The limits of the US President Donald Trump’s brand for extremely personalized, warlike diplomacy have never been more obvious than with the negligible results this week in which two of the most fatal conflicting conflicts in the world were involved.
In Gaza, Israel’s military smashed the weak ceasefire on Tuesday by causing the largest number of deaths on a single day at Palestinians since the beginning of the war in October 2023.
And after Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin about Ukraine, every hope was that the Russian president was willing to resist or to hold his persistent three -year attack on the country considerably.
Both results were easy to predict, say veteran diplomats, since Trump concentrated almost purposefully on achieving quick victories at the expense of the tougher work of stubborn diplomacy, which led to permanent profits.
“He imposes timelines that are unrealistic, and it also imposes terms that are not met,” said Louise Blais, a long -time Canadian diplomat and former Canadian ambassador of the United Nations.
“He is a kind of” immediate satisfaction president ” – he does not have the patience to do the work that requires diplomacy,” she told CBC News.
In her public statements, Trump’s foreign policy team insisted on the fact that it will lead to more peace talks between the USA and Russia in Saudi Arabia at the weekend with “victories” for the administration and that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also agreed to an arms of the arms on energy goals.
Over -promising
But Blais says Trump’s actions follow a familiar pattern of over -promising and subsequent patterns.
“They do not bring parties like Ukraine and the Russian Federation or Hamas and (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu overnight. It just doesn’t happen,” said Blais.
And yet that seemed exactly what Trump tried with his aggressive bullying and his public garment from Zelenskyy in this now notorious Oval Office meeting in February.
Trump insulted the Ukraine leader and urged him to make concessions before he started negotiations with Putin.
When he was challenged at the beginning of this week that his efforts did not achieve any results, Trump officers resorted to exaggeration.
“Trump is a natural guide,” said his special representative of the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who also took over the war in Ukraine.
“I can’t say too much how convincing he was on the call (with Putin),” enthused Witkoff from Fox News. “There is no other person like him.”
Trump repeatedly said that he believes Putin wants to end the war he started, although the US intelligence services together with the leaders of practically every European country do not agree.
The Kremlin continues to consist of maximum ceasefire conditions that extinguish the Ukrainian sovereignty, make their military skills neutrum and officially handed over huge swaths of territory to Russia, including areas that Putin’s troops could not prove.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin say that after a long call, they had agreed to an immediate 30-day ceasefire for energy and infrastructure in Russia against Ukraine.
Trump has recently seemed to be more interested in dealing with Putin than Israel’s Netanyahu.
When Israeli fighter planes rained the rockets in Gaza this week, the White House had little to say, except that Trump fully supported Israel and his renewed military actions.
Unlike the original ceasefire in January, Trump and his emissary Witkoff reported on the Israeli guide to end the war or to insist that Netanyahu should adhere to the three -stage plan that Witkoff Netanyahu urged.
Blais, the former Canadian ambassador, says Netanyahu probably – correctly – predicted that Trump would withdraw or lose interest in finding a negotiated agreement against the Gaza Strip as soon as the first ceasefire was signed.
“This is probably one of the reasons why (Trump) was so ineffective that this party knows about the conflicts that he does not have the resilience, the expansion or focus to keep something that is not going well,” said Blais.
Other analysts say that Trump’s strong act could be useful to break patted situations or to re -stagnate stagnating conversations, but profits from such bravery can be fleeting.
“Madman theory”
“You see a merit in the so-called” Madman theory “-the fact that you do not know what it will do and he is very unpredictable,” said Julie Norman, who teaches international relations at the University of College London.
In a article recently defined in Foreign Minister, “Madman Theory” was defined as a leader who, by a very volatile way, believes that they can get opponents to make concessions.
On more than one opportunity, Trump suggested that his opponents are afraid of him because they cannot predict what he will do next.
However, the article from the Foreign Minister underlines an inherent contradiction in this approach:
“Managers with the reputation of unpredictability – or who promote perception that they could do almost everything regardless of the consequences, often have difficulty fulfilling credible guarantees.”
And although such a leadership style can be popular with dictators and strong, the article also rarely works.
“The former Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev threatened to use nuclear weapons against the West, and often seemed to lose control of his feelings in front of Western leaders – screamed, gestured and red in the face – but ultimately he could not force the United States back,” the article says.
During his first term as president, Trump memorized the same highly personalized approach as the unpredictable dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong un to encourage him to give up his country’s arsenal on nuclear weapons.
Three meet later – including a zone between North and South Korea – Trump ended the diplomatic subtleties after Kim did not proved to sign an agreement that Trump wanted.
According to Norman, Trump’s style seems to be particularly out of place when the two current wars with which he is confronted to solve.
“The attempt to solve these very complex, very durable, very complicated conflicts that require precision, are committed to time and attention to detail and nuances and all of these are things that Trump has not yet really wanted to bother,” Norman told CBC News.
Trump’s next steps are not surprisingly difficult to predict.
The US President seems to intend to restore business, political and economic relationships with Russia, regardless of the progress in the end of war in Ukraine.
And in the Middle East Witkoff and others continue to act as mediators to end the resumed attacks on Gaza Strip, although Trump’s long -term vision for the end of the conflict does not have to be clearly articulated.
While he previously proposed that Palestinians from Gaza should be sold and the territory became a huge real estate development, Trump has declined something since then.
What seems to be secure, says Norman, the analyst of international relationships, is that Trump’s boasting goes far beyond what he delivers will be the guilt of someone else.
“It is very difficult to be a dealmaker, a peace founder, a negotiator or a diplomat if (as a bully) your international reputation is as an individual – and also as a state.”
