Trump: The Erratic but Potentially Effective Peacemaker
Can a mercurial narcissist decenter America from global policing?
Say what you will about the tenets of Donald Trump's diplomacy, but the president understands perhaps more than any of his predecessors the power of a well-crafted dominance visual:
A historic day at the White House as European leaders joined President Trump in the Oval Office.
President Donald J. Trump is the President of PEACE. ???????? pic.twitter.com/V91JvL7K9Z
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 19, 2025
"One picture says it all," crowed The Manhattan Institute's Daniel Di Martino. "The free world is led by America." And yet. "The power dynamic is quite evident," Wall Street Journal European correspondent Bojan Pancevski noted. "Europe largely got what it wanted, but they had to pilgrim and kiss the ring."
Trump's frenetic, expectations-exceeding Russia-Ukraine negotiations the past five days have suggested a paradoxical set of brain-puzzlers: What if gauche ring-kissery is the best (or at least the only available) path to end a sickeningly brutal war? What if mercurial, America-first narcissism and sporadic acts of friendly-fire humiliation are the way to, at long bloody last, hand off responsibility for European security to actual Europeans?
The smart money is still against peace. Ukraine is still seeking armed-to-the-teeth postsettlement security guarantees; Europe is still waiting on Washington before agreeing to any such responsibility, Washington is still balking at American boots on the ground, and Russia is still sending mixed signals about any NATO member troops defending Ukrainian territory. Trump and the rhetorically unified European leaders have given themselves 10 days to solve a problem that has lasted at least 11 years, arguably 31.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may see no reason to budge from the traditional Moscow diplomatic stance of not budging. Trump as recently as Sunday was pinning primary responsibility for ending a territorial war on the side that was invaded, and could very conceivably swing back in that direction when that 10-day window begins to snap shut.
But as former Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, no huge fan of Trump, posted on X on Monday night, "Without the last six months you don't get to today. And if you believe as I do that Ukraine's defense is moral and just, you couldn't have asked for a better outcome to build momentum for peace. Without Trump threatening to step back, you don't get NATO allies stepping up to take more ownership of European security and committing to blow past 2% and raise defense spending to 5% of GDP—the last thing Putin wanted. Without Trump reaching out to Putin and expressing an openness to strike a deal, there would be no possibility of the face-saving framing that is needed to see a lasting peace. The Alaska Summit raised the stakes for Trump to get a deal done, and for Putin as well. Even the awful February meeting with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky in the Oval Office served an important role in recalibrating Ukrainian domestic expectations, which will be essential to gaining approval of the inevitable concessions any peace treaty Putin would sign will include….The dynamic Trump inherited was unsustainable and needed a dramatic reset. Trump did that, and in so doing has brought real possibility this awful war that Russia started might finally be brought to an end."
Trump may come off like a hopelessly needy egocentric (and easy diplomatic mark) with his incessant insistence that Putin's 2022 invasion never would have happened on his watch, but there's corollary analysis that's much more verifiable: Neither former President Joe Biden nor NATO's European members had realistic plans to stop or aggressively roll back the war. Getting to within shouting distance of a Putin-Zelenskyy summit meeting is an achievement in itself.
If, against the odds, Trump and the Europeans agree on "Article 5–like" security guarantees for Kyiv, that breakthrough would put Putin in the awkward position of potentially agreeing to conditions—Ukraine being knitted into the geopolitical fabric of Western Europe—that the war was ostensibly waged to prevent.
Depending on the details, such an agreement could also prove politically problematic for Trump, as well as geopolitically for a future President J.D. Vance and his successors. To the extent there's a shared MAGA foreign policy understanding, it surely does not involve the U.S. military umbrella stretching further toward Moscow.
Vance shot to political stardom not by touting the noble defensive efforts of Zelenskyy, but by getting from "Ukraine" to "fentanyl" in the fewest words possible. If Washington recklessly dangling future NATO membership was, as Trump suggested as recently as today, a main reason why Russia invaded, how does having the U.S. participate in NATO-like security guarantees make even one more whit of sense?
Intractable problems tend to get that way for a reason, as do leadership/followership ruts. If and when the path to this Trumpian process toward peace breaks down, the what-next questions have implications far beyond the millions of Ukrainians and Russians grievously affected by the ongoing carnage. The Trump administration, as the formerly hawkish Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated explicitly, is accelerating beyond the post–Cold War unipolar moment into a more competitive dynamic where regional powers extend spheres of influence. Are Europeans, eight decades after World War II, finally ready to embrace a starring role in their own damned neighborhood?
Pixel dissectors have zeroed in on one particularly unimpressed audience member yesterday at Trump's Oval Office lecture: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Yes, Meloni has a reputation as an eye-roller, and perhaps there's a certain national tendency when it comes to facial expressions. But the pint-sized populist, unlike other MAGA-favored foreigners such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán, has been a vociferous supporter of Ukraine, seeing its cause as central to the European and Christian cultures her political career arose to defend. Meloni was a key figure in rallying E.U. participation in Zelenskyy's trip to Washington, and praised the idea of Article 5–like security guarantees.
But the P.M. has also balked at sending boots on the ground, and been reluctant to crank up the Italian defense-spending machine. At some point, perhaps very soon, Meloni and other Europeans will be impelled to realize that there's a chasm between their tough rhetoric and military readiness to blunt nearby bloodshed.
For now, fingers crossed that somehow Trump will pull a credible and lasting peace and security deal out of his hat, preferably without putting the U.S. on the hook for guaranteeing Ukrainian security against a persistently belligerent neighbor. If and when that plan breaks down, may the next summit meeting take place on the other side of the Atlantic.
