This year’s Munich Security Conference is an unusually consequential one since it begins as the Trump administration turns its attention to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Even as Trump’s delegation discusses terms with Ukrainians and Russians, and occasionally updates the other Europeans, the Middle East is watching to see if the ceasefire deal in Gaza will hold.
To many in Washington, the teetering Gaza deal is both a potential humanitarian catastrophe and a sign of Trumpian incompetence. Donald Trump’s threats and demands that Hamas honor the agreement seem like hamfisted amateurism to the Beltway’s mandarins and their overseas friends. That is because Trump’s view of how diplomacy works is fundamentally different from how they think.
For progressives and their allies, diplomacy is mostly about fostering good feelings. They tend to hope that the process of negotiating will create trust and hopefully goodwill that should improve the overall relationship between the countries involved. In this view, having something to sign is more important than driving a hard bargain that protects American interests. Withdrawing from any deal is a terrible misstep, even if staying in accomplishes nothing or if the other side is violating the terms.
That is not how Trump views things at all. He thinks that the United States is bound by agreements only to the extent that the other side complies—and even then, he reserves the right to pull out when he finds it advantageous. The ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas only exists because of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz’s assurances that if Hamas cheated on the deal, the United States would not force Israel to continue complying. Joe Biden tried for months to get a similar deal, but he could not credibly make the same offer to Jerusalem and thus failed.
So when Hamas threatened to stop releasing its hostages on schedule, Trump responded, "If all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock … I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out." Hamas seems to have backed down—after hitting Gaza with another rocket.
Trump wants a deal with Vladimir Putin, and his 2018 summit in Helsinki dismayed the Americans who had been on the receiving end of Putin’s misdeeds. But Putin’s best offer was unacceptable to Trump, who hurt Russia’s economy by boosting American shale oil production and became the first U.S. president to send weapons to Ukraine. And when the Russians repeatedly violated agreements that banned intermediate-range ballistic missiles and permitted flights to observe Russian and NATO conventional forces, Trump withdrew from both treaties. This is closer to the Kissingerian version of détente—lowering the temperature in some areas while ruthlessly pursuing advantages in more promising ones—than the kinder, gentler version promoted by Jimmy Carter and followed by today’s progressives.
That version is much less successful, even on its own terms. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden hoped that a nuclear deal with Iran would be the first step to calming down the Middle East. Both failed, since the mullahs are not interested in getting along with the Great Satan. James Hansen, one of the intellectual godfathers of the climate movement, lambasted the Paris Agreement on climate as "a fraud really, a fake," since it is nonbinding and had no chance of reaching its targets. But for Beltway progressives, Trump’s withdrawals from the agreement in 2017 and last month were signs of the apocalypse.
Trump cherishes his reputation for unpredictability, and as of this writing, the contours of the Ukraine deal are not yet clear. But his interest in developing Ukraine’s mineral deposits indicates he is not planning on throwing Kiev under the bus. And during the last congressional debate about aiding Ukraine, Trump wrote, "As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us! GET MOVING EUROPE!"
Getting Europe moving is a major goal. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Brussels Wednesday, "Any security guarantee [for Ukraine] should be backed by capable European and non-European troops" and that "Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine." He walked back some of his remarks the next day, saying "everything is on the table," but the overall thrust of American policy is in that direction.
Trump is betting that he can shock the Europeans out of their post-Cold War slumber. German chancellor Olaf Scholz is now calling for another Zeitenwende, a strategic reorientation. But the German Army is less prepared for battle than it was when he announced the last Zeitenwende three years ago.
Trump is also betting that Putin wants a deal that meets his bottom line. Perhaps. But Russia is winning the war, and Putin may decide that humiliating America is worth the wait.