In December 2015, under the bright lights of a Las Vegas auditorium, more than a dozen Republican presidential hopefuls took to the debate stage to brandish their hawkish foreign-policy credentials.
But then a funny thing happened.
Donald Trump went on the attack, criticizing his opponents’ willingness to intervene in Iraq and elsewhere: “In my opinion, we’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could’ve spent that $4 trillion in the United States … we would’ve been a lot better off.” Trump was immediately criticized for his departure from Republican orthodoxy. But it did little to dent his popular support. By 2015, more than half of all Americans had come to believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Trump’s first election as U.S. president was, in part, enabled by communities that had suffered significant casualties in the war on terror.
Iraq is not the only example of Trump’s anti-war rhetoric. In his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump railed against the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine, promising to end the war in 24 hours; after he won the election in November of that year, he memorably promised to “measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” As both candidate and president, Trump has consistently drawn strength from anti-war voters and those who view the war on terror as a mistake; he even picked J.D. Vance, who has been outspoken on these issues, as his vice president—and, given presidential term limits, a potential successor.
It’s clear that, on some level, Trump wants to be a peacemaker. But he hasn’t made good on his promises. In his first term, he increased U.S. involvement in the Middle East and frequently yielded to hawkish advisors on questions of military force. In his second term, negotiations with Russia are languishing, and he’s considering strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, potentially drawing the United States back into another Middle Eastern quagmire—something opposed by many of his supporters.
Why, then, is Trump struggling to live up to his anti-war rhetoric? Because making peace and maintaining it require more than just wanting it.
Almost immediately upon taking office in January, Trump initiated processes to seek a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine and an end to Israel’s war in Gaza. But his expectations were unusually high: He seemed to expect to solve these conflicts with relatively little effort and in weeks, not years.
Some of this is the result of his own biases. Long before he was a reality TV star, Trump was a New York real-estate developer, a background he shares with his chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff. It’s a background that tends to predispose the two toward hard bargaining. Get in the room, face-to-face with the other guy, they assume, and you can probably hash it out.
But while it’s glib to say that war isn’t real estate, it’s really very different. War is the pinnacle of human disagreement. It occurs when states with irreconcilable differences, ideologies, or interests choose to fight—to spend blood and treasure—rather than talk it out. Often, the issues at stake are complex, requiring more than just a handshake and some hard bargaining.
Admittedly, the Trump administration has had a few real successes: bringing home several hostages from Gaza and getting Russia and Ukraine into direct talks for the first time since 2022. But most of its peacemaking efforts have faltered on difficult points of contention, from the Iran’s refusal to abandon domestic uranium enrichment to Israel’s refusal to accept a long-term cease-fire with Hamas.
These stumbling blocks were easily predictable for those who have studied or worked on the issues. The MAGA distrust of expertise in foreign policy is a fair enough position given these experts’ failures over the last few decades of U.S. foreign policy. But it has also produced a top-heavy approach to diplomacy, where personal overtures are prized, even as negotiators don’t have sufficient background or knowledge to make the most of such interactions. It appears to have taken Witkoff several weeks, for example, to appreciate the importance of domestic enrichment as a sticking point for Iranian negotiators, shortening the timeline for useful negotiations.
Indeed, complex negotiations also tend to take time. The Obama administration, for example, spent six months negotiating an interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program in 2013, followed by almost two years of negotiations on the final Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Peace negotiations in the Korean War took two years, during which the fighting continued. Even the first Trump administration’s own opening to the Taliban took years to produce the Doha deal.
Trump’s promises to solve conflicts overnight, or within 100 days of starting his second term, have been widely mocked. But no one really expected peace to happen in a few days in Eastern Europe or the Middle East. The bigger problem is that the short timelines—and the president’s own lack of patience—make it far easier for those who want diplomacy to fail to manipulate him. The slow pace of Russia-Ukraine talks, for example, have produced a push among congressional hawks to tighten sanctions on Russia. And Israel reportedly cited Trump’s own unmet 60-day deadline for Iranian nuclear talks in its decision to strike Iran.
This pressure is compounded by Trump’s preference for coercive diplomacy and deadlines. If you threaten to escalate in the absence of concessions, it is awfully hard to climb down when your bluff is called. Trump also enjoys looking tough. He even started to claim credit for some of Israel’s recent successful strikes on Iran. It’s perhaps no surprise that reporting suggests Democrats criticizing Trump’s tendency to chicken out has increased his willingness to play hardball with Iran.
In short, Trump’s own unrealistic expectations about peacemaking make him less likely to succeed.
The problem has been particularly acute in the case of Iran, perhaps the one area where mainstream Republicans remain steadfast in their commitment to Bush-era regime change. Recent weeks have seen a concerted push from Capitol Hill, hawkish D.C. think tanks, and even right-wing media to push Trump toward military strikes on Iran, even as talks were apparently slowly proceeding. Even media magnate Rupert Murdoch has been quietly disparaging Witkoff’s efforts in an attempt to sway Trump.
But if Trump can find a way to resist the ticking time bomb of pro-war pressure and media frenzy, he could still pull a deal out of this. There are early signs, including a proposed two-week window in which Trump will decide on military strikes, that he has not abandoned diplomacy yet. Negotiations will occur in Geneva this weekend between Iranian and European diplomats, and channels of direct communication between Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi apparently remain open.
Trump could still be a peacemaker. But it would require the mercurial president, who is not normally known for his patience, to shift from ultimatum-based coercive diplomacy to a more constructive long-term approach.
The post Trump Lacks the Patience for Peace appeared first on Foreign Policy.
