia. He seized Crimea in 2014 and encouraged pro-Russian forces to stir up trouble in Ukraine’s eastern region before launching an invasion in 2022 to conquer the country. No one has any reason to believe that even with a peace agreement, Putin will do anything but prepare to try again to achieve his imperial designs on Kyiv.
Not surprisingly, Zelensky believes that peace is “very, very far away,” and—per his fears about Putin’s long-term plans—insists that any peace must be “just, honest, and most importantly, sustainable.”
As for Israel’s war with Hamas, Trump last month proposed to take over Gaza, displace the 2.1 million Palestinians who live there, and redevelop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” He said “all hell is going to break loose” if Hamas didn’t release all of its remaining hostages by noon the following Saturday.
Well, the Gaza plan now seems a controversial pipedream, Hamas ignored Trump’s hostage demand, and neither Hamas nor Israel is showing any signs of abandoning their long-term fight to the death.
Hamas’ leaders view their slaughter and hostage-taking of October 7, 2023 as a huge victory over Israel, vow to commit as many such atrocities as necessary to destroy the Jewish state, and leveraged the recent ceasefire to regain control of Gaza—where they invariably will regroup, rearm, and resume their terrorism.
For his part, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas over the long term, separate and apart from whether the two sides extend the current ceasefire or return to war.
To be sure, peacemaking is a notable U.S. practice, and it’s a big reason why warring parties who are ready to lay down their arms look to Washington to bring them together and push the effort forward.
But whatever the powerful carrots and sticks at its disposal, Washington cannot impose peace from the outside.
Worse, a Washington that seems desperate for peace—no matter the justice of its terms, or the likelihood of its sustainability—will send a dangerous signal to leaders in other regions who are mulling whether to launch their own wars.
The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act declares a U.S. expectation that Taiwan’s future “will be determined by peaceful means” and a U.S. commitment to “maintain the capacity… to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.”
As China’s Xi Jinping considers whether to make do on his threats to seize Taiwan by force, will he conclude that the United States simply won’t have the stomach to turn its earlier declarations into action?
Lawrence J. Haas is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of, among other books, Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World.
Image: Chip Somodevilla / Shutterstock.com.