Why Trump Hasn’t Been Able to End the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza

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Russia keeps bombing Ukraine, including unmistakably civilian targets, and President Donald Trump reacts by threatening to impose sanctions or tariffs, then moves the threat’s deadlines up or back several times, to the point where nobody—least of all Russian President Vladimir Putin—would take any of them seriously.

Meanwhile, Trump has done little or nothing to advance serious talks on the other main issues that he boasted he could settle within days or even hours of taking office: a ceasefire in Gaza and a decisive end to Iran’s nuclear program.

As Steve Witkoff, the longtime friend and fellow real-estate tycoon that Trump appointed as chief negotiator on Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East, said in an interview back in March, “I underestimated the complications in the job, that’s for sure. I think I was a little bit quixotic … like, I’m going to roll in there on a white horse,” but in fact, “it was anything but that, you know.”

Trump came in with equally fantastic assumptions, as suggested by A) his massive overconfidence that his putative deal-making talents could succeed where his predecessors had failed, and B) his unblinkingly assuming that someone like Witkoff, with no experience at international relations whatsoever, could similarly outperform conventionally experienced diplomats.

Trump has said many times that if he’d been president during Joe Biden’s term, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine and Hamas would not have crossed the border into Israel. He has never elaborated on this theory, but presumably it’s because he thinks Putin would have respected him too much, and Hamas’ leaders would have feared him too much, to engage in such aggression.

And yet, six months into his second time in the White House, neither Putin nor the heads of Hamas seem the slightest bit shaken or impressed by Trump’s demeanor, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only pretends to be. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza rage on, as they did before, and, despite the damage that U.S. and Israeli air and missile strikes inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites, Tehran’s leaders reject Trump’s demand that they stop enriching uranium entirely.

Trump’s illusions and disillusions over Russia have left everyone perplexed. Trump seems finally to realize that Putin is a monster who has no interest in ending his war on Ukraine. “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Trump recently complained, adding later, “He talks nice, but then he bombs everybody in the evening.” Yet Trump does nothing about Putin’s murderous treachery. He did lift a freeze on arms transfers to Ukraine—but didn’t accelerate or boost them. He continues to label the conflict “Biden’s war,” and adds that he doesn’t want to get “stuck in the middle of it.”

CNN cataloged Trump’s ever-shifting deadlines on punishing Putin for his actions. On April 27, asked if he trusted the Russian president, Trump replied, “We’ll let you know in about two weeks.” Asked the question again on May 14, he replied, “I’ll let you know in a week. I’ll let you know in a few days.” Asked again on May 19, he replied, “I’d rather tell you in about two weeks from now.” May 28: “I’ll let you know in about two weeks. … We’re going to find out whether or not [Putin is] tapping us along or not. And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently.” On July 14, he said he would impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia if Putin didn’t make a ceasefire deal “in 50 days.” Then, on July 28, he shortened the deadline to “about 10 or 12 days from today, because,” he added, “I think I already know the answer” about Putin’s true intentions.

So, check back on Aug. 7 or 9. My guess is that Trump still won’t have taken any action.

Even if he does reverse course and impose new sanctions or tariffs, they’re unlikely to affect Putin’s behavior in Ukraine or elsewhere. The U.S. and the West have piled sanctions on various sectors of Russia’s economy ever since Putin annexed Crimea in 2014—yet Russians have found ways to export oil and import many goods outside the network of U.S.–dollar transactions. As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it (fairly accurately) in a Reuters interview on Wednesday, Russia has “acquired immunity” to such measures.

As for tariffs, the U.S. imported just $3 billion worth of goods from Russia last year—less than 0.1 percent of the $3.2 trillion we import from the rest of the world. In other words, there isn’t much to tariff. Trump has threatened to impose “secondary tariffs,” amounting to as much as 100 percent, on all countries that do business with Russia. But is he really going to double the price of goods that we import from, say, Russia’s biggest sources of trade—China (from which the U.S. imports $536 billion worth of goods) and India ($87 billion)? Doubtful.

Trump is facing three obstacles in his hapless quest for a Nobel Peace Prize. First, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He authored a bestselling book called The Art of the Deal, and he thinks that a deal is a deal—that negotiating with other world powers isn’t so different from tangling with the New York Buildings Department or offering dimes for dollars to construction contractors.

Second, because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, he tries to solve crises by dispatching trusted friends, like Witkoff, who know little or nothing about the parties they’re negotiating with or the conflicts they’re supposed to be settling. He has a well-known aversion to experts and says—perhaps even really believes—that he knows more about any number of topics than they do. This is not only delusional but dangerous; it’s also a waste of the power and leverage that the U.S. could still sway, to some extent, if steered by diplomats who know what they’re doing.

Third, he tends to view each conflict, transaction, or even meeting as an isolated thing. He has no sense of global or regional strategy, of how one issue might be connected to another. So, he wants Europe to spend more on defense—but also imposes 15 percent tariffs on all goods European countries export to the U.S., which, over the long haul, will weaken the economies on both sides of the Atlantic. He has wreaked similar havoc on economic planning in Japan and South Korea, without considering how they could help counter aggression by China. He pals it up with the Saudi royal family without understanding that they can’t make a grand bargain with Israel until Israel tones down its aggression against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—something Trump could influence, given his close ties with Netanyahu. Yet even after realizing that Israel’s occupation of Gaza is causing starvation, Trump does nothing to exert any pressure for a ceasefire.

Finally, Trump’s failure to help end the wars isn’t entirely his fault. The American diplomats of our golden era, in the decade after World War II—the likes of George Kennan and George Marshall—enjoyed huge advantages, which made exertions of strength possible, even easy: a nuclear monopoly, a surge in wealth and industry brought on by the war, and potential competitors waylaid—some buried in rubble—by the same war. Even these master diplomats would have trouble formulating grand strategy and seizing moments of opportunity in a world of vanishing power blocs, shifting borders, well-armed militias, and loosened ties in common values and loyalties.

The problems that Trump thought he could solve easily—the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions—are especially hard to solve because the players have incompatible goals. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demands that Russian troops leave the portions of his land that they occupy, and he has called for a ceasefire prior to negotiations. By contrast, Putin dismisses the very existence of Ukraine, regards it as part of Russia, and won’t agree to a ceasefire until after the two sides’ political differences are settled—which would mean, among other things, that Ukraine disarm and, for all intents and purposes, surrender.

Israel has called for a ceasefire, during which time Hamas would release the remaining hostages that its militias took on Oct. 7, 2023—but demands the right to resume the war, in order to destroy Hamas altogether, after the hostages are free. Hamas refuses to stop fighting or to release more hostages unless Israel agrees to make the ceasefire permanent and to withdraw all Israeli troops from Gaza.

The Iranian leaders claim that they have no intention to build atomic weapons but that the Non-Proliferation Treaty—which they signed—allows them the “inalienable right” to enrich uranium at least to some extent. Trump says he wants to resume talks toward a “better” nuclear deal than President Barack Obama and the leaders of five other countries were able to achieve in 2015 (a deal that Trump scuttled in 2018 during his first term in office)—but he demands that Iran give up enrichment.

As long as all the combatants and negotiators dig in to their positions and refuse even to consider compromise—and as long as outside powers decline, or find themselves unable, to pressure their allies—then these wars will grind on. Trump can kid himself all he wants that the world leaders fear and respect him, but even to the extent they do, personal politics in today’s world, in these conflicts, won’t overturn vital interests.

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