There appears to be a ceasefire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government, drawn up by Donald Trump himself. It remains to be seen whether the ceasefire will hold; Israel has unilaterally violated similar agreements in the past, and I would not be surprised to see the IDF restart the war at some point.
Still, at the very least, there is a break in the fighting, and hopefully as much aid as possible can get in to feed starving Gazans who have not had enough to eat for months and months. Naturally, Trump is gloating, and stepping up his demands on Norway to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. (They, um, did not.)
But one’s mind turns to the war in Ukraine. That conflict, which Trump repeatedly promised to end, will not be nearly so easy to settle. Unlike Hamas, Ukraine is both effectively fighting back, and also has a large and extremely rich set of allies—even excluding the United States. Unlike Israel, Russia is unambiguously the aggressor and not at all dependent on American patronage. It’s not a situation amenable to Trump’s traditional approach of clumsy, heavy-handed pressure.
The details of Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan are instructive. The 20-point plan is a mix of standard end-of-conflict boilerplate, bizarre Trumpy flourishes, and total capitulation by Hamas. The Israeli military will withdraw, aid will flow, Gaza will not be annexed, and a future Palestinian entity will possibly be recognized; that’s all standard enough. However, in the short term, Gaza will be governed by a committee chaired by Trump himself (?) and including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (??), and it will establish a “special economic zone … with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.” What’s more, a “Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza” will be drawn up by experts who “helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.” Another Dubai—just what the Palestinian people have longed for.
More importantly, Hamas will basically cease to exist—every member will have to lay down arms or leave the country, its members will agree “to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form,” and all its weapons and military infrastructure will be destroyed.
On the other hand, during the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would end the war between Ukraine and Russia “on day one,” and that the war never would have been started if he had been president in 2022.
The reason the fighting continues is obvious enough: both parties would rather fight than give up.
Well, at the time of writing, it is day 262 of Trump’s second term, and fighting continues. Over the three-and-a-half years of war, Russia has made incremental progress at a titanic cost in blood and treasure. It has taken something like a million casualties, it has burned through most of its tremendous stockpile of legacy Soviet military equipment, and its economy is popping rivets all over the place. Ukraine has also taken to targeting Russian oil infrastructure, seriously hampering its most important economic resource.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has taken proportionally fewer casualties, but still a horrific number, and endured much worse damage to its civilian infrastructure from Russian carpet bombing. It’s a bloody nightmare on both sides.
The reason the fighting continues is obvious enough: both parties would rather fight than give up. Ukraine has the halfhearted backing of Europe and the U.S., which still amounts to a stupendous quantity of resources. Russia has its Soviet arsenal and the backing of China and North Korea. Moreover, ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin started the war, he has developed a severe case of sunk-cost fallacy mindset. Indeed, he seems to be convinced that the decadent Europeans will give up any day now, with Russian drones violating European airspace all over the continent.
It’s not surprising that Trump’s signature loudmouthed bluster might end up making some progress with Israel-Palestine. In that conflict, one side is now utterly helpless, while the other is seriously dependent on American aid and assistance—above all, the free use of America’s UN Security Council veto. With that much leverage, even extremely clumsy pressure is likely to produce results—and it is to Joe Biden’s eternal discredit that he refused to use it.
But the war in Ukraine is an exceptionally thorny diplomatic situation calling for the wisest and most courageous of statesmen. The most ignorant and deluded American president in history is not that person.
