People’s ears perked up a little while back when Donald Trump remarked that he doesn’t like his chances of getting into Heaven. He made this comment in the context of discussing his administration’s attempts to facilitate the ending of wars around the globe. Trump has also said that a large motivation for him when it comes to trying to broker a peace in the disastrous Russia-Ukraine War is the desire to stop people from dying. Well, good news, Mr. President, because if the big foreign policy news from this week ends up coming to fruition, it certainly can’t hurt your chances of getting into Heaven.
At the time of writing and posting this piece, a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine appears to be on the table, or at least there’s the potential a peace deal may be on the table quite soon. There were reports earlier in the week that Ukraine had agreed to sign the deal. There’s also been reports that Ukraine is pushing back on elements of the proposed peace plan. And then there’s the Russians. Will a peace plan be signed by the Russians? I’ll believe it when I see it; the Russians are not exactly what I’d call a trustworthy bunch, especially when they have leverage. Neither a finalized peace deal nor peace talks completely breaking down would be surprising. It feels like we’re going round in circles, doesn’t it? But regardless of whether or not a peace deal is hammered out in the coming days or weeks, the main takeaway everyone should have from this process is that the U.S. is using its position in the world to try and broker peace.
Trying to broker peace is much more preferable than the typical foreign policy establishment approach, which we all know by now does not work. Oh, yeah, let’s just continue to send the Ukrainians money and weapons, but no actual strong military commitment. I know people don’t like to restrict things to a binary, but a binary’s what we have here. In armed conflict, you’re either in or you’re out. Just keeping the money and weapons rolling is only going to prolong the destruction.
And the typical foreign policy establishment approach is especially inapplicable when dealing with the Russians because we’re dealing with a leader who looks at the illusory world the hyper-credentialed, administrative bureaucrats conceived post-WWII—and the rulebook we’re all supposed to abide by in that world—and urinates all over it. Vladimir Putin is an old-time leader when it comes to foreign policy. He, unfortunately for us, understands that the way the world actually works is: you want something, you take it; you want to keep something, you defend it. No amount of global, liberal idealism is going to save you when dealing with a leader like Putin.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to hard power. Sure, when you have leverage, you play with things like sanctions or, if you want to be really aggressive, something like a blockade. But Putin’s got hard power—nukes—and leverage—he’s effectively won the war on the ground as things stand; the territory claims haven’t shifted substantially in a while. The typical playbook doesn’t work anyway, but it especially doesn’t work here. So it’s nice to see an administration that understands the futility of employing the neoconservative/neoliberal foreign policy playbook.
Furthermore, it’s nice to see an administration with a figurehead who, as I referenced earlier, is primarily motivated by wanting to stop people from dying. As politically misguided as the typical foreign policy approach is in this country, the worst part about it is that it treats these people in other countries as, effectively, pieces on a chessboard. And, obviously, these people are not pieces on a chessboard; they’re human beings, and their lives have value. Look, I’m not a total dove. War, unfortunately, has a purpose, even a justified one. If someone tried to invade America, I’d be totally behind using arms to forcefully drive back our assailants. But we’ve used our position as leader of the world to either directly involve ourselves in armed conflict or to incite armed conflict around the world at the cost of millions of lives. And for what? “Democracy?” The liberal, rules-based order? No responsible, and more importantly, moral leader of the world—no leader with a modicum of a conscience—would approach foreign policy entanglements the way we have. A moral and responsible leader of the world would be motivated by trying to broker peace, which saves human lives, which is vastly more important than a warped sense of “democracy.”
And Trump’s not perfect; no leader is going to be. I’m not anywhere close to an expert on the disaster in Yemen, but Trump probably could have done more during his first term to, if not fully bring the conflict to a close, at least get some of the heat to simmer. The Israel-Iran situation ruffled a lot of non-interventionists’ feathers. It made me nervous. Yet we did what we did, and, fortunately, a major conflict hasn’t broken out in the Middle East in the aftermath. A large reason for that, I believe, is because Trump is a strongman who commands the respect of the leaders in this world who don’t play by the liberal, rules-based order. But, even though we’ve had some shenanigans during this term, Trump’s approach to foreign policy is still vastly more in line with how a moral leader of the world should act. He appears, overall, to be more concerned with ending wars than starting them. And, as long as we’re the leader of the world, it’d be nice to have more of that approach than the approach we've been using. But I'm not holding my breath for the long-term future.